Christine McDonnell

An Unusual Christmas

Christine McDonnell — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 14:23:36 +0000

I met my husband Terry in the spring when his son, Garth, was five years old. The winter before, Terry and Garth had spent Christmas alone. Between a busy retail season and getting Garth to and from daycare Terry hadn’t had time to buy a tree. So he covered a wall with paper and drew a tree. Then the two of them made paper ornaments, cut them out and hung them, using notebook reinforcers. They both had such fond memories of that special Christmas! It’s vintage Terry: creative, positive, valuing relationship over ritual, putting magic into an otherwise sad situation just as he did during the months of his cancer treatments.

This year is another strange Christmas: just me and the cats here in snowy, cold Vermont, staying safe during the pandemic. My Christmas decorations and lights are in Boston, and since it’s just me I wasn’t interested in getting a tree. I did manage evergreens and lights on the door for the delivery guys.

Then I noticed this funny little plant growing between the deck and the garage. I dug it up, potted it and brought it in to decorate. Silver ribbon, little pompoms from yarn (remember making these for our ice skates?), knitting markers…a funny little tree.

Surely it’s a relative of that paper tree from years ago.

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A Newsletter from Rosie’s Place, 1975

Christine McDonnell — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 16:20:07 +0000

I was reading Kip Tiernan’s papers today and came across this from a 1975 newsletter about Rosie’s Place during its first year.

The compassion and respect shown are such a contrast to attitudes we witnessed in Washington this week.

I hope Kip’s words will lift our spirits and remind us of what is possible.

Two of our women died this winter. Alcoholism and the results of it. A small funeral service was held and we all went.

Indian Mary was killed by a car. She was out, drinking, got picked up, and dumped out of a car on the expressway. Some Indian women came to us for help.

Without a wake, a service, it cost a total of $500 to get Indian Mary back to her native land, Canada. We saw the plane off at Logan, the only time she ever rode anywhere in comfort, probably.

When one of our women gets sick and goes to the hospital, we visit her, send flowers, bring the things she needs or wants. Such a small thing, but to those who never receive flowers or visitors or gifts, it means a great deal.

Rosie’s is beginning to become something else. It is beginning to have an important meaning in the lives of those who come to us. We do take care of the basics. But we are trying to do other things as well. And we do to care if the place is jumping.

You cannot measure effectiveness in body counts.

We don’t keep records. We don’t ask questions. We don’t push. Or probe. Or have expectations of them. When we don’t see them for awhile we are concerned, and we do go out and look for them. When we don’t see them, we worry, but when they come back, we never ask them where they’ve been. We only tell them we are glad to see them and we missed them.

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A Monument to Kip Tiernan

Christine McDonnell — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 16:29:29 +0000

I’ve been working on a book about Kip Tiernan, a social activist in Boston who founded the first shelter in the country for homeless women in 1974. Kip worked for the poor and homeless in Boston for over forty years, founding Rosie’s Place, Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, the Boston Food Pantry and the Poor People’s Union. She died in 2011. On October 6, 2018, a memorial to Kip will be dedicated near Copley Square in Boston.

Rosie’s Place, the sanctuary that Kip founded, is open from early morning until night, offering meals, legal advice, temporary housing, medical help, a place to spend time during the day, lockers and showers, and classes in literacy, ESL and computers. I’ve taught there for several years. It is an amazing place! Every year I am so inspired by the courage and resilience of the women in my classes. And I am delighted by their warmth and humor. We always laugh together.

Kip Tiernan’s papers are at Harvard University, in the Schlesinger Library in Radcliffe Yard, an oasis. Paths lead from busy streets to a wide expanse of grass and many trees, surrounded by old buildings. Inside the Schlesinger you put your belongings in a locker and bring just your computer.

The librarian wheeled out a cart with boxes holding the material I requested. Kip’s letters, typed copies of her speeches, brochures, newsletters are all arranged chronologically in folders, drafts with her notes all over them.

In the silence of the room Kip’s voice rang loud in my ears. She was so passionate about the rights of the poor for food, housing, dignity. She was relentless in hounding city and state officials to provide permanent housing and to treat the poor with dignity. She was smart, powerful, irreverent and very funny!

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Kip’s writing and speeches.

“The face of homeless women is our face. She is our mother, our sister, our daughter and she deserves more than three hots and a cot as the saying goes.”

“Never forget that charity is scraps from the table and justice is a seat at the table. Charity is giving to others what belongs to you. Justice is giving to others what belongs to them.”

“The rage I feel around homelessness and hunger and deprivation is barely containable. It is on the surface of my skin, my bones, and it lies coiled, ready to spring at a moment’s notice… Sometimes all we need is just plain stubborn hope.”

“I sometimes wish everyone could experience the alienation and discrimination, the isolation of disapproval…so everyone could know how it feels to be unloved, unwanted, unnecessary.”

“Who decides who gets the condo and who gets the cardboard box?”

“I have chosen the edge as my personal geography.”

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My First Children’s Room

Christine McDonnell — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 15:10:54 +0000

The first children’s room I was in charge of was at the Mott Haven branch of the New York Public Library, in the South Bronx. It was a venerable Carnegie library, the oldest in the Bronx.

The children’s room occupied the whole second floor, with huge windows on three sides that pivoted, letting in the sun and wind all summer. Round radiators with marble tops warmed the room in winter.

The Mott Haven neighborhood was alive with children. They came trooping up the stairs and fanned out into the space and light of that gracious room. The senior clerk for the room was a warm and talented neighborhood woman named Caroline Williams. She took me in hand and I happily followed her lead.

“We need some diapers up here,” Caroline told me. And so we had diapers.

“We can get free lunches for these kids in the summertime,” she instructed. So we had lunches provided by a city program.

My favorite memory of Caroline Williams was the time she said, “I’m calling up some families we haven’t seen in awhile, telling them we’ve got a new librarian now.”

Soon a troop of children arrived with armloads and boxes of books overdue by eons. Mrs. Williams kept piling them on a book cart, thanking the kids for finding them. We never asked where the books had been, or questioned their condition. We welcomed those children back and they joined the crowd of regulars.

I have so many memories of Mott Haven:

showing a luminous new print of The Red Balloon to a room filled with at least three hundred children. We gasped together at the brilliant colors, and the image of the boy carried by the balloons above the harsh Parisian neighborhood.
learning to make hand puppets with Pura Belpré and watching her bring Perez and Martina to life with the slightest movement, the smallest gesture of a puppet’s head or hand.
snowy winter afternoons when children sat near the huge, round radiators, the snow on their coats turning to steam.
two young men approaching me an an empty subway platform. Rather than asking for my wallet, one said, “Are there any films this week, lady?” They recognized me! At twenty-four, with my young Irish face, I stood out in the neighborhood.

What a fine education I received at Mott Haven branch library, tutored by Caroline Williams and the children there. Keep the doors open, keep the children coming, make everyone welcome. Share the sun, the breezes, the warm, round radiators. And of course the books!

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When the Babies Came to Stay

Christine McDonnell — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 15:00:25 +0000

Here’s the cover and an inside spread from my new picture book, When the Babies Came to Stay, which will be published by Viking Press in the spring of 2020. The illustrator is Jeanette Bradley. (jeanettebradley.com)

At the beginning of the story four babies turn up on an island, one on the mail plane, two on the ferry and one on a pile of nets. What should the islanders do with them? The librarian solves the problem.

Of course she does! Librarians are the smartest people and they’re always helpful.

(Full disclosure: I was a librarian for many years and a lot of my closest friends are librarians, too.)

The story answers the question what should we do when people turn up on our shores?

The answer: make them welcome, give them a home, and take care of them!

As the librarian says, “Where we’re going is more important than where we came from.”

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Inspiration in Ireland

Christine McDonnell — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:49:38 +0000

This spring I visited Innishbofin, an Irish island. Supposedly the pirate queen, Gráinne O’Malley, and the Spanish pirate, Don Bosco, had fortresses there in the 1500s, trapping unsuspecting ships in the harbor.

For years Innishbofin was home to a thriving fishing community but famine, war and emigration decimated its population and now only a hundred and fifty people live there. It’s a quiet place with boats anchored in the protected harbor. Sheep dot the rocky hillsides and trails lead by peat bogs and ponds. When the fog comes it’s easy to imagine why pirates chose it as a hiding place.

My new picture book, When the Babies Came to Stay, is set on an island but I wasn’t on an island when I wrote the first draft. I was looking out at cows lazing in the pasture behind my house. In the distance the Lowell Mountains were hazy blue. A whirring hummingbird paused by the flowers outside my window. It was a summer afternoon in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, miles and miles from the ocean, with no island in sight.
Here’s the idea that came to my mind: four babies appear mysteriously on an island. One is discovered in the mail bag, two are left on the ferry and one is found sleeping on the fish pier on a pile of nets. The babies are discovered by the ferryman, the harbor master and the fisherman and not one of them knows what to do. The librarian takes charge!

Why an island? Why four babies? That’s the mystery of the imagination.

It doesn’t surprise me that the librarian is the hero, the smartest one around. Of course she is! I love librarians. I was a librarian myself, working at the New York Public Library at the start of my career and ending my library career in a large school library. This is the first time a librarian has appeared in one of my books. I’m delighted that she’s the star.

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