Although we prefer to get to know people face-to-face, it is possible for someone you have only heard stories of to have the same amount of meaning to you. This is demonstrated in the book Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool, in the relationship between the main character, Abilene Tucker, and various townspeople. They are Pastor Shady Howard, the gypsy Ms. Sadie, and, while only a memory of the past, the most important person of all: the childhood embodiment of her father, Jinx (whose given name is Gideon Tucker). Each of these relationships is special and meaningful in its own way, and contributes a large part to the overall frame of the story. After Gideon’s sudden departure to a railroad job in Iowa, Abilene is sent to stay with Pastor Shady Howard in Manifest Kansas, where her father once stayed when he was an orphan. Although the pastor’s name strikes Abilene as ominous at first, she quickly finds that Shady is actually very nice. He does his best to provide for Abilene, and introduces her to the local townspeople. However, Abilene doesn’t find out much of an impact Shady really had on this small town’s development until she befriends the diviner Ms. Sadie. Ms. Sadie is a long-time resident of Manifest, and whenever Abilene goes to her divining parlor, Ms. Sadie “divines” a story about Manifest to Abilene. The main character in every one of these stories is Jinx. You might be interested in how Abilene got involved with a diviner: Gideon had entrusted Abilene with a memento of his–the compass of his deceased friend Ned Gillen–but Abilene lost it and later found it on a tree in Ms. Sadie’s backyard. However, it was too high to reach, so she stepped on a porcelain pot and almost got it, but not quite. But things got worse when she was stepping down; the pot suddenly cracked under her feet. Ms. Sadie happened to notice and forced Abilene to do yard work for her, in addition to collecting strange herbs. However, Ms. Sadie would repay Abilene’s hard work by telling her stories, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes because Abilene would coax her to. These stories left Abilene surprised and shocked at the end of every single turn. Who would have thought Ned and Jinx would set off firecrackers during Woodrow Wilson’s trip to Manifest? Who would have thought Mrs. Larkin and Jinx would be able to devise a plan to humiliate the cruel coal mine owners Devlin and Burton? Yet, crazy as they were, through all of Jinx’s mischievous plots, Shady was there for him. Knowing that Shady had looked after her very own father when he was a child quickly made Shady one of Abilene’s most trusted friends. However, Abilene is undoubtedly most connected to her father, Gideon Tucker. And although Abilene is very close to him, I think what is interesting is that knowing about his childhood life as Jinx brought Abilene even closer to him. After hearing about all of Jinx’s crazy but magical plots alongside his friend, Ned, Abilene was opened to a whole new section of her father’s life. And while this may seem obvious, getting the whole picture of someone often allows you to get closer to them. Aren’t there so many stories where someone forgot his past, and desperately tries to find a way to get his memories back? And after the memories are retrieved, isn’t there always a sense of completion? Abilene is in the same situation here. Previously, Abilene felt uncomfortable knowing that Gideon hadn’t told her that much about his childhood and often pondered what it was like. This triggered many disturbing thoughts in Abilene’s head, such as, Did something happen with my father when he was young? Is that why he is leaving me for his railroad job? or What impact did my father have on Manifest? Why is there no trace of him here? During her time in Manifest, Abilene spent most of her time trying to answer these questions. And when they were finally answered, Abilene suddenly felt that she knew her father so much better, and that she had finally found the missing puzzle pieces to her image of her father. And she felt that her life’s yearning was fulfilled. Many of us worry about the future–about tests, homework, classes–a little too much, and don’t really focus on the past. As Abilene showed us, there is valuable information stored in our past, and if we just spend a little time uncovering these secrets, our lives will seem a lot more meaningful and complete. The prominent religious leader Thomas S. Monson once said, “The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.” Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. Delacorte Press, 1995. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
Unrest in Hong Kong by Daniel, 10
Trustworthy Inquiry Needed to Restore Order “I’ve tasted tear gas. I’ve been hit by a rubber bullet. I set roadblocks.” Seven years ago, this would not be something a typical Hong Kong citizen could say truthfully. However, in 2014, everything changed. Many citizens in Hong Kong were shocked after police began using aggressive tactics during the 2014 Umbrella Movement. These included tear gas, pepper spray, brutal beatings of citizens, etc. Hong Kong ruined its old reputation of having one of the most citizen-friendly and gentle riot police across the entire globe, mainly because its police are beginning to be trained by China instead of Great Britain, who occupied Hong Kong from 1841 through 1997. The trust between the residents of Hong Kong and its government and police, which took a long time to build after the 2014 protests, is crumbling because the Hong Kong government is allowing unapproved wiretapping, more and more violent tactics, and refusal to allow other countries to intervene in response to the ongoing 2019 protests. In my opinion Hong Kong should immediately declare an official and independent inquiry into police behavior to decrease tensions between the government and the citizens. In the beginning, the protests were quite significant, but had not reached their peak: only around 1 out of 10 people joined the rally against the extradition bill that China had proposed, which would send Hong Kong prisoners to China. However, things blew up after the police’s aggressive actions against protesters were discovered by the public. They began clearly relaying their five demands to the government: rejection of the extradition bill, universal suffrage, an end to calling the protests “riots”, amnesty for the arrested protesters, and an inquiry into police behavior. Despite one of the main problems being the police’s brutal tactics, many citizens are also being attacked with wiretaps (an interception of communication systems) that are mostly performed without legal permission, and are therefore being denied their privacy. With the growing intensity of the Hong Kong protest, unapproved wiretapping is becoming more and more common. Wiretapping is needed extensively in situations like the current one, but that doesn’t mean wiretapping without legal permission is allowed. The number of requests for legal permission to wiretap has increased from 1,303 in 2017 to 1,343 in 2018. The number of cases of wiretapping (in general) increased from 86 in 2017 to 183 in 2018. Most importantly, the number of cases of unapproved wiretapping increased from 18 in 2017 to 27 in 2018. Although this increase may not necessarily be a direct result of the current protests, it shows that police are expanding their aggressive tactics past just physical ones. Current trends in police behavior suggest that these numbers are bound to increase. What’s even more outrageous is that officers that wiretap without permission do not receive as severe a punishment as they deserve. One law enforcement officer continued to listen in on a conversation that could have contained confidential legal information because he thought that the subject concerned was lying, but he was only given a verbal warning since he said he had “no ulterior motives.” The extensive amount of unapproved wiretaps is concerning, but what is even worse is that punishments given to officers that wiretap without legal permission often are not harsh enough. All this means that Hongkongers cannot trust the government and the police to give them the privacy that they deserve. Moving on to the most important problem: the negative change in police tactics that started during the protests in 2014 and has not stopped. If anything has changed, it has gotten worse. The Hong Kong police have lost their old reputation of being the best at crowd control. Hong Kong police were once renowned for being gentle when dealing with protests. During the late 1900s, Hong Kong police were taught that acting with restraint and seeking tips from the public was the best way to deal with protests. As BBC reporter Gerry Northam recalls, after the protests of 1981, which, according to The Conversation–an academic-centered journalism site–“saw the most significant urban disorder in England for a generation,” the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) from England invited the director of the British police forces in Hong Kong to teach other UK police forces about crowd control methods, since the British Hong Kong police had much experience with protests and riots. They kept heavy arms inconspicuous and did not take aggressive actions against the crowd. They wore soft hats and had bare hands when talking with protesters. However, the reputation that the Hong Kong police had taken so long to build crumbled in just a few months during the protests of 2014. On one occasion, police fired 87 rounds of tear gas, leaving protesters stunned and outraged. More violent tactics began to emerge since the Hong Kong police were starting to be trained by China. Not to mention that this year, those tactics expanded to include beating (with clubs), tear gas, pepper spray, beanbag rounds, and, as stated before, wiretapping. It’s shocking how fast Hong Kong police went from being experts at crowd control that were superior even to the British police, to the most controversial police force in the world. A successful inquiry into police behavior is needed to put Hong Kong in a more peaceful state, even if it doesn’t fully solve the problems the protest has created. An inquiry into police behavior is the most sensible step for the government to take right now. Unfortunately, police inquiries require trust and power and the IPCC doesn’t have that. The US Kerner Commission in 1968 was able to make impressive suggestions for police reform because it had public trust; there were civil rights representatives among the commission staff. The 2011 Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry consisted of international experts that held public trust and was able to fairly recount what happened during the Bahraini uprising in 2011. It also gave pointed recommendations on how the police could change, though none of the
Counting by 7s, Reviewed by Daniel, 10
Although grief itself is not hard to understand, the effects of this powerful feeling are often unpredictable. In the book Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan, the main character, Willow Chance, experiences grief after she loses her parents. In her struggles to leave the past behind, she went through many changes. There were two main transitions that had the most notable effect on her: first, when she first moved in with the Nguyens and second, when she and the Nguyens moved to the Gardens of Glenwood. When Willow first came to live with the Nguyens, she was still in shock. Right after she found out that her parents died in a car crash, her brain can barely function, and she loses the ability to talk. Her new friend, Mai Nguyen, decides that Willow couldn’t survive on her own, and decides that her family needs to take Willow in. However, Willow didn’t know that the Nguyens lived in a garage, so when she got to the Nguyens’ residence, she was caught off guard; this added to her shock even more. Had the Nguyens had proper quarters and sufficient resources to properly take care of Willow, she would probably have recovered much sooner. Although Willow’s condition improved in the days after her move to the garage, the symptoms of her grief still showed. She used to be obsessed with medicines and diseases; because of her shock, even when she made interesting medical discoveries, she didn’t speak, and, if she talked at all, she just made a short, blunt statement, like: “Get some rest.” She used to count everything by 7’s; because of her shock, she couldn’t even count anything anymore, because she thought “she didn’t count in this world anymore (as in ‘she didn’t matter to this world anymore’)”. She also became some sort of hermit: she refused to go to school or even leave the garage at all unless she was going to the Nguyen’s family-owned nail salon or the library. However, we begin to see an improvement in Willow’s spirits after she moves to the Gardens of Glenwood. At the Gardens of Glenwood (an apartment complex), Willow began enjoying life. She enjoyed life at the Gardens of Glenwood from the very beginning, in fact, when she cleaned up the apartment building with the Nguyens when they just moved in. She especially enjoyed it when she uses shards of broken glass to decorate a just-cleaned window. Then, she began finding joy in helping others, most notably Dell Duke, a sloppy but compassionate school counselor, and Quang-Ha, the Nguyen brother who at first was very behind in school (mostly because he didn’t care about it), but, with Willow’s help, got impressive homework and test scores and was moved to Honors and AP classes. However, none of these things impacted Willow as much as planting a garden (an actual one!) in the Gardens of Glenwood. Willow thought the Gardens of Glenwood needed a real garden. Despite the name, since it was so hot in the area, no creation of an actual garden had been attempted. Since tending to her garden was one of Willow’s favorite activities in her old life, she thought that planting a garden would be easy. It was not. She attempted to start the garden up by planting dozens of sunflowers in pots and then transferring them to soil later. Although the initial planting worked out, when it came time to transfer the sunflowers to the ground, Willow could not find good soil; the only dirt around was covered with all kinds of filth. Willow decided to sell the lava rocks and tarp covering everything, just for a start. Then, after that was done, they used a Rototiller to till the dirt. However, that night, a powerful wind came and blew the dirt right off the ground, like a mini Dust Bowl. Fortunately, this uncovered more filth, which was washed away by a power sprayer, and, in the end, the had finally gotten to the bottom of the pile: clean, brown soil good for use. But, Willow couldn’t relax too soon, right after she started a mini-nursery on the roof, some maintenance worker through all the plants on the roof into the garbage. But it wasn’t over yet. Henry, a friend of Willow’s and a plant dealer, donated a cherry tree, a few bamboo stalks, and other exotic plants to the garden. After everything was planted, the garden looked much better than Willow had ever imagined. Although it was a tiring ordeal, planting a garden really improved Willow’s spirits. Despite how hard the death of Willow’s parents hit her, she was ultimately able to overcome her grief. However, it was not just by herself, but also many others who worked together tirelessly to secure her future. The famous Roman philosopher and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero once said, “Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.” Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan. Puffin Books, 2013. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process! Have you read this book? Or do you plan on reading it? Let us know in the comments below!
