When Heathcliff returns to Yorkshire a rich man after a three-year absence and finds Cathy married to Edgar, the roles reverse. Now it’s his turn to inflict pain. He marries Isabella, “an abject thing,” whom he tells Cathy he’d only live with in “a very ghoulish fashion,” turning “the blue eyes black, every day, or two.”
Brontë’s Isabella (who is Edgar’s sister in the novel but his ward in the movie) doesn’t enthusiastically consent to her own degradation—but Fennell’s Isabella does. And although she naïvely crushes on Heathcliff because she thinks he’s sexily moody—rather than a lunatic set on the ruination of her and her entire family—the novel’s version is not a simpleton infatuated with dolls, as portrayed in the film.
That said, in the novel, Heathcliff is able to trick Isabella into eloping, putting himself in position to inherit the Grange, which he wants to spite Edgar. Once they’re married, Heathcliff reveals his true nature and begins terrorizing her, prompting Isabella to ask Nelly in a letter, “Is he a devil?” If readers are at all uncertain of his sociopathic tendencies, Heathcliff then hangs his wife’s dog. Jacob Elordi would never.
Instead, Elordi’s Heathcliff collars and chains Oliver’s Isabella herself, instructing her to bark like a dog. Importantly, this only occurs after he tells her he’ll “never love her,” will “treat her abominably,” and asks her no less than four times, “Do you want me to stop?” This is a sadist who is surprisingly committed to consent. Isabella becomes his willing submissive, a plot line that provides the film’s comic relief. When she calls Heathcliff “diabolical,” she means in the way he savages her body. Though momentarily amusing, it’s a total 180 from the book, in which Isabella demonstrates the most agency of any character: Horrified by Heathcliff, she escapes to London, where she raises their son, Linton, until she dies.
And that’s not the only sub/dom addition Fennell has made to Wuthering Heights. In the novel, the servant Joseph is a self-righteous zealot who’s always banging on about the Bible. His character is an avatar for the austere religion that threatens to impinge on the wildness that reigns at the Heights. That is to say, he doesn’t use farm equipment to have bondage sex with a housemaid in the stables—as he does in the film. (Joseph is played by actor Ewan Mitchell.) Believe it or not, there is zero bondage sex in Brontë’s classic.
If the book is psychosexual, the emphasis is on the “psycho.” In this buttoned-up Victorian milieu, all erotic desire is shoved under the surface, and Heathcliff and Cathy’s thwarted love, though all-consuming, is never consummated. Robbie and Elordi’s Catherine and Heathcliff, on the other hand, have a months-long affair in which they have explicit sex in a montage whose settings include her powder-pink bedroom, inside her carriage, on the moors, and atop a table.
In the novel, the closest the two come to sex is when Heathcliff digs up Catherine’s grave—not once but twice. The second time, he knocks out the side of her coffin and plans to do the same to his own, so that when he’s buried next to her, their decaying corpses will merge. Recalling the story, Brontë’s Heathcliff tells Nelly he slept well that night for the first time in 18 years, dreaming of himself dead with his “cheek frozen against [Cathy]”—a scene that for many implies a necrophilic embrace. In contrast, “Wuthering Heights” ends with Heathcliff cradling Catherine’s expired body on her deathbed. The poignant image is juxtaposed with flashbacks of them as children lying sweetly next to one another. (Can’t wait for Fennell’s reimaging of “A Rose for Emily.”)
The Lost Generation: Cathy II, Linton, and Hareton
As is tradition in adaptations of Wuthering Heights, Fennell’s film narrows its scope to Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship and ends with her death. When the credits rolled, the woman next to me turned to her friend and exclaimed, “Wait, what? There must be a part two!” There is not. But her confusion was understandable, since Cathy dies just halfway through the novel—which is, in fact, split into two parts.
Over the past century, there have been countless attempts to assemble a definitive list of essential literature. In recent decades, however, the very idea of a literary canon has become a source of sustained debate, shaped by its historical tendency to be racist, sexist and otherwise exclusionary. A glance at many of these roundups still reveals a striking sameness: overwhelmingly white and male.
That is not to suggest that Joyce, Homer and Dostoyevsky are not foundational reads for literary devotees. Rather, a truly committed reader would do well to recognize that many extraordinary books exist as overlooked peers to the greatest works humanity has produced. With that in mind, what follows is a selection of classics, old and new, that deserve a place in any honest literary canon.
The formula is simple: Combine the best-loved traits of J.R.R. Tolkien’s high fantasy and of modern romance novels, make the characters’ sex lives explicit and very detailed, and include a lot of descriptions of beautiful gowns and luxurious bathtubs. Put a lushly illustrated cover on the front. Back it up with authors who have very active social media presences, and get the ever-growing world of fans on BookTok (the book-focused corner of TikTok) and Goodreads to read and review. Call it romantasy or faerie smut—the new genre is everywhere.
Of course, it’s not really a new genre. I say that not because romantasy combines strands of several previously existing genres—romance, fantasy, and (often) horror. A new kind of pastiche still counts as something new. But literature that combines fantasy and sex is at least as old as the 12th century lais of Marie de France. In one such lai, Lanval, a knight in King Arthur’s court is wooed and seduced by a beautiful barely clad fairy maiden he meets in an ornate golden tent in a meadow. Yonec tells of an unhappily married young woman whose lover transforms himself into a bird to fly in her window. Bisclavret is the story of a werewolf baron who is betrayed by his human wife. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream shows the audience Titania, the fairy queen, and the very human weaver Nick Bottom in love and in bed. And Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market is a Victorian fever dream about the pleasures and consequences of sucking on goblin fruit.
The world of faerie is the world of the other, the mysterious, the forbidden. And all of that is sexy and dangerous in ways that have appealed to humans for a very long time. It’s really only with the rise of sharp genre distinctions—evidenced by bookstore section headings that cloister romance, fantasy, and science fiction from one another—that this kind of erotic, adventurous, magical melange became uncategorizable and thus unmarketable. (I’m inclined to think that the way Amazon and other online bookstores break down the distinction between genres and sections of a traditional bookstore might be a small technical driver for the return of romantasy.)
Technical questions aside, there may be something uniquely 2025 about the way romantasy has come roaring back to life. The overturning of Roe v. Wade and the rise of the hard right have put questions of women’s autonomy and power at the center of American political and cultural discussions. Though it may surprise those who haven’t read much in the genre, romantasy puts those questions right in the center of its texts.
The classic plotline of a generic romantasy novel runs something like this: A young woman who is overlooked and undervalued in her normal life enters a different, magical world where she is a being of extraordinary abilities. She attracts a passionate and highly desirable partner who introduces her to sexual heights she has never before experienced while also drawing her into political and military intrigues that allow her to utilize her newly valuable abilities. Over the course of the story, there will be heartbreak and separation, but an eventual happily ever after is nearly certain.
There is nothing revolutionary about the standard romantasy plotline. Its basic steps align precisely with Joseph Campbell’s idea of the “hero’s journey,” marked by separation from a familiar environment, initiation into a new one, and a return to the old world once the hero has been transformed by experience. Swap in hungry hobbits for horny heroines and you have Tolkien. Subtract the magic and you have the plot of Jane Eyre. Subtract the sex and you have The Chronicles of Narnia. But fantasy novels that focus on an adult female lead character and her journey and desires, while far more common than they were when I began reading them in the ’70s and ’80s, still feel a bit radical, just by virtue of taking a woman’s point of view.
It is the genre’s focus on transformation, stepping into power, and recognition that seems to me to be its most compelling aspect for readers right now. While traditional fairy tales often focus on a magical transformation that comes from outside the main character—think of Cinderella’s gown and coach, or the frog who is changed into a prince—romantasy often deals with a character whose strong sense of self remains unchanged, but whose importance, skills, and even physical beauty change in value as she enters a new world.
This moment where the undervalued becomes valued may be the defining dream of fiction produced for a largely female audience. The best-selling series A Court of Thorns and Roses features a protagonist, Feyre, who begins the series as a neglected and overworked middle sister, hunting game to feed her impoverished and unappreciative family. By the end of the first three books in the series, she is the high lady of the Night Court. She has used her hunting skills to vanquish terrifying monsters, her intellect to outsmart several enemies, and a physical attractiveness that no one has ever noticed before to win the love of two faerie high lords. She has also died and been resurrected, brought her family into the faerie world with her, fought in several military campaigns, and (in a classic fairy-tale trope) seen her small kindnesses to magical creatures repaid with assistance at crucial moments. She says of herself, by the end of the second installment of the series, “No one was my master—but I might be master of everything, if I wished. If I dared.”
Rebecca Yarros’ The Empyrean series presents us with a heroine with a similar trajectory. Violet Sorrengail, who has studied her whole life to be a scribe, is thrust by her mother into a military college that trains cadets to partner with dragons for battle. Suffering from a mysterious ailment that causes her constant pain and frequent joint dislocations (based on the author’s own experience with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome), Violet seems like the least likely survivor of the war college’s vicious training. Not only does she survive, but she also bonds with the rarest and most powerful type of dragon. And then she bonds with a second dragon, of a type no one has ever bonded with before, and is told, “I waited six hundred and fifty years to hatch. Waited until your eighteenth summer, when I heard our elders talk about the weakling daughter of their general, the girl forecasted to become the head of the scribes, and I knew. You would have the mind of a scribe and the heart of a rider. You would be mine.” Violet develops a series of increasingly impressive magical powers, attracts the love of a (nearly equally powered) fellow soldier who turns out to be a duke, restores the protective wards around her country, battles vicious enemies, and becomes an impressive military strategist, often using her formerly undervalued scribal skills to find creative and unexpected solutions to political and military problems.
That both these series place their heroines into positions where they must be politically and militarily savvy is, I think, no accident. Readers of this fiction grew up on epic fantasy novels with complex world-building and political wrangling, and they want the same attention to detail from romantasy. This means that romantasy heroines must, in general, be prepared to tangle with warring fairy courts, espionage, maintaining magical defenses and supply lines for troops, and diplomacy in cultures and languages that are wildly alien to their own. Romantasy heroines have personal problems to solve that matter intensely to them, but they are equally involved in the world-altering problems that surround them. Just as in the real world, the personal and the political both demand the heroine’s attention and talents. In the world of romantasy, it is possible to triumph simultaneously at both. Romantasy heroines can have it all and a dragon, too.
As I read through both series and a selection of other romantasy novels while researching for this article, I kept thinking of economist Claudia Goldin and her lecture, “The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family.” Goldin observes that women’s gradual move into the labor force “was a change from agents who work because they and their families ‘need the money’ to those who are employed, at least in part, because occupation and employment define one’s fundamental identity and societal worth.”
In romantasy, the work of the hero and heroine often intertwines as they try to save the world, protect their communities, discover hidden knowledge, or generally engage in a quest. Importantly, it gives them a project that they are working on together. Work has always played an underappreciated role in romantic fiction. But as contemporary politics mean that male and female spheres of interest and influence feel increasingly separate, the appeal of reading about that kind of shared project only increases. Istvhan, the berserker knight, and Clara, the nun and werebear, from T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Strength have unique capacities for destruction that often go unappreciated by the rest of the world. As a team, they are a well-matched delight, wreaking mayhem when necessary and fighting together with élan.
“Protect the nun!” roared Istvhan, yanking his sword free.
“Protect your own damn self!” Clara roared back.
Romantasy heroines are not sidelined in politics or in battle. They are equal, even superior partners.
It’s not all violence, either. There is an entire subgenre of romantasy dedicated to heroines who are busy building small businesses. Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree, for example, tells the story of an orc who is retired from mercenary work and just wants to open a coffee shop. A sequel explores the same orc’s stint of working in a bookshop while recuperating from battle injuries. That novel’s best-known tagline, “Things don’t have to stay what they started out as,” is a fairly good shorthand for Goldin’s quiet revolution.
Even now that we are well-established in the labor force, women obviously still find stories about women finding identity and worth through occupation and employment enormously compelling. Women who long to achieve that kind of satisfaction are inspired by reading stories of others doing the same. It is this longing that makes stories of entrepreneurs so important and popular. It is this longing that drives the success of dubious multilevel marketing companies that persuade aspiring girlbosses that they can become millionaires by selling leggings. And it is this longing that fuels romantasy, where the jobs may be slightly less plausible but the quest for identity and desire for worth are the same.
That same longing for recognition fuels the romantic and erotic relationships in romantasy. While traditional fantasy may sometimes contain romantic elements, romantasy treats the romantic and erotic desires of its characters as equally important to their quest to resolve the magical and political tumult that surrounds them. A friend of mine who is a devoted romantasy fan noted that the love interests of these books are often mysterious and emotionally remote “damaged” characters who open up to only one person—the previously overlooked heroine. His attention, given to no one else, is another indication of her unique value. And his ability to see how remarkable she is marks him out as unusual and worthy of love as well.
The intense romantic bonds between the heroes and heroines of romantasy are often depicted not just in emotional terms, but also as part of their magic. Frequently, they are able to read one another’s minds, telepathically communicate over long distances, and strengthen one another’s individual magical gifts. It is not far from Cathy’s insistence in Wuthering Heights that, “I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again: it is impracticable.” The subgenre of romantasy that focuses on shape-shifters like werewolves and other human/beast hybrids makes much of a mysticized version of animal pair-bonding when it explores its characters’ romantic connections. There can be no more intimate connection imaginable than to have a partner who is destined to you by both fate and pheromones, who can read your mind, and who can communicate with you when no one else can.
The erotic scenes between these characters are often extremely explicit, and they often explore kinky and alternative sexualities. Romantasy is a genre where erotic and emotional combinations of all genders, species, and magical races are embraced with enthusiasm and delight. Many discussions of the genre express feminist qualms over the way that the male heroes are supportive of their high-powered partners outside the bedroom, but inclined to dominate them in bed. It’s a reasonable point. But these books revel in the sexiness of explicit consent. That erotic dynamic of exploring and experimenting with the taboo aligns with the way the genre as a whole plays with questions of what it means to have power and to be powerless. In the same way romantasy heroines shift from powerless to powerful as they enter the world of magic, their erotic life enables them, and the reader, to explore those changes in a physical context.
Those explorations can be very dark indeed. The vampire romances that seemed so edgy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight are weak tea for romantasy readers. Laura Thalassa’s The Four Horsemen series takes the incarnations of Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death as its romantic heroes. Kingdom of the Wicked has a prince of hell as the romantic lead. The darker the hero, the more likely one is to run into the recurring romantasy trope of a woman who can take endless damage, often at the hands of a sexual partner, and bounce back physically and emotionally. It will be a long time before I recover from reading Lindsay Straube’s Kiss of the Basilisk, where a woman is so violently mated by her shape-shifting partner that her pelvis breaks. A recent conversation with some horror writers, however, makes me wonder whether writers who eroticize this kind of violence are using it as a way to cope with increasingly threatening sexual politics. Getting the monster to fall in love with you is one way to solve the problem of a culture that sees you as prey.
Read too much romantasy in too little time, and all the dark faerie lords and maladroit human women with special gifts begin to melt together. You’ll begin to notice the sometimes awkward juxtaposition of Instagram-inspired fantasies of a magical good life marked by glamorous gowns, palaces, jewels—all those bathtubs!—and the rugged woman warrior tropes borrowed from dystopian fiction. These books are fantasies of infinite luxury and of rugged survival against all odds at the same time. Part of the appeal, I suspect, is that these heroines are simultaneously ready for a Vogue cover shoot and drenched in the blood of their enemies.
Like other kinds of romance, romantasy is escapist fiction, and that’s always easy to mock. But the interesting thing about romantasy is that its readers know that. Their TikTok videos and commentary on Goodreads and elsewhere make it clear that the readers love these books—often passionately—but they also read them with a critical mindset and very little patience for authors they don’t respect. Yarros, in particular, has come under fire online for a ludicrously overpowered heroine and a plot that, readers argue, has been stitched together from elements of previous successful series.
But that sharply critical eye doesn’t prevent romantasy readers from defending the genre against all outside detractors. Those who write articles with titles like “The Porn-Brained Women of Monster Smut” that criticize the “spice level” of romantasy or moralize about it as just “pornography for women” are likely to be reminded that the multibillion-dollar pornography industry caters almost exclusively to men. Readers will point out that the romantasy industry’s estimated value of $610 million is nothing in comparison. Is it targeted because it’s largely written by women, for women, with women’s desires at the forefront? Surely, even the most explicit faerie sex scenes one can imagine have analogs in porn films or in the fantasy novels of George R.R. Martin. I was pointed to the pelvis-shattering violence of Kiss of the Basilisk, in fact, because it had inspired such a vigorous online discussion on exactly these lines.
Readers don’t just consume these books. They debate and discuss them, trace the fairy tales and myths that lie behind them, speculate about future series installments, and put that discussion up online. That community is at least as important to the readers as the books are. Readers have countless stories of making friends in online chats and in the aisles of bookstores as they find others who are browsing the same sections. And the upcoming release of a romantasy novel that began as a darkly explicit work of Harry Potter fan fiction reminds readers that their favorite genre belongs to its fans in a way that most other genres do not.
Popular culture—art, music, television, film, and yes, romantasy—can tell us a lot about what we value enough to spend time and money on. It can tell us even more about our wishful thinking. Mysterious magical beings will always be sexy. But right now, romantasy might be telling us how much we wish for a world where the things that make us weird turn out to be the things that make us special and lovable. And maybe also for a dragon.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline “Like Tolkien, but the Elves Have More Sex.”
It’s Eat an Extra Dessert Day, so consider stopping on your way to, or on your way home from, one of our best bets for a sweet treat. This week, we’ve got a ballet returning to Houston after 17 years, two classic film restorations, and much more. Keep reading for these and all our picks of the best things to check out this week.
Go down the path of an alternate history, one where the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol was ultimately successful. In this world, a white supremacist, Christian nationalist government rules, and a father and daughter, Jewish, are living in upstate New York, hiding their identity when a 1,000-year-old Yiddish-speaking woman shows up at their door. That’s the premise of Deborah Zoe Laufer’s The Last Yiddish Speaker, a co-production between Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company and the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston, which will open tonight, September 4, at 7:30 p.m. at the Evelyn Rubenstein JCC. Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 11 a.m. Sundays through September 21. Tickets can be purchased here for $18 to $29.
Thirty-five years ago, in July 1990, Houston played host to the 16th G7 Summit, attended by then Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, who participated in the unveiling of a model for the Japanese Garden in Hermann Park. He also gifted funds to construct a garden pavilion, or azumaya. On Saturday, September 6, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Japan Festival Houston will honor this history when it returns to Hermann Park for two days of Japanese food, cultural exhibits, family-friendly activities, martial arts demonstrations, cosplay, and traditional and contemporary performances, including two performances by alumni from Takarazuka, an all-female musical theatre troupe – one on Saturday, September 6, at 8 p.m. at Miller Outdoor Theatre. The free festival will continue Sunday, September 7, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Artistic Director Dr. Betsy Cook Weber will lead the Houston Chamber Choir in season-opener Mozart Requiem.
Photo by Jeff Grass Photography
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Haydn brothers, Franz Joseph and his younger brother Michael, were not only contemporaries, but at times neighbors, friends, collaborators, and rivals; Michael Haydn was once Mozart’s chief competition for the job of organist at one of Salzburg’s largest churches. Considering their intertwined lives, Houston Chamber Choir will open its season, its first conducted by new Artistic Director Dr. Betsy Cook Weber, at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church on Saturday, September 6, at 7:30 p.m. with Mozart Requiem, a program set to feature all three composers. During the concert, featuring members of the Houston Symphony, Mozart’s titular piece will be bookended by works by the Haydns: Franz Joseph Haydn’s Te Deum, which will open the program, and “Exsurge” from Michael Haydn’s cantata Applausus, which will close it. Tickets are available here for $10 to $50.
Washington State-native Travis Holp is a psychic medium with close to 300 thousand followers on Instagram and 500 thousand on Tik Tok. Known on social media as the Warrior Unicorn – a nod to his fighting spirit toward LGBTQ and mental health awareness issues, combined with his effervescent personality – Travis connects with those who have passed over and delivers messages to their loved ones in the physical world.
Through one-on-one readings and large public events, he says he does it with one aim in mind: that clients leave their time with him feeling a new sense of connection, clarity, closure and healing. He’ll make his Los Angeles debut at The Vault in the Beverly Center on Sunday, September 29, at 7pm.
Holp doesn’t recall when he discovered his psychic ability. He simply remembers being very young, maybe four-years-old, and having long conversations with what people around him assumed were his imaginary friends but, he now realizes, were his Spirit guides. “I can’t say there was one specific moment, but more like many moments throughout my life.”
It wasn’t until his early 20s when he decided to turn his skill into a profession. “Early on in my journey, I read as many books on mediumship as I could find,” he continues. He quickly found himself inundated with Spirit hoping to connect with loved ones in the physical world.
One of his biggest concerns became protecting his energy and learning to keep boundaries with the spiritual world.
“My now mentor and friend MaryAnn DiMarco wrote this great book called Medium Mentor, and she has some great exercises for spiritual protection.”
He also takes steps to nurture his special gift. “I regularly meditate and do things to raise my vibration like dancing to music.” A favorite song of his to listen to before readings and live events is Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth”.
He believes most people have psychic abilities. Some, like himself, are born with it, and others access it later in life. “Like any other ability, it is absolutely possible for a person to learn to connect for him or herself,” he says. He often teaches people how to do it during sessions and at live classes.
The best way he has found to enhance mediumistic abilities is to actively participate in one’s own emotional healing. He says the connection we have with ourselves is the foundation for mediumship. “Like anything, it takes some training but I have gotten really adept at understanding the messages Spirit tells me,” Holp explains. He sees Spirit in his mind’s eye, and he hears and feels their communications. “Spirit uses my own frame of reference and symbols to help me convey their messages.”
His main purpose with Spirit is being a vessel. He views himself as the Guncle (gay uncle) of the Spirit world. “I always tell it like it is,” he says, “but I’m careful to deliver information with kindness, joy, and hope.”
Though both of his grandmothers “pop in” from time to time (he’ll feel their warm and loving energy and always enjoys it when they come to say hello!), he typically won’t read for close family members because he knows too much information about them. However, sometimes Spirit does present itself for a loved one.
When it does, Travis will thank the Spirit for coming but let them know that he prefers not to send a message. It’s all about keeping healthy boundaries between himself and his loved ones.
He does the same thing while on dates.
“I don’t date much, but when I do and I tell a guy how I make my living, they often worry that I’m reading them. I am not,” he insists. “I may get little nudges here and there, like one time I felt the energy of a mom in Spirit for someone I was on a date with, and a few moments later, he shared his mom had passed from cancer a few years prior, but I won’t stop a date to deliver a reading. It’s not very romantic,” he laughs.
“I believe I am meant to help others along their healing journey,” he continues. “Whether a client seeks guidance on a specific topic, wants to connect with a loved one in Spirit, or wants to deepen their own spiritual practice, I’m here to help like any great guncle who knows a lot of sh-t would.”
He admits that he often surprises himself with the accuracy of his messages. “I especially love it when the two people shared a special word or song and then Spirit reveals that word or title to me so that I can relay it back to my client. It’s validation, for sure, but it is also a fun feather in my cap.”
As far as the messages that he most often receives from Spirit, Holp says our dearly departed wish that we would let go of regret, guilt, and shame. “One of the things I have learned from Spirit is that most of what we carry isn’t necessary. In the end, all that really matters is love.”
Travis Holp appears at The Vault in the Beverly Center (8500 Beverly Blvd, Suite 860) on Sunday, Sept 29th at 7pm. For tickets, visit: www.travisholp.com
Former Gloucester resident Peter Van Ness’s debut novel, a tech thriller called “The Faithful” has arrived, and it is very ambitious indeed.
Van Ness, who now lives in Florida, says he has always been fascinated by the intersection of science and spirituality/religion. Add to that the confluence of 21st century technology, and you are inside the mind of John Welles, a brilliant and ambitious MIT graduate who is not just the central character but absolutely central to the novel, as much of the book takes place in his mind.
We first meet John when, as a precocious and curious child, he questions the very existence of reality. Little John recalls in a first-person introductory narrative that he observes the world as a place he can only think to call “pretend.” He can escape it by entering a secret portal in the hallway into infinity where he can time travel at will.
As the son of a prominent Presbyterian minister, Van Ness himself developed an early interest in spirituality and religion, and their link to the metaphysical. Likewise, as a natural math whiz, science was second nature to him. His mind, he says, was ready made for the 21st century, and his tech resume began in high school when he programed computers connected to the ARPANET, the first operational computer network that became the foundation of the modern internet. Later, he’d go on to co-found a software company “that made his investors rich.”
Anyone who knows Van Ness from his entrepreneurial 25 years in Gloucester, knows he marches to his own drum. He skipped college, and became a student of world religions, with a special inclination toward Buddhism.
All of this — science, technology, religion, spirituality, mysticism, not to mention Van Ness’s passion for music — comes home to roost in “The Faithful,” as John’s tech brilliance gets him and his equally brilliant girlfriend Emily swept up in a struggle between two opposing secret religious sects, the Faithful versus the Disciples.
Van Ness describes “The Faithful” sect as representing those wanting “to protect people from all the dangers of the world. They are absolutely sure they are right and committed to their mission, whatever it takes.” The Disciples, on the other hand, “are endlessly curious, seek adventure … constantly question whether they are doing the right thing, and are always adjusting their plans to adapt to current conditions.”
When John and Emily stumble upon evidence of an undiscovered energy field that is, to make a long story short, the key to life itself, they become targets of an ensuing Dan Brownish conspiracy reminiscent of a high tech “The Da Vinci Code,” plunging the reader “into the minds and psyches of the couple as they each embark on a personal journey of self-discovery.”
Ten years in the writing, “The Faithful” evolved with today’s rapidly changing technology and came to include new advances in artificial intelligence. Suffice to say, this is not a tale for tech luddites. But is you are a 21st century digital citizen, then fasten your seatbelts, you’re in for a ride.
Tech aside, at its heart, “The Faithful” remains deeply humanitarian, even romantic. John, like Van Ness himself, loves music, and music weaves its magic throughout “The Faithful.” John hears it in everything, including the glug, glug, glug of fine wine decanting. Then there is “the maestro” — a beloved conductor revered by his musical students, one of whom is John. Van Ness creates in the relationship between the maestro and his students what sounded to this reader as a metaphor for the relationship between the all-seeing God orchestrating life itself.
Van Ness, who, with his wife Vicky, was well known in Gloucester as a mover and shaker in downtown community creative and cultural initiatives. From the summer block parties to Discover Gloucester, they were on the launching pads. But they were best known as promoters of local live music. As founders of Gimme Music and Beverly’s “intimate listening room” 9 Wallis, they were — until the COVID-19 pandemic hit — major players on the North Shore’s live music scene.
One door closes, another opens. In his new home in Florida, Van Ness says he loves swimming daily in the ocean. and as anyone who knows him will not be surprised to hear, in between riding the waves, he’s already writing a sequel. Stay tuned.
A new survey commissioned by Elmer’s found that the average U.S parent has to come up with four new ideas and activities daily to keep their children entertained. And while most parents believe their children have active imaginations, the average kid gets bored in just 33 minutes.
The survey findings show the immediate benefits that creative activities have on parents and kids – with 71% feeling happier when crafting and having less screen time. Other key findings from Elmer’s include:
Parents shared that, outside of the classroom, their kids are more likely to watch TV (80%) than to play with toys (67%).
Many also said their kids like to play with siblings and friends after class (62%) or play with playsets (35%).
93% of parents said it’s important their children are involved in productive forms of play that encourage mental and emotional development
81% found their kids are always looking for something to do after school or daycare
64% of parents said their children like to draw and color after school, alongside doing arts and crafts (46%) or sensory play (36%).
BEVERLY — When the Le Grand David and His Own Spectacular Magic Company ended its historic run at The Cabot theater in 2012, one might say that David Bull disappeared.
Bull, who played the show’s headlining magician for more than 35 years, moved to western Massachusetts, got married, and has not performed a magic trick in public since.
“I don’t miss performing the show we did,” he said. “We did over 2,600 performances in Beverly. But I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to get on stage again and get in front of an audience?’”
Bull will do just that on Sunday, May 26, when he hosts what he is calling ”Le Grand David’s 70th Birthday Bash.” The show will include comedian Paul D’Angelo, Amy G., Kenny Raskin, the Jethro Tull tribute band Minstrels in the Gallery, and others.
Bull will mostly play master of ceremonies and tell stories about the history of the magic show, but said he will also perform “three or four” magic tricks, including one called the Upside Down Production Box.
“I’ve been practicing,” he said. “This is not push-button magic.”
Le Grand David and His Own Spectacular Magic Company ran from 1977 to 2012 in Beverly, making it the longest-running stage magic show in the world, according to Guinness World Records. The troupe that performed the shows also owned both The Cabot and Larcom, two vaudeville era theaters down the street from each other in downtown Beverly.
The company was led by Cesareo Pelaez, a charismatic Cuban who created the show and played Marco the Magi. The show ended shortly after Pelaez died in 2012. The company eventually sold both theaters and auctioned many of its props, costumes and other artifacts.
Bull – who won the Illusionist of the Year award from the Milbourne Christopher Foundation and was given honorary lifetime membership in both The Magic Castle in Hollywood and The Magic Circle in London – said he loved performing as Le Grand David, calling it a “wonderful adventure.”
But he also said he and the rest of the troupe were ready to give it up by the end.
“The shows were so physically grueling,” he said. “It was go-go-go for 2½ hours. I did it from ages 22 to 58 and it became physically difficult at the end. We were the owner-operator, so we popped the popcorn and went in and swept it up in the morning.”
“We said, ‘We’ve done it for 35 years. We’re in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s time to do something else.’”
The only performing Bull does these days is when he and his wife sing in a choral group in nursing homes and hospices. He survived a heart attack and is now a stepgrandfather, which he called “an unexpected blessing in my life.”
Bull admits he’s nervous about performing at The Cabot again. But at the same time, he takes comfort in knowing he is returning to a very familiar place.
“I swing between utter panic and thinking, ‘I’m in my living room. I was on this stage for 35 years.’”
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
BEVERLY — The Beverly Public Library has announced the winners of the 28th annual Teen Poetry Contest.
Winners in the Middle School Division were Sydney Brown, first place for “What Shall I Say”; Katie Daniels, second place for “A CD considers its music”; and James Daoust, third place for “some random poem I made part 2.”
In the High School Division, the winners were Johnny Sheridan, first place for “Elegy for the Impermanent”; Michael Towne-Smith, second place for “Pupa”; and Sheridan, third place for “Sweet Dreams.”
The library received over 450 poems for the contest. The poems were judged by a panel of local poets — Kevin Carey, coordinator of creative writing at Salem State University; Liz Ciampa, founder of the Winter Street Writers group; and Aly Pierce, author of “The Visible Plants and Cryptids.”
The following students all won honorable mentions:
Emma Conway for “Forgettable”; Charlie Cook for “Through my Telescope”; Liana for “A Woman”; Rory Horan for “The phantom cat”; Lequontavious Jarmanious Jaquan Lamar Quandale Lapaix III for “The boy from Rosario”; Bianca Loiacano for “Series of haikus”; Cornelia Sollins for “I Hate It Just As Much As You”; Cornelia Sollins for “Ode to Pointe”; Miya Tsuji for “An Ode to Soccer Fields”; Destiny Albanese for “My Mother, My Father”; Skyler Bickmore for “The M&M Not Taken”; Arianna B. for “Ballad of Nicole Duennebier’s ‘Still Life With Meat Pile’”; Amy Cai for “MATH”; Sabela de Haro Borras for “Dichotomy”; Scarlett for “A Photo Of Us”; Claire Fitzgerald for “learning”; Riley E. Michael for “The Bathroom Girls”; JJ Niemann for “The Dreamer”; Colin Vellante for “Wood Doves.”
The poetry contest is supported by the Friends of the Beverly Public Library; Joan Nelson; and all of the parents, teachers and school librarians who encouraged their students to enter. Further questions about the Annual Teen Poetry Contest or any of the library’s Teen events can be directed to Katie Nelson, the head of Teen Services, at knelson@noblenet.org.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is getting set to shift into summer mode and open its doors Monday through Sunday for the fair-weather season. The public will have even more opportunities to discover the Museum’s vast collection in addition to the three new exhibitions that will be available.
In a Canadian exclusive, the MMFA will showcase Flemish masterworks from The Phoebus Foundation’s collection. It will also present a new body of works from Winnipeg artist Wanda Koop. Thirdly, it will draw from its storage one of the most iconic series by Andō Hiroshige, master landscape printmaker, which will take us on a journey to Japan of the late Edo period.
Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools: Three Hundred Years of Flemish Masterworks
This major exhibition shines a spotlight on The Phoebus Foundation’s world-class collection of Flemish art. It will transport the public to the Southern Netherlands of the 15th to the 18th century (today mainly Flanders, Belgium) during a dynamic period of social, scientific, economic and artistic development. Spanning close to 300 years, it bears witness to the role Flemish artists played in asserting this tiny, yet influential, region’s place in a fast-changing world.
The nearly 150 works on display, including paintings by celebrated artists Anthony van Dyck, Hans Memling, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens and Michaelina Wautier, address timeless themes of vice, virtue, desire and folly. The selected works comprise monumental paintings, sculptures, maps and silverwork. Furthermore, the exhibition is complemented by a dozen or so masterpieces from the MMFA’s prestigious collection, featuring paintings by such masters as Adriaen Isenbrandt, Jan Fyt and Jan Brueghel the Elder.
April 11 – August 4, 2024
Wanda Koop
WHO OWNS THE MOON
Winner of a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2016), Wanda Koop is one of Canada’s most renowned artists of her generation. Her work has been the subject of some sixty solo exhibitions in Canada and abroad. Born in Vancouver to parents from the Zaporijjia region (present-day Ukraine), the artist lives and works in Winnipeg.
For her first monographic museum presentation in Quebec, Koop is unveiling an entirely new body of work. In these twenty or so paintings, the artist expresses her engagement with her family history. The trauma of the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe was, in fact, the point of departure in these painterly meditations on issues of territory, the environment, memory, loss and ever-present war. With the all-seeing moon as its central motif, the exhibition invites us to reflect on our relationship to history and the most pressing questions of our time.
April 27 – September 8, 2024
東海道 Tōkaidō
Dreamscapes by Andō Hiroshige
In the 19th century, the Tōkaidō was one of the most travelled roads in Japan. Towards the end of the Edo period, Andō Hiroshige revolutionized the woodblock publishing industry when he illustrated scenes of everyday life unfolding at the 53 relay stations along the famous route that connected the Tokugawa capital of Japan, Edo (today Tokyo), to the former imperial capital of Japan, Kyōto. Inspired by earlier travel guides and magazines in circulation, this print series sparked a desire in the masses to take the nearly 500-kilometre journey on foot. This imaginary work treats the landscape and its atmospheric appeal as subjects in their own right, a novelty in Japan at that time.
This exhibition presents the very first edition of the “Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō” in its entirety, which was published by Hoeidō and Senkakudō publishing houses in 1833 and entered into the MMFA’s collection in 1972. The show looks at the talent of Hiroshige and his team as the makers of a world people wanted to buy into and inhabit, as well as at the publishing industry that made the dream come true. It also examines the factors that led to these prints becoming an astronomical commercial success and fuelled the emergence of Japonisme in Europe.
The essays in “Ghost Dogs, On Killers and Kin” by Andre Dubus III are pieces of memoir.
They were written between 1988 and 2023 and focus on family and work, guns, dogs, the pandemic, sudden success, falling in love, and the life and craft of writing.
But devoted readers of Dubus will have the added pleasure of recognizing people and places in these essays that were eventually transformed into his works of fiction.
In many cases, readers are also exposed to something unique about the real person that wasn’t part of the fictional character.
Dubus, a Haverhill native who now lives in Newbury, will discuss his latest work April 12 at Jabberwocky Books in Newburyport, then April 26-28 at the Newburyport Literary Festival, followed by appearances Sept. 19 at the Danversport Yacht Club in Danvers and Sept. 29 at the Andover Bookstore. For details on these and other presentations in the region visit www.andredubus.com.
In Dubus’ essay “Blood, Root, Knit, Purl,” we meet a woman with a $2 million trust fund who seems identical to the ex-wife of disabled carpenter Tom Lowe in the novel “Such Kindness” from 2023.
She is mentioned in several essays in “Ghost Dogs,” once by first name, where her relationship to Dubus is just as destined for failure as the one in the novel.
But in an unexpected touch, in “Blood, Root, Knit, Purl,” she teaches Dubus how to knit, so that he can make a homemade Christmas gift for his aunt in Louisiana.
It is not clear which is more unlikely, a woman with lots of money who takes the time to knit scarves and sweaters, or a rugged working man who would knit anything.
But their practice of this humble, domestic art brings them together in a way that makes their backgrounds less important than the quantum of love that they share.
In some cases, however, a connection to previous works by Dubus doesn’t tell the reader much, or prepare them for what happens in an essay.
That is true of “The Golden Zone,” which recalls a figure who appeared in the 2011 memoir “Townie,” who has a second job as a bounty hunter and takes Dubus to find a brutal killer in Mexico.
The plan is to turn the killer over to authorities who will take him back to the U.S. to stand trial, but someone finds Dubus and his partner first, and busts into their hotel room when they are out.
It’s one fight that Dubus is happy to pass up. But he doesn’t leave Mexico without regrets about things he did there under the guise of gaining “experience.”
“I vowed I would not be coming back here, not like this, a tourist of other people’s misery, a consumer of it,” he writes.
As Dubus writes several times in “Ghost Dogs,” both his father and mother were born in Louisiana and most of his “kin,” to emphasize the term from his subtitle, are from there.
In spite of Dubus’ identification with the Merrimack Valley, “Ghost Dogs” makes clear that this southern element is important to his self-image.
Dubus explores this connection at length in “Pappy,” which is about Dubus’ maternal grandfather, Elmer Lamar Lowe, a former construction foreman from Fishville, Louisiana.
Dubus traveled to Louisiana with his mother and siblings for vacations but rarely got a chance to relax, as Pappy would set Dubus and his brother Jeb to work clearing timber and tilling garden beds.
Rather than resenting these demands on his time, Dubus appreciated the value Pappy placed on hard work, and the masculine role model that he provided.
This was during a time when Dubus’ father, short story writer Andre Dubus, was mostly absent, as the son recorded in detail in “Townie.”
The identification with his grandfather becomes so strong that Dubus tells his aunt, when she asks what he wants to be when he grows up, “I don’t want to be a writer. I want to be a working man like Pappy.”
It is later that a mature Dubus realizes he wants to write, and a story, “Last Dance,” in his first book, “The Cage Keeper” from 1989, is both about his grandfather and also dedicated to his memory.
It treats an incident that also appears in the essay on Pappy in “Ghost Dogs” in which Dubus, his grandfather and some men trap and butcher a loggerhead turtle.
In the essay, where Dubus is just an observer, the incident appears as an example of Pappy’s rugged resourcefulness.
But in the story a main character, Reilly, who is clearly based on Dubus, becomes the center of the action and wades into water to snag the turtle with a hook at the end of a pole.
The physical challenge is matched by emotional struggles that Reilly carries with him, which are captured in a brutal final image.
But if the work of fiction intensified the incident, “Pappy” fits it into a larger pattern that doesn’t become explicit until the last paragraph of the essay.
At that point, Dubus makes it clear that he relies on some combination of his grandfather and father in everything he does.
“I feel my grandfather’s eyes on me, my father’s too, the working man and the writer,” Dubus writes.
Mark your calendars because on April 8th there is going to be a rare total solar eclipse. With many school districts granting a ped day day out of caution, board staff are encouraging parents to take advantage and teach their children about astronomy, and Toys R Us Canada has some fun ways to get excited about what’s above.
A lot of people have been asking around online and on social media to find solar eclipse glasses so the eclipse can be safely viewed, and TRU has them for just $3. They are made with an advanced impregnated polymer filter material and are the ultimate in protection, producing a natural yellow-orange solar image.
Their Toy Solar Vehicle Construction Set is a great way to get creative and also learn more about solar energy. This super fun building ki includes a solar panel that powers the positive and negative cables. Kids can build a real working solar-powered motor that serves as the motorized foundation for each robot model.
Finally, this Eclipse book, celebrated artist and author Kelsey Oseid explores the science and mystique of lunar and solar eclipses, from the myths of our ancestors to today. Did you know that in Chinese legends, solar eclipses were caused by dragons eating the sun? Or that the Norse people believed that a sky wolf chased away the moon? Oseid presents these rich historical stories alongside informative, accessible science to enrich your understanding: a solar eclipse only occurs during a new moon; a selenelion is when you can see the lunar eclipse in front of you and the sunset behind you; and the Mars Rovers have even taken photographs of eclipses from Mars. Filled with captivating information and vivid, colorful illustrations, Eclipse will delight and inspire astronomy lovers of all ages.
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On Thursday, March 28, from 4-5 p.m., Teens are invited to hang out with other teens who identify as LGBTQIA+ at the Peabody Institute Library, 82 Main St., Peabody. Like minded friends are also welcome to listen to music and enjoy snacks! We’ll provide different crafts and activities each month, and discuss how to create a more safe and inclusive environment. This event is open for all Teens, grades 6 to 12. This event is free, but registration is required at: https://peabodylibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/lgbteen-hangout/ For more information, please call the Main Library at 978-531-0100, click the link below, or email AThomas@NobleNet.org.
Pop Up Art School: Plant Buddies
Peabody Institute Library South Branch, 78 Lynn St, Peabody, invites teens to create a clay plant buddy with free Pop Up Art School on Thursday, March 28, from 6-7:30 p.m.. A Plant Buddy is sure to add a touch of whimsy to any space. Learn a range of techniques in this hands-on art program to shape air dry clay to bring to life an adorable animal figurine that carries a miniature terra-cotta pot. Ages 16 and up welcome. Space is limited and registration is required at: peabodylibrary.org/calendar
Inside the Oscars
Peabody Institute Library, Danvers, invites you to get an insider’s insight on this years Oscars. Join Danvers-born film critic and author Charles Bramesco on Zoom for the inside scoop on this year at the movies. A film and TV critic, Bramesco writes for The Guardian, The New York Times, GQ, Forbes and many others. If you love the movies (and who doesn’t?) you’ll love this chance to learn how the nominations/selections are made, who should/will win, great films that have been overlooked. With a Q&A for all your burning question. Registration is required for your Zoom link at: https://danverslibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/adult-program-pending-84/
Black History Month Community Read
The Salem Athenaeum, in conjunction with Grace Church, (Salem)’s Anti-Racism Committee, will hold a community discussion of Jon Meacham’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction book about Civil Rights hero John Lewis entitled ‘His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope.’ The discussion will take place at the Athenaeum, 337 Essex Street, Salem on Thursday, Feb. 29 from 7 to 8 p.m. For more information, please contact Maureen Bingham, chair of the Grace Church Anti-Racism Committee at mcbing@comcast.net.
HAVERHILL — Students at Haverhill High School are the first in the nation to engage in live, narrated tours of two Nazi concentration camps – Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, where unimaginable atrocities took place during World War II.
Anyone can watch documentaries and read books about the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis in their quest to eradicate the Jewish people of Europe, but short of visiting Auschwitz in person, local teachers say these live tours are the next best thing while also allowing students to ask questions of a knowledgeable tour guide.
Through a partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation for Genocide Education, the school is introducing these broadcasts as part of the freshman world history curriculum that calls for the study of genocide, not only the one that killed 6 million Jews in Europe during World War II but also genocides in Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia.
On Monday in the UMass Lowell iHub in the Harbor Place building on Merrimack Street, more than a dozen high school seniors were among the first to participate in a live broadcast from Auschwitz where more than 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives.
Their tour guide, a woman from Poland, interspersed her walking tour of the Auschwitz camp with real images of prisoners waiting to be executed in one inhumane way or another.
A camera followed the guide through cramped former military barracks once packed with prisoners who were forced to sleep on hard floors before eventually being led to underground chambers where they were exterminated with poisonous gas. Images of prisoners crammed into tight quarters were overlaid onto the now-empty death buildings.
Meghan DeLong, the district’s history coach, told a crowd that included various school and city officials that Haverhill is the first school district in the country to bring this experiential learning to students “in order to combat hatred in the world and to prevent future genocides.”
During an intermission, several students talked about their impressions of the broadcast. Some of them had enrolled in a course titled “Holocaust and Crimes Against Humanity”.
“It’s like you’re actually there visiting Auschwitz,” said senior Lucas Harvey. “What surprised me is how many people they put into such small spaces.”
Senior Asil Nguyen said the live, narrated tour featured more intense images than she expected.
“My knowledge of the death camps was not as detailed as this,” she said. “I participated in an earlier tour with a different guide and I was crying.”
Senior Shea Kelley said what he saw on the video screen was a lot to deal with emotionally.
“It’s all crammed together in small spaces with unsanitary conditions, it’s terrible to see,” he said.
The guide continued her tour at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, about two miles from Auschwitz, and talked about how train cars overloaded with prisoners arrived before the people were led into underground gas chambers under the guise of taking showers.
“Here, I learned how to starve and how to suffer,” a survivor of the death camp said in a recorded interview shown on two large video screens.
“Trains from across Europe arrived here,” the tour guide said while walking the same path. “The gas chambers operated day and night in the summer of 1944.”
“By the time Germany entered Hungary in March of 1944, the gas chambers and crematoria were operating at full capacity,” a prerecorded voice said. “In the spring of 1944, a special ramp was built to shorten the distance to the gas chambers. Those selected who were fit to work were abused, enslaved and exploited.”
By fall 1944, the Nazi SS stopped the exterminations and began to deconstruct their crematorium, the tour guide said, and when the Nazis realized they were defeated, they tried to destroy all evidence of their crimes while continuing to kill Jews until the camps were liberated by Soviet forces in January 1945.
The tour guide noted that as the Nazis left Auschwitz, they took many prisoners to other camps, which were subsequently liberated, but left behind about 7,500 of the weakest and sickest, who required months of medical care.
The screen was overlaid with images of what the gas chambers looked like when they were intact, with images of the rubble that remains today.
Tom Jordan, recently retired dean of history at Haverhill High, told the tour guide that there is an increasing number of Americans who seem open to the idea that the Holocaust did not happen as is stated and is “an exaggeration.”
He asked what documentation or other evidence is used to prove that the Holocaust did occur.
The tour guide noted the existence of the death camps’ remnants, including the crematoriums, along with the testimony of survivors, the contents of a museum at Auschwitz created by former prisoners, and other evidence.
“Unfortunately, we have the lies that people spread and it can spread stronger than the truth,” she said.
History teacher Ted Kempinksi said he became aware of these tours during a visit last summer to Auschwitz where he attended a professional development program on how technology is changing Holocaust education.
“The Auschwitz Foundation was doing a presentation on this very tour we saw today,” he said. “I asked the question, ‘How can I bring this to Haverhill.’”
Kempinksi said he brought the idea back to Haverhill and learned that DeLong had already applied for a grant that allowed the school to revise its curriculum to incorporate these tours.
“A tour like this is a real privilege,” high school senior David Martinez told the crowd. “To see it live humanizes the stories in a way I don’t think you can really understand through textbooks or documentaries. You feel a real connection and it’s very moving.”
Rabbi Ashira Stevens, spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El in Haverhill, said that in the 20th century, baseless hatred led to the systematic persecution and mass murders of millions of people, including 6 million Jews throughout Europe, and that baseless hatred in the form of antisemitism and bigotry is on the rise throughout the country.
She added that the hate speech in the news and on social media is “frightfully reminiscent of the time leading up to the Holocaust.”
“We must continue to teach about what led to the Holocaust and how utterly horrific, devastating and far reaching it was,” Stevens said.
The rabbi said the collaboration between the Auschwitz Foundation and Haverhill Public Schools will offer students a powerful opportunity to witness the horrors of the Holocaust, see firsthand the conditions at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and learn about the ideologies that led to the atrocities committed by the Nazis.
To conclude the event, the educators presented a glass memento to Wojciech Soczewica, director general of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation in recognition of the partnership with Haverhill Public Schools.
A little bathtub humorThe Newburyport Documentary Film Festival presents its inaugural screening of the NBPT Docu Fest Series on Friday with “Bathtubs Over Broadway” at Firehouse Center for the Arts, One Market Square, Newburyport. The event, sponsored by Dyno Records,…
Worried your taking too many medicines? A presentation on Wednesday may help you advocate for yourself and keep medications in check throughout the aging process.
The Rockport Council on Aging will host Donna Bartlett, author of âMedStrong,â at a special luncheon presentation Wednesday, Feb. 21, at noon.
The lunch and presentation topic âShed Your Medsâ is free thanks to sponsorship from Addison Gilbert Hospital and the Friends of the Rockport Council on Aging. The event will take place at the Rockport Community House, 58 Broadway, where seats are limited and advance reservations are required.
A board-certified geriatric pharmacist based in Worcester, Bartlett is engaged in community outreach programming specializing in older adult medication needs, affordability and prescription coverage. Bartlett has seen first-hand the effects of staying on medication longer than necessary and the impact of âover medication.â
Those in attendance can expect to come away with a better understanding of âde-prescribingâ from an expert who has been practicing, teaching and speaking on the subject for more than 15 years. Copies of Bartlettâs book âMedStrongâ will be available for purchase at the event.
Seats may be reserved by contacting the Rockport Council on Aging at 978-546-2573.
Career Day
The DECA chapter at Rockport High School is sponsoring Career Day on Wednesday, April 3, at the school, 24 Jerden’s Lane, from 8 to 10:30 a.m., and the chapter is seeking for volunteers for presentations. Rockport High alumni are encouraged to present. Anyone interested in participating should email DECA advisor Scott Larsen at slarsen@rpk12.org.
HAVERHILL — Elaine Barker never leaves home without several copies of her favorite faith-based book stuffed into her pocketbook.
It’s a very small book that has attracted a big following, mostly due to Barker, who after discovering the little red book she began handing out copies to people she encounters and are willing to share their burdens and worries.
A devout Catholic whose life is immersed in spirituality and has an unshakable faith in God, Barker says the 70-page “Keep Calm and Trust God” has not only become her daily reader, but it has also brought comfort to those she’s given it to.
Since 2015, she’s handed out more than 500 copies and just received another shipment of 25. She uses the book as a vehicle for sharing her faith.
“Every morning before I leave my bedroom I kneel down and I open the book to a random page and read it,” said Barker, 87, a long-time All Saints Parish member. “It seems there is something there that I’ve read before and gets me through the day. It’s like a spiritual daily vitamin.”
Written by Jake Provance and his father Keith Provance, “Keep Calm and Trust God” contains just 12 short chapters, each offering spiritual guidance for those struggling with concerns such as anxiety, depression, regret, stress and fear of the future. The authors don’t bog down the reader with wordy responses, but instead ask the reader to turn to prayer while citing biblical passages that relate to each area of worry and emphasizing to the reader to “Trust God.”
Barker shares her faith in many ways, but never to the point where she sounds like she’s preaching or forcing her faith onto anyone. Chances are if you bump into her, she always has a kind word or two and will always end a conversation with “God bless you” along with a hug.
“A few months ago they passed one million in sales,” she said. “And last month they sold 40,000 copies. The authors just can’t believe the way their book has sold.”
Back in 2015, Barker was shopping at the CVS in Lafayette Square and was perusing the book rack when she spotted the little red book.
“I bought a copy and when I got home I glanced at it then set it aside with my other Christian books,” she said. “When the pandemic hit, I needed something to bring me comfort so I went to my stack of books and sitting at the top was this book. I picked it up and read a few chapters that talked about stress and worry.”
The words inside carried such meaning that Barker returned to the CVS but the copies were all sold out.
“I contacted the distributor and ordered five copies,” she said. “I was so touched by the effect it had on my life that I gave out the copies to people I ran into and who talked about COVID and its effect on their lives. I told them I have a book that could take some stress out of their lives. So I ordered 25 more copies and gave them out over the next few months.
“I can be anywhere, such as a store, a Chamber event, a celebration or a cemetery and since I’m a good listener, I focus on what people are saying as people love to talk about their problems. Sometimes people just need someone to talk to.”
She has encountered mostly positive reactions from people she hands copies to. The opportunities are everywhere as she attends so many local events, including Chamber of Commerce events, awards and recognition programs, festivals, church gatherings and more. As a member of the Haverhill Exchange Club, you’ll find her at their weekly luncheon meetings. If there’s something happening around the city, Barker is usually there bringing her own style of light and happiness into a room.
“When someone has a problem, or there’s a sickness, or they have a family member they are worried about, I just listen,” she said. “And when the opportunity arises, I’ll tell them you seem very stressed and worried and that I have this wonderful booklet I’m sure can help you. I only give them out to people who talk about having a problem and I feel the book can help.”
While attending a bridal conference in North Carolina in 2022 as part of her work with her company Paper Pot Pourri, a custom maker of stationary, she was in a cafe at her hotel and noticed an elderly man who appeared to be alone and lonely.
“I saw that he had a pile of books and that one had the word Jesus on the cover,” she said. “I struck up a conversation and he told me about a problem with a family member who had attempted suicide. I told him I have a wonderful little book and will you accept it? Since then I continue to receive text messages from the man.”
She said she carries several copies in her pocketbook, just in case.
“It’s not that I go looking for people to hand them to, it just happens,” she said. “This book helps me to accept the trials and tribulations in life.”
Barker’s faith in God has brought her on many pilgrimages, including to a village called Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which she visited in 2022.
“I prayed a lot and climbed Apparition Hill while hobbling with a cane due to foot surgery the year before, and which has since healed,” she said. “I also submitted prayer petitions from people I know and who requested certain prayers.”
She’s been to the Holy Land twice to visit the place of Jesus’ birth and crucifixion and other holy sites, and last year she visited religious sites in Italy.
Barker said she initially purchased the books for the retail price of $4.99, but for the past four years she obtains them at a discount from Keith Provance, who lives in Oklahoma.
“I often write to him to tell him about situations that led to my handing out a copy,” she said. “During one phone conversation I reminded him that he’d included a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, who was born in Haverhill, and over time he’s learned a lot about Haverhill’s history, which I’m happy to talk to him about.”
“This little book speaks to common things people struggle with and is written in such a simple way that it doesn’t overwhelm the reader,” she said.
“It’s very easy to understand. I also like the sayings from well known people. I have other books but I’m not addicted to them as I am to this book and the message it brings to me. It doesn’t solve all problems, but it helps understand and accept things. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, we must accept, and of course God is always here to help us.”
