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‘Shoeless Joe and Me’
[JUNE
26, 2002] "Shoeless
Joe and Me." Dan Gutman. HarperCollins, 2002. 163 pages. Grades 4-7.
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Joe Stoshack is 13 and plays baseball
for the "big league." Well, that doesn’t mean major league,
just that they’ve outgrown Little League. Not only does he play
baseball, he’s a baseball fan and lives in Louisville, Ky., home of
the Louisville Slugger Museum. Joe’s favorite hangout is Flip’s Fan
Club, a little sports card shop where he has purchased many baseball
cards.
Flip was watching Joe’s championship
game the day he knew he was safe and the umpire called him out.
"It’s not fair! I was safe! If the ump
hadn’t blown the call, we would have won the championship," Joe
complained.
That was when Flip told Joe the story
of another baseball player who may have been treated unfairly. He
listened as Flip told about Shoeless Joe Jackson and the 1919
Chicago White Sox World Series game the players deliberately lost.
Eight players were banned from baseball for the rest of their lives,
but Flip thinks they didn’t deserve that fate, especially Shoeless
Joe.
A plan begins to form in Joe’s mind.
Using baseball cards, he has been successful traveling back in time
to 1909, 1932 and 1947 for visits with Honus, Jackie and Babe. Why
wouldn’t it work just one more time? His plan is to somehow prevent
the scandal from happening and restore to Shoeless Joe the respect
he deserves.
[to top of second column in this
review]
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Joe is successful in finding the right
card to help him travel back to 1919 and lands on the other side of
a wall that separates him from the gamblers. He is able to listen as
they are planning the World Series fix. Because Shoeless is such a
good hitter, they want to make sure he is in on the deal.
At just the wrong time Joe makes too
much noise and is discovered by the gamblers. The action intensifies
as Joe is chased, caught and locked in a closet.
Eventually, Joe does get to meet
Shoeless Joe and tries to explain why he shouldn’t accept any money
offered for a deal to lose the game.
Shoeless is presented as a player who
plays for the love of the game and plays to win. Children will be
fascinated with the mental and physical exercises he uses to prepare
himself for each game and the special care of his bats, especially
Black Betsy.
By the end of the story every reader
will be wishing that he or she could travel back in time and change
history for Shoeless.
There is also some humor in Gutman’s
story as Joe Stoshack tries to adjust to life in the early 1900s
when he wants to use his cell phone. The copies of photos and
newspaper articles from the time period also add to the total
package.
This book
will be enjoyed by children in grades four through seven and should
hold the attention of reluctant readers as well.
[Patricia Schlough,
Lincoln Public Library District] |
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Ticket office opens today
for ‘Dearly Departed’
[JULY
1, 2002]
It would be hard to imagine a goofier
or funnier set of individuals than the members of a Southern family
named the Turpins. Despite the family’s earnest efforts to pull
themselves together for their father’s funeral, other problems keep
overshadowing the solemn occasion. Amidst the chaos, the Turpins
turn for comfort to their friends and neighbors — an eccentric
community of misfits who just manage to pull together and help each
other through their hours of need, and finally, the funeral.
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D.
Ann Jones of Clinton, director for Lincoln Community Theatre’s July
12-20 production of "Dearly Departed," has announced the play’s
cast. Lincoln residents appearing on stage will be Bob Wood as both
Bud and Norval, Gail King as Raynelle, Kelly Dowling as Lucille,
Eric Agostino as Junior, Cindy McLaughlin as Suzanne, Kay Mullins as
Marguerite, Alison Kessinger as Delightful, Allen King as Reverend
Hooker, Amanda Perry as Nadine, Melanie Goodgin as Veda and Heather
Ferguson as Juanita. Other cast members from the area include Chuck
McCue of Mount Pulaski as Ray-Bud, David Mankey of Clinton as Royce
and Larry Jones of Hartsburg as Clyde.
Also helping in the production of the comedy are Jennifer Hieronymus
of Clinton as director’s assistant and Jerry Dellinger of Lincoln as
technical director and lighting director.
[to top of second column in this
article]
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The box office opens Monday, July 1, for season ticket holders to
make reservations. General admission sales will be available
beginning July 6. Ticket prices are $9 for adults and $6 for
students through eighth grade. The box office, located in Johnston
Center for the Performing Arts on the Lincoln College campus, is
open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m.
For further
information call (217) 735-2614 or go to the LCT website:
http://www.geocities.com/lincolncommunitytheatre.
[Judy Rader, LCT publicity
chairman] |
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Nature
and haiku poetry
to be featured in reading
[JUNE
26, 2002] Two
award-winning poets will present a varied program of readings and
discussions at 7 p.m. on Thursday at Coffee With Einstein,
201 S. Sangamon in Lincoln. The program will feature the
husband-and-wife team Penny Harter and William J. Higginson. An open mic session will follow.
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Harter, who has received national
recognition for her poems on nature themes, will share poems from
some of her 16 published collections, as well as new work. Higginson,
an internationally acknowledged author and lecturer on the brief
Japanese nature poems called haiku, will include translations from
his several books on the subject, as well as reading some of his own
original work in English. The reading is sponsored by Modern Haiku and
the Vachel Lindsay Association.
This is the inaugural program in the "Poetry with Einstein" poetry
reading series.
Harter’s poems reflecting the natural
environments of the Northeast and Southwest have won repeated
inclusion in the annual volumes of the "American Nature Writing"
series established by the Sierra Club. She recently received the
first William O. Douglas Nature Writing Award, for her poems in the
2002 volume. She is also fascinated with human cultures and has
written poems based on Japanese and Tibetan life. She will round out
her portion of the program with poems dealing with family
relationships and social consciousness, including some of the
environmental and human problems of our time.
Higginson has translated a wide variety
of traditional Japanese poems, including the brief, season-based
haiku, the lyric tanka and the collaborative linked poems composed
by groups of poets who hold parties to write together. He will share
these, as well as his own haiku and haibun (haiku-prose) in English.
His reading will also include some of his longer poems on family
relationships.
[to top of second column in this
article]
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In addition, the pair will read from
the haiku journal of their previous cross-country drive through
Lincoln, 11 years ago. Harter and Higginson return to Lincoln to
once again visit their friend Lee Gurga, poet and editor of Modern
Haiku, the leading magazine in its field. They are traveling
cross-country from Santa Fe, N.M., to their new home in New Jersey.
Both authors have written numerous
books, including Harter’s "Turtle Blessing," "Lizard Light: Poems
from the Earth" and "Buried in the Sky" and Higginson’s "The Haiku
Seasons," "Haiku World" and "Over the Wave: Selected Haiku of Ritsuo
Okada." They collaborated on "The Haiku Handbook — How to Write,
Share, and Teach Haiku," one of the most widely read books on the
subject. Many of their books will be available for sale at the end
of the program.
Coffee With Einstein is located at 201
S. Sangamon in downtown Lincoln. The phone number is (217) 735-5282.
For
information concerning the program, please contact Modern Haiku
editor Lee Gurga, phone (217) 732-8731; e-mail
gurga@ccaonline.com.
[News
release]
Click below for more information on the
poets:
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Penny Harter
Penny Harter has published 16 books of
poetry, six since 1994. The most recent are "Grandmother’s Milk"
(Singular Speech Press), "Shadow Play: Night Haiku" (Simon &
Schuster), "Stages and Views" (Katydid Books/U. Hawaii Press),
"Turtle Blessing" (La Alameda Press/U. New Mexico Press), "Lizard
Light: Poems from the Earth" (Sherman Asher Publishing) and "Buried
in the Sky" (La Alameda Press).
Known for both longer poems and haiku,
she is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the New Jersey
State Council on the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the
Haiku Society of America and the Poetry Society of America. She
recently received the first William O. Douglas Nature Writing Award,
for her poems in the anthology "American Nature Writing 2002." She
is listed in "Who’s Who in the West," and her autobiographical essay
about becoming a writer appeared originally in Volume 28 of the
"Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series" and was reprinted in the
regular "Contemporary Authors" series in 1999.
Her work appears in numerous
anthologies and literary magazines worldwide and has been translated
into Dutch, French, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Romanian, She has
presented readings, talks and workshops from coast to coast at
venues such as the Georgia O’Keefe Museum, Santa Fe, N.M.; the
Border Book Festival, Las Cruces, N.M.; Haiku North America, in
various cities; and the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Waterloo
Village, N.J.; and in Japan.
Contact information: Penny Harter, P.O.
Box 2740, Santa Fe, NM 87504; (505) 438-3249;
penhart@att.net.
[to top of second column in this
section]
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William J. Higginson
William J. Higginson has been a leading
figure in the North American haiku movement since his first small
book of translations from Japanese appeared in 1968. "Twenty-Five
Pieces of Now" was followed in 1971 by the first book of critical
essays about haiku in English, "Itadakimasu: Essays on Haiku and
Senryu in English," which received one of the first Haiku Society of
America Merit Book Awards.
Since these early efforts, Higginson
has published three of the leading books in the field: "The Haiku
Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku" (McGraw-Hill, 1985),
"The Haiku Seasons: Poetry of the Natural World" and "Haiku World:
An International Poetry Almanac" (both Kodansha International,
1996). In addition, he has published two volumes of longer poems, a
book of haiku and an international anthology of haiku for children.
His longer poems and haiku, as well as translations and articles,
have appeared in magazines and anthologies worldwide and on the
Internet. He is also the volunteer editor of the "Haiku and Related
Forms" section of the Open Directory, the world’s largest actively
edited directory of Internet sites.
Higginson is also known internationally
as a speaker and reader of poetry, and has given keynote addresses
at conferences in Tokyo, San Francisco, Duluth and Boston. For 10
years he made his living as a visiting poet in the National
Endowment for the Arts Writers in the Schools Program, and he has
led workshops and literary events at community centers, colleges,
schools and Y’s in the United States, Canada and Japan.
Contact
information: William J. Higginson, P.O. Box 2740, Santa Fe, NM
87504; (505) 438-3249;
wordfield@att.net.
[News
release]
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Movie
classics
Logan
County Arts Association upcoming films
All
upcoming monthly features in the Logan County Arts Association
series of classic films will start at 7 p.m. at the Lincoln Cinemas,
215 S. Kickapoo.
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Thursday,
July 11
"Top
Hat" (1935)
Fred
Astaire, Ginger Rogers
Showman
Jerry Travers is working for producer Horace Hardwick in London.
Jerry demonstrates his new dance steps late one night in Horace’s
hotel, much to the annoyance of sleeping Dale Tremont below. She
goes upstairs to complain, and the two are immediately attracted to
each other. Complications arise when Dale mistakes Jerry for Horace.
Thursday,
Aug. 8
John
Ford’s "Fort Apache" (1948)
John
Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen
In
John Ford’s somber exploration of "Custer’s last
stand" and the mythologizing of American heroes, he slowly
reveals the character of Owen Thursday, who sees his new posting to
the desolate Fort Apache as a chance to claim the military honor
which he believes is rightfully his. Arrogant, obsessed with
military form and ultimately self-destructive, Thursday attempts to
destroy the Indian warrior Cochise after luring him across the
border from Mexico.
Thursday,
Sept. 12
"Breakfast
at Tiffany’s" (1961)
Audrey
Hepburn, George Peppard, Buddy Ebsen, Patricia Neal
Based
on Truman Capote’s novel, this is the story of a young jet-setting
woman in New York City who meets a young man when he moves into her
apartment building.
[to top of second column in this
section]
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Thursday,
Oct. 10
Horror/sci-fi
double feature
"Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1931)
Frederic
March, Miriam Hopkins
Based
on the story by Robert Louis Stevenson. Dr. Henry Jekyll believes
that there are two distinct sides to men: a good and an evil side.
He faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run wild
with a potion that changes him into the animalistic Mr. Hyde.
"The
Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951)
Michael
Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe
An
alien (Klaatu) with his mighty robot (Gort) lands their spacecraft
on cold-war Earth just after the end of World War II. He tells the
people of Earth that we must live peacefully or be destroyed as a
danger to other planets.
Tickets
will be available at Serendipity Stitches, 129 S. Kickapoo; the
Lincoln Public Library Annex; at the door; or by calling (217)
732-4298. Ticket prices are $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $2.50
for children 13 and under. These features are one show only, with
limited seating.
[Logan
County Arts Association ]
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Lincoln Community Theatre
information
Lincoln
Community Theatre’s box office, phone
735-2614, is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through
Saturday for the summer season. The office is located in the lobby
of the Johnston Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of
Lincoln College.
Performances of
"Dearly Departed" are scheduled for July 12-20, and "The King and I"
will be presented Aug. 2-10. Show times are 2 p.m. on Sundays and 8
p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
The LCT mailing address is Lincoln Community Theatre, P.O. Box 374, Lincoln,
IL 62656; e-mail: lincolncommunitytheatre@yahoo.com.
Visit the
LDC website at www.geocities.com/lincolncommunitytheatre/index.html.
Pictures from past productions are included.
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