persistence – Debby Detering Wordcraft

Dr. Ida–for the Women of India

The Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, started as a single-bed clinic, by Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder who served as a missionary for 50 years. Today, it is one of the top-ranked educational, healthcare and research institutes in the country.

The first class of 14 women—taught by Dr. Ida and a few of her associates, with only one microscope, one skeleton, and few textbooks—faced regional end-of-first-year examinations along with men from established government-run medical schools. Dr. Ida tried to encourage the girls:

“All anybody can expect of you is to do your best.”
     The girls were not deceived. “Best” to Dr. Ida meant nothing short of 90 percent. They huddled on the long, hard seats staring at each other in terrified silence…Examinations according to the British system were matters of educational life or death.
     Ida, herself one of the examiners, met Colonel Bryson in the hall…
     “Ah, Dr. Scudder! So you’ve brought up your first class for examination?”
“Yes.” Ida smiled at him brightly.
            His face clouded with sympathetic concern. “My dear doctor, please don’t be discouraged if none of your students makes the grade this first time.”
            “None of them?” echoed Ida bleakly.
            “”It wouldn’t be surprising…only a small percentage of men pass it. Naturally we couldn’t expect too much of such a young project, especially all women. But they can always try again. Promise me you won’t give up, whatever happens.”
            “I promise,” said Ida. She went on, head held high but heart sinking to the region of her shoes.
            The grim days passed. Huddled in a tight, silent group in the mission bungalow in Madras where they were housed, the girls waited to hear the results. Lists from various men’s college were posted and read with dismay. Only about 20 percent—one in five—was passing!
            “And we’re only women!” wailed one of the fourteen in anguish.
            In a note from the considerate Colonel Bryson, Ida learned the results before they were posted. The distance from college to mission bungalow seemed interminable. She wished it were a tennis court or a racetrack so she could run at top speed and still be considered proper. But she reached it finally, stood in the doorway of the room where they were waiting. They read the answer in her radiant face.
            “Lambs!” She held out her arms to them. “You did it! Passed. Every single one of you. And four of you in the first class. And—can you believe it? This places our school at the head of all the medical schools in the presidency!” …
            The next time she met Colonel Bryson, he shook his head. “I’m afraid, Doctor,” he said sheepishly, “that your girls are setting too high a standard for our men to live up to.”
            Ida only smiled.
From Dr. Ida, The inspiring story of Dr. Ida Scudder, fifty years a medical missionary in India bu Dorothy Clarke Wilson.

I’ve read a couple of Wilson’s other books–I’d like to own every one of them.

Fiction

Shiloh: A Boy and a Beagle

“The reason I don’t like Judd Travers is a whole lot of reasons, not the least is that I was in the corner store once … and saw Judd cheat Mr. Wallace at the cash register. Judd gives the man a ten and gets him to talking, then–when Mr. Wallace gives him change–says he gave him a twenty.”

Worse yet, Judd kicks his dogs.

Marty will do anything to rescue Shiloh, the beagle who follows Marty home from the “rattly bridge where the road curves by the old Shiloh schoolhouse and follows the river.” Trouble is, not only does “anything” includes lying, but it risks Shiloh’s life.

It’s Judd who unintentionally hands Marty a solution. Then Marty, when he’s forced to spend time with Judd, learns that right and wrong aren’t always as simple as the difference between the truth and a lie.

Shiloh is a Newberry Medal book; even better, there are three sequels: Shiloh Season, Saving Shiloh, and Shiloh Christmas.

Biography

What Terrorism Feels Like

“I am Malala, and this is my story…

Terrorism is fear all around you. It is going to sleep at night and not knowing what horrors the next day will bring. It is huddling with your family in the center-most room in your home because you have all decided it is the safest place to be. It is walking down your own street and not knowing whom you can trust. Terrorism is the fear that when your father walks out the door in the morning he won’t come back at night. ..

And since I had been in the kitchen both times there were [bomb] blasts near our house, I stayed as far from that room as possible. But how can a person live when she is afraid of a room in her own home? How can a mother buy food for her family if the market is a war zone? How can children gather for a game of cricket if a bomb could go off under their feet?”

Malala was 15, in ninth grade, in 2012 when Taliban soldiers shot her in the head because she spoke out for the right of girls to go to school.

In December, 2014, Malala received the Nobel Peace Prize for her stand against extremism and her coinntued fight for the right to education.

“On my eighteenth birthday, I returned to the Syrian border to open a school in Lebanon for refugee children and to demand that world leaders invest in books, not bullets.”

In her autobiography, Malala tells about her childhood, the international team that saved her life when she was shot, her long recovery, and her fight for education.

“It is people’s love and encouragement that gives me the energy to continue my fight. I will never give up on advocating for peace and education for all. I want to build schools and make sure there are qualified teachers in as many places as I can. That is something else that hasn’t changed: I am the same stubborn girl who will never give up.”