(Courtesy of the author)
Alison McGhee (Courtesy of the author)

ALISON MCGHEE: Bestselling Minnesota author who writes for all ages in all forms introduces her new novel, “Weird Sad and Silent” and celebrates publication of the paperback edition of “Telephone of the Tree.” In her new middle-grade story McGhee, winner of four Minnesota Book Awards, introduces readers to Daisy, who’s trying to “invisibilize” herself after living with her mother’s violent ex-boyfriend. She keeps a low profile to avoid the bullies who are targeting her, eating lunch with the librarian to keep away from the Lunchroom of Terror. Things begin to look up when a new boy arrives, willing to stand up to the bullies. And the stray cat she’s been feeding begins to almost trust her. The author’s previous books include “What I Leave Behind,” “Shadow Baby” and “Firefly Hollow.” 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 27, Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.

JIM MOORE: Poet who lives in Minneapolis and Spoleto, Italy, and Colorado-based poet, book artist and printmaker Robin Walter discuss their latest work. 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 27, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

READINGS BY WRITERS: Tim Nolan hosts Brian Duren, Becky Boling, Cass Dalglish and Peter Geye. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, University Club, 420 Summit Ave., St. Paul.  

REMEMBERING GEORGE FLOYD: Young artists’ event features award-winning author Shannon Gibney hosting a reading by youth activists of the picture book she wrote, “We Miss You, George Floyd,” in observance of the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer. With Ananya Dance Theater. 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul. The program will be outdoors, weather permitting.

KAO KALIA YANG: First winner of Minnesota Book Awards in three categories in one year reads and offers reflections on her writing, inspired by her Hmong heritage, in a program titled “Under Turbulent Skies.” Presented by Friends of the St. Paul Public Library’s series of appearances by Minnesota Book Award winners and nominees. 7 p.m. Thursday, Eastside Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St., St. Paul. Free; registration required at eastsidefreedomlibrary.org.

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In the middle of Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re offering stories about forgotten people on the margins, a memoir about how trees soothe and calm us, and two helpful books for those living with mentally challenged loved ones.

(Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press)

“Lucky Tomorrow”: by Deborah Jiang-Stein (University of Minnesota Press, $18.95)

Another thing, I dream of ears. Last time I was in the psych wing of the jail, I listened less than ever before. Thought my dreams would stop that way, the sounds and visions. Sometimes I think I’m over the edge with these visions. Other times pretty sure I’m an intuitive antenna, a direct conduit from the universe. It chimes secrets of wisdom into me and pumps truth through me. — from “Lucky Tomorrow”

This riveting collection of 35 tender/heartbreaking interconnected short stories (the publisher calls them vignettes), begins with evocations of flowers in the life of flower vendor Felma, who had a baby taken from her when she was locked up in Seattle. Felma loves flowers, wants to be them: “If I leave the pollen on me long enough, I figure, it’ll soak into my pores and hair follicles and then I’ll start growing tiny little buds and blossoms of pansies.”  Her flower cart sign says: “For a Lucky Tomorrow Buy a Flower Today.”

Later we learn Felma’s little business lasted only a few months. Is she Esther, locked in the prison’s death row psych ward? Thoughts of her daughter, taken away right after her birth, are always part of Esther’s semi-coherent thoughts even though she’s been in prison for decades. The writing in Esther’s stories is chilling as, for instance, we witness the feces-smearing woman across the hall being led to the death chamber.

Other characters include outcasts, visionaries and eccentrics — all of whom live on the margins as unseen — a former priest, a girl trapped in working her family’s candy stand, a woman who learned preaching from her brother and is a caretaker for her dying housemate. The settings move from Seattle to Tokyo to Minneapolis.

It isn’t a spoiler to reveal this collection ends with hope as Esther’s daughter is given boxes of small cafeteria paper napkins covered with her mother’s drawings of flowers.

Jiang-Stein, born in an Appalachian prison, is author of the memoir “Prison Baby.” She’s a writer, public speaker, collaborator and founder of the unPrison Project, working with and mentoring people in prisons to build life skills. Her sympathy for the unseen, forgotten and mentally unwell permeates this collection.

Jiang-Stein will launch her book at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 29,  at Children’s Theater Company, 2400 Third Ave. S., Mpls., in conversation with Sha Cage, artist, writer and director. Free, advance registration required at z.umn.edu/52925. She will also be in conversation with author, teacher and writer’s advocate Carolyn Holbrook at 6 p.m. June 2 at Moon Palace Books, 3032 Minnehaha Ave., Mpls.

(Courtesy of Holy Cow! Press)

“Tree Trek: A Daughter’s Walk Through Grief”: by Stephanie Mirocha (Holy Cow! Press, $18)

As I finished crossing the pedestrian bridge that day on my way back, instead of looking straight ahead at the Lily Pond as I usually did, for some reason my head turned to the left and my gaze fell directly on an Ohio buckeye tree. On its trunk was one of my dad’s tree ID signs shining starkly as if looking at me, drawing my attention to it like an arrow. It was the first time I had ever noticed one of his tree signs I’d heard about from vague references slipped into conversations… — from “Tree Trek”

Science, biology, ruminations on nature and family memories intertwine in this debut from a woman who inherited her love of trees. It is a pleasure to read.

“This book is the story of losing my father, the pillar of my life, and of trees, the silent partners who stood with me along the way,” she writes. Each chapter title names a tree, from Basswood and Spruce to Ginkgo and Hackberry, as well as the author’s personal connection.

Mirocha, who lives in Aitkin, grew up climbing trees and riding her bike in Como Park where she learned about trees from her dad, Chet Mirocha, a University of Minnesota professor of plant pathology. In 2004 Chet Mirocha began leading treks through the Como Park trees and later started attaching ID tags to them. After her dad’s death in 2019, Stephanie continued his work leading educational Tree Treks in the park and tagging trees.

There are plenty of nature books about the importance of animals, insects and flowers, but too often we take trees for granted. “Trees have much to share with us beyond shade, oxygen, wood products, food, and their beauty,” Mirocha writes. “Living alongside us as we grow and age, sometimes for our entire lifetimes, they calmly and quietly connect us to those who came before us and to those who will come after we are gone. Trees are always available to hold our memories, joys, sorrows, and major life events in their strong branches while we attempt to explain ourselves.”

Mirocha illustrated four picture books connecting children to nature, including “Frog in the House” and “My Little Book of Bald Eagles,” both award-winners. She earned a degree in philosophy from the University of Minnesota and is a Minnesota Master Naturalist.

A book launch will be hosted by Mirocha at 7 p.m. Thursday at Northland Arboretum in Brainerd and she will sign books May 31 at Zenith Bookstore in Duluth. In St. Paul she will sign from 1:30 to 3 p.m. June 21 at Garden Safari Gifs, 1225 Estabrook Drive (Como Park), and 4 p.m. June 21 at Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave.

“Loving Someone with a Mental Illness or History of Trauma” (Johns Hopkins University Press, $22.95) and “I’m Not Alone” (Seeds of Hope Books, $22.95): by Michelle D. Sherman and De Anne Sherman.

Michelle Sherman is a Roseville-based psychologist and her mother, De Anne, is an educator/advocate in Woodbury.

Their book “Loving Someone…”, subtitled “Skills, Hope, and Strength for Your Journey,” is an interactive paperback that offers space for the reader’s thoughts and experiences. Sections include Reflecting on Your Experience, Supporting Your Loved One, Strengthening Your Relationship With Your Loved One, and managing common challenges. They address the emotional journey, coping tools, empowerment, communication, limit setting, addictive behaviors and possible impacts of trauma. Written in clear language, this workbook is for individuals or helping groups.

“I’m Not Alone” is an interactive teen guide to living with parents who have a mental illness or history of trauma. This is an updated and expanded second edition. Young readers should be hopeful as they delve into the book because on the first page it promises “You are not alone,” emphasizing that confusion, worry, fear and anger are common feelings when living with an impaired parent. The young reader will learn about causes, symptoms, and treatment of mental illness/post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as the possibility of recovery, healthy coping skills, tools for talking with your friends, how to identify people who can support you, strategies to strengthen your relationship with your parent and how to strengthen the reader’s own mental health.

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Paul Rudd and Jason Segel dissected the nature of adult male friendships in 2009’s “I Love You, Man,” and Rudd is back exploring similar terrain in “Friendship,” which plays like a cracked mirror version of the former film.

The igniting agent here is Tim Robinson, the sketch comedy oddball who has made his Netflix series “I Think You Should Leave” an uproariously funny piece of outsider art. Robinson, in his first feature film starring role, brings such an absurd, wild-card presence that he turns “Friendship” into its own demented, extended “I Think You Should Leave” sketch, stretched to feature length and ramped up for maximum awkwardness.

Robinson plays Craig Waterman, a nerdy, socially inward desk worker at Universal Digital Innovations, a tech company that implements strategies to make people more addicted to their phones. He’s married and has one teenage son with his wife, Tami (Kate Mara), who recently beat cancer and passively (but also not so passively) mentions her ex-boyfriend as frequently as she can.

Craig gets stars in his eyes when he brings a misdelivered package to the door of his neighbor, Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd), a weatherman at the local TV station. Austin smokes cigarettes, plays in a band and knows sewer routes below the city (they live in generic Clovis, USA), all of which make him seem like the kind of awesome guy that every 12-year-old boy or stunted male adolescent would think is the most radical dude in town. (It helps that Rudd plays him as coolly and casually as he has any character since “Anchorman.”)

At first, Craig and Austin strike up a casual friendship, and the feeling of companionship gives Craig a sense of belonging he hasn’t felt in years. You can see his inner fire burning again. But their friendship is short lived, and when Austin tries to break things off with his new pal after a night gone awry, Craig refuses to let go, and like many a Tim Robinson character before him, he keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper until he can no longer see the surface above him.

“Friendship” is an exaggerated study of modern masculinity and the corroded, festering wound of male loneliness. Robinson is a hilarious time bomb of discomfort, and it’s a credit to writer-director Andrew DeYoung that he applies the brakes and doesn’t let the movie go pitch black in tone. That would be almost too easy to do, but it would also be a cop out, and he leaves a little light at the top of the hole that Robinson’s character digs for himself. It’s a friendly, compassionate gesture.

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The film identifies small moments of bizarro humor — Craig buys all his clothes from fictional clothing label Ocean View Dining, a psychedelic trip results in a monumentally mundane trip to a popular fast food establishment — that seem to come straight from the “I Think You Should Leave” playbook. That makes “Friendship” feel like an extension of the already existing Tim Robinson universe rather than an invite to newcomers to come on board. If you’re already seated, make yourself at home. Everyone else may want to wait for the next train to leave the station.

‘Friendship’

Grade: B

MPA rating: R (for language and some drug content)

Running time: 1:40

How to watch: Now in limited theatrical release; expands nationwide May 23

During an interview in late April with Dr. Phil, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reiterated his appeal to parents on vaccine safety: “We live in a democracy, and part of the responsibility of being a parent is to do your own research.”

The U.S. health secretary has also announced his own investigation, pledging to find an answer to the autism “epidemic” by September. It’s an ambitious goal. It’s also a realistic one but only if he already has an answer in mind.

To tell the story you want with statistics, you don’t have to lie or fabricate data — though that happens, too. More often, statistics are manipulated, figures massaged and results skewed through subtler means. Sometimes, it’s sloppiness or unconscious bias at work. Other times, the distortion is deliberate.

Whether the numbers attempt to tell a story about the economy, immigration, education or public health, we should empower ourselves to recognize the deception.

Vaccine data are far from immune to statistical trickery and its consequences.

Not only might individuals skip a vaccine and get unnecessarily sick, but the viral spread of misinformation can poke holes in the herd immunity needed to protect a population. One new, untampered statistic tells a chilling story: A meager 10% drop from today’s already dangerously low measles vaccination rates could spark an estimated 13-fold increase in annual cases.

Statistics wield incredible power. I developed a deep respect for them during my first career as a biostatistician. Today, as a journalist, I see numbers leveraged for good and for bad. I’ve seen them help the public and policymakers interpret complex data, detect patterns and make better decisions — evidenced in my reporting on data dashboards during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve also seen data withheld and statistics doctored for less-than-noble aims by chemical companies, the gun industry, police departments, the U.S. military, climate change deniers and vaccine skeptics, to name a few.

If left unaware of the deceit, the public can’t hold these groups accountable. And if citizens base their votes and other decisions — like whether to vaccinate their child — on distorted or false information, our democracy and our health lose again.

Fortunately, inoculation against misinformation is available. As Kennedy and his collaborators dig into vaccine and autism data, as measles cases mount, and as you “do your own research” or simply digest your news and social feeds, here are red flags to watch for.

The infamous paper that launched the vaccine-autism controversy was based on just 12 children.

Its author claimed that eight showed signs of developmental regression after receiving the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. The study was later retracted for scientific misconduct. But even without fraud, the sample size should raise alarm. Chance alone could explain such a small cluster of cases. Contrast that with rigorous studies — like one in Denmark with more than 650,000 participants — that consistently find no relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.

We should be just as wary when studies test a grab bag of possible outcomes.

Suppose researchers ask whether a vaccine causes heart disease, diabetes, any of a dozen types of cancer or any of five neurodevelopmental disorders. Even if the vaccine is in reality not affecting any of those 20 outcomes, when researchers try to study so many things all at once, statistical noise can mean one may erroneously appear “significant” just by chance. A more rigorous and targeted study would be far less likely to give that false positive.

Big numbers can impress. But quality counts.

In 2021, the Delphi-Facebook survey estimated near real-time COVID-19 vaccine uptake using weekly responses from around 250,000 people. On paper, the large sample size conveyed statistical confidence. But in practice, the data missed the mark. The sample was biased and unrepresentative of the overall population. By late May, the study had overestimated vaccine uptake by a wide margin — 70% compared with the true rate of 53%. That inflated figure may have lulled the public and policymakers into a false sense of security.

Beware, too, of the misuse of raw data.

Figures from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System appear in many papers and posts asserting vaccine harms. But this system was set up only as an early warning system. Anyone can submit a report on a suspected reaction. If a hint of a pattern emerges, then researchers will investigate to determine if the signal represents an actual risk. As its own website warns, the initial reports may be “incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable.” People may be apt to connect an event that occurs shortly after vaccination with the shot itself, for example, especially if they personally fear the safety of vaccines. To demonstrate the system’s fallibility, a doctor filed a report saying he turned into the Incredible Hulk after receiving a flu vaccine. The entry was initially accepted into the database.

One study circulating in the anti-vax community was led by David Geier, the same figure tapped by Kennedy to head his federal autism and vaccine investigation. The study found a connection between autism and vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal. But it hinges on a critical flaw: Cases of autism and the comparison group came from different time periods. Because vaccination rates changed dramatically over time, the design introduced a spurious association.

Among myriad ways to manufacture a desired conclusion is the strategic choice of time frame, analysis method or how the data are presented.

By plotting only convenient variables or truncating inconvenient values, for example, you can tell the story of your choosing. One COVID-era graph appeared to show that vaccines did not prevent deaths. The trick? It compared vaccine uptake with cumulative deaths— a number that can only rise over time, and so of course would broadly move in the same direction as the uptake rate of a desperately needed new vaccine that the public is clamoring for.

— Another sleight of hand to play down the size of a problem: Acknowledge a not-so-unusual number of outbreaks while ignoring how large or how deadly those outbreaks were, just as Kennedy did in February with measles.

A widely shared study recently referenced by Kennedy reports a link between vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorders among 9-year-olds in Florida. This one, too, is riddled with problems — namely, its failure to account for other factors that could explain the results. Children whose parents more regularly use the health care system, for example, are more likely to get both vaccinated and diagnosed. Healthcare engagement confounds the relationship. So, we can’t say the vaccine caused neurodevelopmental disorders any more than we could say that increased consumption of margarine resulted in a higher divorce rate in Maine. These are cases of correlation, not causation.

Something similar and even more interesting cropped up when people compared death rates by COVID-19 vaccination status. At first glance, an unexpected pattern emerged: The vaccinated were dying at about twice the rate of the unvaccinated. The catch here? The analysis didn’t account for age. Older people were more likely both to die and to get vaccinated. Once researchers broke the data down into age groups, a more accurate — and reverse — picture emerged: The unvaccinated were dying at higher rates.

Talk of an uptick in autism diagnoses often skips crucial context: expanded awareness, broader diagnostic criteria and financial incentives for diagnosis. There could well be a surge in the number of cases without any surge in the true incidence of the disorder.

Also, discussions motivated by a desire to explain autism or to oppose vaccines tend to omit the robust studies that have debunked any link between vaccines and autism — because those would be unhelpful to the agendas. Vaccine opponents may further ignore the glaring conflicts of interest behind many of the studies still pushing that autism narrative. Geier had a study retracted, in part, for not disclosing his involvement in vaccine-related litigation.

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Conflicts of interest surround Kennedy as well. He has spent years pushing anti-vaccine claims despite overwhelming evidence of vaccine safety and despite not being a doctor or a scientist. Now that he is in a position of authority over public health, he should at least be held to the same ethical standards as a scientist. Modern scientific practice calls for statisticians to specify their hypotheses and analysis plans before data are collected. This ensures transparency and objectivity, and reduces the risk of data dredging and misleading results. Statisticians follow where the data lead rather than mold or seek out data to fit a predetermined narrative.

Kennedy’s team appears to be following a different playbook. According to a former top vaccine official, Kennedy’s team requested a wish list of data seemingly to justify their autism theory: The team asked for cases of brain swelling and deaths caused by the measles vaccine. The official said there are no such cases. Someone who keeps hunting for evidence to back up his discredited theory is not conducting science.

Our stories should be malleable. Our statistics should not.

Lynne Peeples, a science writer, is the author of “The Inner Clock: Living in Sync With Our Circadian Rhythms.” She wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.