Notes from Candice Ransom

Cancer and the Game of Polaris

Some years ago I bought a game board at an antique show because I loved the graphics. The board was designed and signed by A.R. Meissner, 1923. It’s an odd game–“Polaris: The Great 254 Trillion Mile Aeroplane Race,” patent applied for (don’t know if it was ever granted) by Chas. S. Muir, to be produced

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Reunion

What I Miss This Summer

“Summer Aunts” I miss the aunts who gave us summers. Kitchen-steady, radios tuned to country and western. Racing bikes. Bactine unstinging skinned knees. Beaded pitchers of cherry Cheeri-aid in the fridge. Tuna fish, Fritos for lunch. Don’t slam the screen door! Lazy hammock afternoons, Little Lulu, Scrooge McDuck, chewing Juicyfruit till the sugar fades. Carload

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Young Candice with cat

Trying to Find My Way Out

Once, a girl read a lot of books and wrote stories and drew pictures and wanted to be a writer. At fifteen, the same age as Sleeping Beauty when she pricked her finger on the hidden spindle, this girl decided to write children’s books. She told her mother she needed a typewriter to be a

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mailboxes

Long Road of a Long-hauler

It’s been a month since my first symptoms of Covid. My doctor has declared me a “long-hauler.” This was a group I truly did not want to join. Long-haulers have been around since the first outbreak in March. They no longer have Covid. They are not infectious. But they retain the symptoms. Their stories are

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Skeleton Window - (c) Candice Ransom

Covid’s Ghosts

You won’t find us in the daily Covid statistics. We test negative–more than once–or we’re too sick to be tested at all. Our symptoms are usually atypical. We’re often dismissed by the medical community who are overwhelmed with real Covid cases. I’ve read about us. We don’t have the flu or bronchitis or pneumonia or

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Charlotte Huck Book

The Big Green Textbook

My first inkling there was a thing called children’s literature came at a yard sale.  I picked up a thick green textbook, Children’s Literature in the Elementary School, by Charlotte S. Huck.  I marveled at the idea that people discussed and studied the books I loved and planned to write, that children’s books were literature,

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Hubble's Bubble

Our Public Libraries and the New Normal

I’ve been delving into my home library since March.  Just yesterday I chose a vintage children’s book, an ex-library copy of a book I’d read (from a public library) when I was a kid.  Look at the regulations pasted on the inside cover—particularly the last paragraph.    As much as I’m enjoying my private library,

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Miss the Library? Not So Much.

I could stand almost everything about this pandemic except the public library closing. The library is essential! We bought property to build our house based on proximity to the library. I stopped on my way back from exercise class four and five times a week. Some library systems let people know in advance of closing,

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My Truck Office

Over the years, I’ve often had a tote bag on the passenger seat of my little red truck that held a pen, notebook, and current reading book.  But cloth tote bags are too flimsy and usually become grungy.  Then I bought a canvas garden tote from Cracker Barrel because it was sturdy, had several pockets

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I Once Had My Own Literacy Program

Last night, I wrapped a box of the Boxcar Children books I’d written for a friend’s granddaughter.  She is nine and into the Boxcar Children.  I autographed each title, added a note as to why I am not Gertrude Chandler Warner, the original creator of the Boxcar Children, but a ghost writer, revealed a secret

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Dear James Daunt

  Dear James Daunt,  Some people don’t think you can save Barnes and Noble bookstores, but I’m cheering you on.  You turned around Waterstones, that gem of a bookstore chain in Britain.  You understand that we need bookstores, even Barnes and Noble, often the only bookstore in some areas in America. A good bookstore is

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How to Write About Your Trip

You wait years to take an important trip, saving money, carving out time from work and obligations, reading up on your destination.  You finally go and see the places on your list and more besides.  And then you come home, and friends and co-workers ask, “How was your vacation?”  Because you know people aren’t really

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