Totem Pole Tacoma Ephemera

Not an only child       My sister does not want her photos or her stories on the internet. I was not an only child, as a pair we were pretty good friends after we moved into our house when I was two and a half. I was left behind as I entered fourth grade and she individuated into junior high school. After fourth grade I can talk about myself as a child on her own.
The Totem Pole of the 1959 Book Club    At McCormick Branch Library to the right as one entered the double doors, was a thin wall where there was a bulletin board. During Book Club in the summer, the Book Club Name Cards of children gradually were stapled, one or two, to a flurry of names and a solid assemblage of names of a lot of children who reported on books. On the other side of the thin wall was the last of the alphabetically arranged children's fiction, which had begun on the other side of the room.

My Name Card for the '59ers Book Club was a totem pole, and currently the Tacoma Totem Pole downtown is in the local news.  It is to be restored.  The library made some effort to create a totem pole that was like the Tacoma Totem Pole, although it is not the same exactly.  It was a celebration of Alaska Statehood, Alaska, the 49th State. I believe a star was given after ten, then a star was given after twenty-five. After 50, a blue flag on a toothpick with stars was given. I won the flag.

The view from the library windows is Washington Grade School. In that school had been a small room off the hallway of classrooms that was used as a school library where I found Dean Marshall's The Silver Robin and read it many times. I liked to reread books. In the autumn McCormick Branch Library people came to our fifth grade classroom to award us our name cards and our reading records and certificates. The certificates also featured a totem pole.  I reported on 50, actually 51 books. I seem to have visited ten or eleven times to report.

“Compensating”   My ephemera from childhood achievement was not the experience of a fit, nice looking child with a financial advantage. Such a child can be viewed as in a simple good balance, while childhood achievement by a less physically even or disadvantaged child can be labeled "compensating" - "Compensation" is a defense mechanism of emphasizing one aspect of a situation to offset other aspects that are clearly limited. (It is only one aspect of my situation that I could not see the blackboard anymore. In third grade I could see the board clearly from my seat near the rather high window across the room. In fourth grade I began to not be able to see the board. I was unwilling to talk to my parents about this.) We should not belittle the academic achievement of those who are less perfect. And yet, I also recognize the theory and can view my achievement in some ways as "compensation". Yet I remain sure it was, yes, a childhood academic achievement.  In fifth grade I told my mother I thought I needed glasses and she said we would make an appointment with the eye doctor right away.

Nancy Pearl’s Book Crush (2007)   Among the first eleven, my first visit, only one title appears now on the Tacoma Public Library catalog. One title among the first eleven remains clear in my thoughts, and the author, Dean Marshall, I recently found in the index of Nancy Pearl's Book Crush (at King's Books). On my list was The Long White Month, another Dean Marshall book that, like The Silver Robin, featured birds. I was introduced to juncos in The Long White Month. Nancy Pearl believes (2007) it is not too likely that Dean Marshall will be reprinted but wishes to hear from her admirers.