Yes, Here in My Back Yard

I learned last night that there are 32,510 homeless kids in Orange County. 

You read that correctly. In Orange County, California, with a 3.2 million population, there are 32,510 homeless children.

About a dozen AAUW members from our Westminster-Fountain Valley-Huntington Beach branch were present last night at the Huntington Beach Central Library Theater to hear Regina Calcaterra recount what it felt like to be a homeless child.  Our evening book discussion group had discussed Etched in Sand, and its sequel, Girl Unbroken, in February.

Regina Calcaterra, photo by  SUNY New Paltz

Etched in Sand had been selected as the community read for Huntington Beach Reads One Book 2018. It had been distributed to eight area high schools where it has been used for reading assignments, book reports, art projects and classroom discussion.  It has also been read by Huntington Beach Library Community Read participants.

The Huntington Beach Reads One Book project's mission is to encourage youth and the community to read, think, discuss and act. Its annual selections provide "a contemporary message of promoting diversity and eliminating prejudice, be it prejudice against race, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation, weight, age, or class." The committee chooses books with fewer than 300 pages to fulfill its first purpose...promoting literacy. The selections are appropriate for ages 15 and up, so adolescents and adults can exchange ideas.


This was the third consecutive year I've attended the speaker event. I've previously heard Conor Grenan talk about his "orphan" project in Nepal, recounted in Little Princes, and Jamie Ford discuss his novel, The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, about Japanese families sent to internment camps during WWII.

Calcaterra's mother had been herself an abused child with mental illness who, beginning in adolescence, self-medicated with drugs and alcohol. She produced five children with five different men, and lived in the Hamptons, a string of communities in eastern Long Island's South Fork, often thought of as an affluent area. But, just as in Orange County, Long Island features pockets of poverty, as well as neighborhoods of great wealth.

Her mom got evicted from place after place, and often the family was homeless, living out of a car or on the street. Calcaterra said by the time she was five, she already knew she and her siblings were different. They were scrawny, dirty, and disheveled, and other adults would not allow their children to play with them when they ventured to playgrounds or libraries. The only place they managed to fit in was at the beach, where they could strip off their clothing and bathe in the sea.

Calcaterra provided some sad statistics about the percentage of adolescents who shared her plight who are able to escape the cycle of poverty by getting an education.. She'd been told in the '80s by her child welfare worker that she had no future, because foster kids didn't go to college. She disclosed that even today less than three percent of homeless and foster kids have the social skills to navigate through the formal learning structure. 

She detailed why access to public schools and public libraries is so vital for these children. Though she and her siblings learned to steal food from supermarkets and farms in order to eat, these facilities provided basic elements such as a controlled temperature, bathrooms with running water and working toilets, and electricity. Libraries also provided reading materials, and schools provided lunches, often the only meal that she and her siblings could depend on. 

Calcaterra credits having access to books about Amelia Earhart, a woman of tenacity and persistence, as well as Landmark Series books about Pocohantas, Betsy Ross and Dolley Madison, as providing inspiration for her. She also thanks the teachers who encouraged her for planting seeds in her mind that she could have a different future. Indeed, when she finally began college, she took an early morning political science course, international politicos, where she learned of how children in many developing countries either starve to death, are abandoned on the streets, or are sold into the sex trade. She began to realize that as horrific her childhood was, with the beatings and neglect, she actually had been lucky in at least living in an area where there were a few resources that she and her siblings could access, meager as they might be.

Calceterra wrote her books to draw awareness to how youth can be encouraged to congratulate themselves on their endurance and to adopt attitudes of optimism, persistence and tenacity. She also wanted to encourage adults to assist such youth in trying to find the resources that could help them become productive adults, by being role models and mentors.

Again, we learned last night that there are 32,510 homeless kids in Orange County.

A few days ago in the Orange County Register I read about a homeless family of four, including a young boy and girl, who had been sleeping inside a van at a Garden Grove shopping center’s parking lot. They had been discovered inside, possibly victims of carbon monoxide poisoning, according to authorities.

On the front page of today's Los Angeles Times, I read this: Orange County's homeless plan is now in serious jeopardy after those three communities vowed to do whatever it takes to keep the shelters out. Leaders in Irvine and Laguna Niguel voted to sue the county to block the shelter plan, and local officials want to drop the Huntington Beach location.

www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-collapse-oc-20180322-story.html 

 Yes, everybody agrees to want to help the homeless. Just not in my backyard, though. 

Some spokespersons criticize the plan to house the homeless in tents adjacent to areas where "innocent children" wait to take school buses or use public libraries. I'd like to suggest that many of these homeless are innocent children themselves. Again, there are 32510 homeless kids in Orange County. 

 What We Can Do To Help Right Here in Orange County

One woman works tirelessly to do what she can. Robyne Wood, a Huntington Beach housewife and mother of two, works with nearly three dozen adolescents, badly in need of adult role models and mentors.

Here's more about Robyne's Nest:

The mission of Robyne’s Nest is to ensure identified at-risk & homeless students in the Huntington Beach community get the academic, financial, and life skills to complete high school and look to college, trade school or military options.
Robyne’s Nest was created by Robyne Wood, an HB wife and mother of two children, to help provide funds and resources for HB school administrators to take care of these students and create a path to successful completion of high school. This is a proactive approach to keep our youth away from drugs, crime, homelessness, human trafficking and early parenthood. We want to re-write their story for a better future.
There is increased awareness of students struggling when it comes to basic support from their parents for such needs as food, housing, academics and even safety. The answer is not as simple as calling the police or CPS. Many of these students want help and that is why they continue to go to school looking for some security, routine and a place to belong.
We have the opportunity and responsibility, as a community, to take care of these students and not leave them behind!

Please read about Robyne's Nest, and see what you can do to help address the heartbreaking issue of homelessness and what happens to children who age out of the foster care system.  Here's the website for Robyne's Nest: https://www.robynesnest.org/

If you live in Orange County, Robyne's most needed items include gift cards for WalMart and Target so her teens can purchase basics such as socks and underwear. She also can use school supplies, bus passes and ge boxes of granola/breakfast bars, tuna/chicken salad kits, fruit cups, beef jerky, pretzel and nut bags, individual peanut butter/crackers, ramen noodle cups/bowls. View Grocery List OR visit our Amazon Student Pantry List for convenient donating!

Three Voices, One Message...Follow Your Muse

Anne Perry and Abbi Waxman

This past St. Patrick's Day I got lucky, indeed, at the Old Ranch Country Club in Seal Beach. The Westminster-Fountain Valley-Huntington Beach AAUW branch staged its annual fundraiser Authors Luncheon, so I got to listen as three women novelists revealed what inspired them to write. All three definitely inspired me to continue to explore what I need to write next. I've always known that "waiting for the Muse," doesn't work. Waiting isn't the answer. Writing the first paragraph...and perhaps later eliminating it...opens the door for Ms. Muse. 

Aline Ohanesian

line Ohanesian described talking about her debut novel, Orhan's Inheritance, as "like talking about an ex-husband," because she's in a "new relationship," rewriting Homer's Odyssey from the viewpoint of the women, Penelope, Circe and Calypso. Nonetheless, she revisited the precipitating incident that inspired her to write about the Armenian genocide. When she was eight, she'd been obsessed with Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) in The Sound of Music. One day while watching it on TV, Ohanesian's grandmother lead her away to a bedroom. There she horrified the child by relating how she had survived exportation by the Turks. 

The memory of the event resurfaced in the author's adulthood. Because she'd worked on a Ph.D. dissertation, she knew how to research and began the task of shaping her novel.

"Orhan’s Inheritance skillfully plays on the tension between voice and perspective in its references to art, photography, and oral history... At turns both subtle and transcendent, [it] will speak to those familiar with this dark chapter of history, and will be equally appealing readers who want to linger quietly in unfamiliar places and hidden stories of love and family."--Los Angeles Review of Books
                                           

Anne Perry's first Victorian mystery, The Cater Street Hangman, riveted my attention when it first appeared in 1979. Perry's inspiration came from a suggestion from her stepfather as to whom Jack the Ripper might have been. Subsequently, Perry has written dozens of the William Pitt and Thomas Monk novels. The societal scope of her books has been compared to the works of Trollope and Thackeray.  Perry has said she loved that particular era because "in a way it is the end of history and the beginning of the modern world."

Perry recounted how she saw herself as a magician who uses little squiggles, scribbling marks to convey to anybody in the world a story she wants to tell. John Man's Alpha Beta, which details how the invention of the alphabet shaped the western world, is one of the 50 books she chose to bring with her when she came to the United States to live. "We all have to come to terms with the idea that we will all die," she continued. "So if you're going to put your heart on paper, it's important that you write what you really mean to say, that you create something you really care about." 

The book she is working on now will be about a heroine who in 1933d stood up and tried to prevent an assassination. The character is a photographer, modeled on Margaret Bourke White. "We admire those who stand up, no matter what the cost," Perry concluded.

Final speaker for the afternoon, Abbi Waxman described how she began her writing career at only 14 years of age, in her father's advertising agency. Now working on her third novel, Waxman is from southwest England. Her inspiration for The Garden of Small Beginnings, came one day when she felt vexed with her husband. "I'll kill him," she said to herself. Then she speculated at what that would really look like, a young mother, and what she would actually do without him. I felt privileged to thank Waxman for writing a book about grief and mourning that is laugh-out-loud hilarious. I mentioned that it reminded me in a way of Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club, where a group of very different people gather on a regular basis, and through their interrelationships  grow and change.
 “A quirky, funny, and deeply thoughtful book…We’re already dying to know if there will be a sequel.”—HelloGiggles

Yes, there indeed is a sequel, and it's set in the same locale as the first poignant and hilarious book, with some of the same characters, Other People's Houses. Waxman contributed a box of the second book, and I received a copy. I can't wait to begin to read it...and to be inspired. And I'm assured to know there's a third in the works, to continue the series.

Kisses for Mr. Castle

 In Orange County I've served two terms as secretary for the Westminster-Fountain Valley-Huntington Beach Branch of AAUW (American Association of University Women. Our annual fundraiser luncheon comes up on March 17. We support Tech Trek, summer camps for girls middle-school girls to support their interest in STEM...science, technology, engineering and math. I recall how I struggled when I was that age with the mere concept that girls could achieve in this area.

My story here originally was published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Life Lessons for Mastering the Law of Attraction.

Kisses for Mr. Castle

“Give me a kiss to build a dream on, and my imagination will thrive upon that kiss.”  -- Louis Armstrong

By eighth grade, at age twelve, I’d pretty much bought into the common credo that girls couldn’t succeed at math or science.

“Girls don’t become scientists,” Mama said, totally ignoring Madame Curie. “Take typing and shorthand. If your future husband dies, you can always get a job as a secretary.”

Such was the common wisdom in working class families back in 1950. Girls could become nurses, teachers, librarians and secretaries. Those were the choices for those unlucky enough to remain single or to become widowed. So I gave up even before I started, and still have my junior high school report cards to prove it, sprinkled with dismal C’s in science and math.

Daddy also reinforced the myths that girls could not grasp the subtleties of algebra or geometry, or succeed in scientific endeavors.  In early l950, we’d received a letter suggesting that my scores on the Iowa Standardized Tests were high enough to qualify me for a career in engineering.

“It’s a mistake,” he’d said with a chuckle, tossing the letter into the wastebasket. “They must have thought you were a Terry, a boy.”

By the last semester of eighth grade, though, I had a goal.  My English teacher, Miss Laird, had written in my autograph book: “Good, better, best. Never let it rest, ‘til your good is better, and your better’s best.”  Since then I’d longed for a straight A report card to please her.  But how could I get it, with my mandatory science class?  And this year I had Mr. Castle with his famous formidable projects.

All of his science students had to conduct research, prepare a visual exhibit, and give an oral report.  Though we could be creative in choosing a topic, it had to relate to science.  Science to me meant engines! Test tubes! Electricity!  I still viewed the new television sets I saw in store windows with awe.  Pure magic.  And my father, a mechanic, sighed as he wiped his greasy hands, after trying to interest me in how our sedan’s motor worked.

“Some students do chemical experiments,” Mr. Castle suggested, when we asked for examples.  I envisioned explosions that would hurtle us through the windows, with no “drop drill” exercise to protect us from the impact.

“Some like botany, and have collected and categorized various leaves into scientific classifications.”  I couldn’t tell an oak from a maple, let alone a phylum from a species.

After class I stopped by his desk.

“I don’t know what to do,” I began, “I get stage fright when I have to speak, and my parents say girls aren’t good at science. So how can…”

Mr. Castle threw up a hand to stop me mid-sentence.

“No!  Anybody can be good at science,” he said.  “All you have to do is be curious.  Curious!  Just think of something that you love, and research that.  No matter what it is, you’ll find it’s related to science.  Forget the stage fright.  If you love something, and it’s evident, so will your audience.”

Besides family and Miss Laird, what I loved most were acrobatics, baton twirling, and tap dance, but I couldn’t see how I could relate any of that to science.  I also loved reading Ray Bradbury, but that was science fiction, not science.

Then I thought of Hershey Kisses, in their glittery little silver wraps.  Though I later learned that Kisses dated back to 1907, during my childhood they were no longer around, since foil had been rationed for the war effort.  Kisses returned on the market just as I started junior high, and I was an immediate fan.

I doted on them, but nibbled them sparingly to avoid the dreaded zits that allegedly could dot my face.  At mid-century we still believed that chocolate caused pimples, but Kisses seemed safe, not as much chocolate as in a full scale candy bar, but a bit more than in one of the chips my mom used for baking cookies. 

In pre-Internet days, research meant heading for the encyclopedias.  Luckily, I had library science as an elective, so whenever I had a spare moment between shelving books, I read up on the history of chocolate, and how the Maya and Aztecs extracted it from cacao beans.  I learned that chemistry showed that the principal alkaloid is similar in structure to caffeine, providing that little lift.  I could also chart out details of how chemists and biologists over the years had worked to improve the quality of chocolate by breeding a better cacao bean. 

For botany, I tracked chocolate from Kingdom Plantae to Species Cacao.  For physiology, I outlined the nutritional content of chocolate, fats, sugars, carbohydrates and proteins, and demonstrated how the body converts food into energy.

Still needing color, I decided to write to the company in Hershey, PA, to plead for materials.  They responded, sending posters and photographs that arrived just days before my presentation.  I fashioned a portable bulletin board from an old cardboard box, and then did a mental review.

“Appeal to our senses,” Miss Laird had stressed, teaching us about creative writing.   I had sight down and sound, since I’d be talking.  But what about taste, touch, smell?  The answer came immediately.  I needed the Kisses themselves!

Three hours of babysitting would cover the cost of two bags, so I hustled next door to ask Mrs. Kimble if she needed a babysitter since she liked to go to the Saturday matinees.  “Cinderella is playing up on Vermont,” she frowned.  “And the kids want to see that.”

I jumped in fast.  “Why don’t I take Bobby and Biddy to Cinderella, and you can go to see All About Eve at the Arden?”  I asked for a dollar to cover my admission and three hours of babysitting.  Just enough to buy two bags of Kisses so everybody in the class could have seconds.

“Bette Davis is my favorite,” Mrs. Kimble agreed, “It’s a deal.”

The day of my presentation I marched confidently into science class, tossing a smile towards Mr. Castle.  After a lackluster procession of reports from others, I strode to the front of the class, unfurled my posters and propped up my bulletin board.

I dug a bag of Kisses from my purse, and began to pass them around, as I began to explain the science of chocolate.  Nobody heckled me with “Kissy,” which had been my biggest fear.  Instead, eyes remained glued to me as I produced a second bag.  “Just taste them, smell them, feel the tin foil,” I urged.  “It’s all science.  You just need to be curious!”  Mr. Castle looked away, choking back a chuckle.

I got the straight A report card I had yearned for, and Miss Laird hugged me.  My parents shook their heads and agreed that somehow a mistake must have been made with that A in science.

Though I did not pursue a career in chemistry or biology, I overcame my fear of science, public speaking and even of math.  My curiosity remains, and has helped me in work as a journalist and a social worker.  I’m able to speak before groups with no trace of stage fright.  I did a statistical analysis of data for my master’s degree and annually do my own income taxes.   

In January 2007 the United States Postal Service issued a stamp to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Hershey Kiss, its special Love and Kisses, just in time for Valentine’s Day.  I was at the post office early to buy several books.  Even today, no matter how stringent my current diet, I can never turn down a Hershey Kiss.

And I still attribute my unabashed curiosity, which has led me to the some of the most exotic ends of the earth, to Mr. Castle.