Neil Germundson Toyota Fleet Manager NeilG@RightToyota.com 7701 E. Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. Scottsdale AZ, 85260 480-778-2200 Contact Neil today for your friendly neighborhood discount! 7875 E. Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. Scottsdale AZ, 85260 480-778-2440 Craig Thorpe Honda Fleet Manager CThorpe@RightHonda.com Big discounts on remaining 2015 Accords! COME EARLY FOR BEST SELECTION! 2016 Tacoma A NEWLY REFINED WAY TO GET MAN’S BEST FRIEND TO THE TRAIL Contact Craig today for your friendly neighborhood discount! Page 54 October 2015 than 20 years, and was Arcadia High’s equipment manager for 18 years. This is Hanson’s first book. He plans on writing more in the future. “One thing I can say about this book is that it may not be required reading, but if you love Arizona and you love high school sports, you will love these fascinating stories about the names behind high schools and their sports venues,” Hanson said. To purchase the book, visit whoisgym.com. By Mallory Gleich Have you ever wondered why Arcadia High School’s Baker Field is named Baker Field? Or why Washington High School’s gymnasium is named Ed Sine Gymnasium? Scott Hanson has your answers. Around three years ago, Hanson was getting ready to officiate a high school football game at Cactus High School. They were playing at M.L. Huber Stadium. Wondering where (or who) the name came from, Hanson asked around, only to find that no one knew who M.L. Huber was. His curiosity was piqued. Hanson decided to research the names and places of high school sports venues in the surrounding area. After speaking to Arizona state historian, Marshall Trimble, about these records, Trimble suggested that Scott take it upon himself to write the record. Who Is Gym? is that record. Around 300 schools in Arizona are included in the book. From Lake Havasu and Nogales, to Arcadia and Scottsdale, if you want to know why a venue is named what it is, this is where you look. Hanson, who is president of HMA Public Relations in Arcadia, has always been a lover of sports. He has officiated high school football and baseball games for almost 30 years. He grew up in Phoenix and attended Washington High School. He has two sons who attended Horizon High School, which is featured in the book. For Hanson, Who is Gym? was his calling. “I talked to athletic directors, historians, librarians, civic leaders and old-timers… The book even mentions schools that aren’t around anymore,” Hanson said of his research. After asking Trimble to write a foreword for the book, The name behind the building: Local author tells us Who Is Gym? Hanson got to work. He researched his own high school and found that Pagel Field was named after Tom Pagel, a science teacher at the school, and his family. Three of Pagel’s five sons were involved in sports around the area and Hanson even went to school and played sports with them when he was younger. Are you ready to find out why Arcadia High School has Baker Field? This name came from Jim Baker, who played a part in coaching Arcadia’s Little League program for more You will love these fascinating stories about the names behind high schools and their sports venues.” ‘‘ Author Scott Hanson officiates athletics in his spare time.

Serving the Arcadia area since 1958          Find us on Facebook! Member Since 1959      •  •    •    •    •         www.ingleside.com • 602-840-3446 WE ARE PLEASED TO WELCOME OUR NEW VETERINARIAN: TALI TONCRAY, D.V.M. Call us today for an appointment. 602-952-1754 BRIAN A. SERBIN, DVM • RACHEL BART, DVM KATIE CHILES, DVM • KATHERINE HEWITT, DVM Page 55 October 2015 By Randy Susan Meyers I have a monthly coffee date with one of my closest friends. It is the first week of every month and it’s nonnegotiable. This friend is like the friend so many of us have and treasure. She is someone I spill my secrets to, share my concerns with, and know – without a doubt – will celebrate my accomplishments just as much as – if not more than – I do. More than anything we talk. We chat. We trust. And we are thankful. But last week, as we sat for two hours (in what felt like a blink of an eye), I started thinking about the recent book I had read, Accidents of Marriage by Randy Susan Meyers. Meyers writes about life. She writes about truth. She writes about the secrets we all hide between our smiles and she cuts to the bone with her raw descriptions of sadness, failure and defeat. While her novels are never depressing, they are simply real. And I love them. It is hard to admit you love a book when it is based on unrelenting family traumas and personal destruction. Yet, read one or all of her novels and you will know what I mean. She writes beautifully and with her entire heart. She gets deep into the soul of each of her characters and makes you feel like you know them, love them, and want to hold their hand and make their days better. My time with my friend reminded me once again that having such people in your life is important. As we all race around, too busy for our own good, it’s absolutely key to make time for these moments. These relationships. These people. We all have daily struggles. We all fight battles and stare our own demons in the eye, but it’s much more difficult to disguise when you know you have a friend who will soon be sitting across the table, looking you in the face and seeing through the façade. And while I am not personally fighting any battles today, I’m blessed to know I have a deep well of solid, beautiful people waiting across my table when I do. The Arcadia News Book Club will meet on October 29 at 6:30 p.m. at the Saguaro Library to discuss Accidents of Marriage . Refreshments will be shared and a $5 raffle will be held in support of Don’t be a Chump! Check for a Lump! We will hold a question- and-answer Skype session with the book’s author, Randy Susan Meyers, as well. Recently Arcadia News was able to ask Meyers a few questions to prepare for our book club event. AN: The Arcadia News Book Club has had the pleasure of reading all three of your novels. (We read The Murderer’s Daughters and The Comfort of Lies in 2013.) Can you explain to our readers what inspires you to write about real people with real (although sometimes extreme) problems? RSM: My favorite books, the ones I return to time and again, are those gritty enough to have emotional truth (which is very different than the truth of events.) Thus, I work to write with a knife held to my own throat, so that my work will hold as much emotional truth as possible. How does this happen, this weaving of truth and imagination? Does it always happen to writers? One wouldn’t know without X-raying each writer’s past, but it’s a question I think about when reading my favorite books. What was that writer tapping into when they brought such depth to the page? Can a wrenching book be written without the writer taking a visit to their depths? For me, writing transmogrifies fact into fiction, and thus, soothes my soul. I used to play a song for my daughters, from Free to Be You and Me, which swore that crying got the sad out of you. That’s what writing does for me – it gets the sad, the mad and the glad out. Writing calms me. Writing excites me. Writing sorts out my world. AN: Accidents of Marriage presents readers with Maddy, a social worker, who faces the same problems she has been trained to not only understand, but also help people overcome. Was it important to you to show that even those who know better find themselves terrified and stuck? RSM: Maddy is modeled after about a thousand people I know – including myself and my friends and family. Most of us have some Maddy in us, at least at some point. It’s common in the helping profession to ignore the worst in our own lives. We use drugs or alcohol or food or something else to tamp down our feelings. When you work within a maelstrom of problems, you become desperate to believe it’s all okay at home. We deny and lie to ourselves, until we can’t anymore. In Accidents of Marriage I wanted to show that even the “best and brightest” suffer from emotional and psychological abuse. Stopping bullies is hard for everyone. AN: Do you think it’s a common practice in life (not just social work) to teach but not practice what you preach? RSM: Helping others is much easier than helping ourselves. That’s why there’s so many problems with substance abuse in the helping professions and how we end up with proverbs such as “the shoemaker’s children go barefoot.” I worked in human services for many years and was struck repeatedly by how often those who help, can’t help themselves. I worked with men in the field of domestic violence who couldn’t keep to the tenets of what they taught and women in the same field who were kept quiet about the ways in which they were victimized. AN: Each of your novels is based on family matters. Do you enjoy exploring the family dynamic? How do you do your research? (Personally, I imagine you quizzing everyone you meet about his or her family relationships.) RSM: Exploring family dynamics draws me like no other genre, especially families facing what seem to be insurmountable problems. I’m mystified by and marvel at all stories of how families conquer hurdles, whether they be about abuse, medical trauma, racial injustice, financial difficulties or war. And while I don’t quiz my friends (at least I don’t think so!), I am the person to whom people spill. I prefer listening to people’s stories, probably ask more probing questions than I realize and have always lost myself in “what if?” In addition, memoirs are my secret research weapon to getting inside the minds of those with diverse experiences. AN: This novel, as well as The Comfort of Lies , switches point of view throughout. How does writing such a novel change your process? Do you prefer it to one point of view? RSM: All my novels (including the one I am presently working on) have more than one point of view. I prefer this because in families, the same situation looks different from each member’s eyes, a dynamic I find intense, interesting and often damaging. If we each stay strictly as the star of our own show and never step into another’s shoes, our outlook becomes stagnant. I guess I write how I think, always imagining myself in other’s shoes. In the novel I just finished (Book Four) I planned to do one point of view, but, of course, another one snuck in. AN: Can you give us three statements about your own family? RSM: 1. Great ability to laugh and tell anecdotes. 2. Complicated backstories (a bit of bigamy here, a touch of addiction there...) 3. We sure love to eat. AN: What are you working on now? RSM: Book Four, which suffers from a surfeit of working titles, explores the seemingly blind love of a wife for her husband as he conquers Wall Street, and examines her extraordinary loyalty during his precipitous fall down when he reveals his financial crimes. She is torn: Her family will shun her if she supports her husband, but she can’t abandon a man she’s been tied to since they were virtually children. AN: If you could escape to a tree house for one week simply to read and sip exquisite tea, which three books would you pack in your bag? RSM: Tough question, as choosing unread books leaves one at the mercy of being stuck with a bad choice. (Plus, I’m a very fast reader on vacation, so my choices must be fat books!) I’ll pick three books I’d love to revisit and see if they match my memories from years ago: Exodus by Leon Uris, Jubilee by Margaret Walker Alexander, and Roots by Alex Haley. And I think I’ll sneak in The Godfather to keep with my long-ago-read theme. BOOK CLUB BOOK OF THE MONTH Accidents of Marriage BY RANDY SUSAN MEYERS Saguaro Library Oct. 29, 2015, 6:30 p.m. Author writes to soothe soul and expose personal emotions