I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
November 06, 2011 - 11:30 a.m.
We set the clocks back last night so I got up an hour early which meant an extra hour of procrastinating this morning but I did it. I hope you appreciate the hard work it takes putting things off.
Yesterday I had an off the regular menu adventure for me. I went to the 90-Second Newbury Film Festival at the main branch of the New York Public Library. The Newbury Awards are given each year to the best children's book. These are 90-second films of winners and honorees made by children. It is the brainchild of James Kennedy. What was I doing there? James. I loved James's YA novel Order of the Oddfish. Of course if I had just read the book I wouldn't even know about the festival. James is also a friend and neighbor of Carey (she insinuates herself here a lot). Carey sent me as her representative. I would have liked to have gone with someone and I immediately thought of Erika but she couldn't make it. I should have thought of asking some of my friends with kids, I bet Warren & Tina and Carolann & Mark's kids would have loved it. And as they are my friends they probably would too. I'll remember that for next time.
It started at 3:00 but I had no idea where in the library it would be. The place is huge so I gave myself time to find it. When I went to the information desk I was told to go to the far corner and make a right. I did. That led to the microfilm library. That wasn't right. I backtracked. By far corner the information person meant the one just off of dead center. She must have been absent the day they taught the word far.
There were no signs there but I went in as it looked like the only place it could be and there was a theater there. It wasn't in that theater. It was down a flight of steps that had no signs that led to a second theater. Good thing someone walked by and asked, "are you looking for the Newbury films?"
I got down there about 25 minutes before show time and the place was more than half filled. Good thing I was early. I then started worrying that people would think I was a creepy old man. It was almost all children and parents. There were a few young women. I was the only man there by himself.
I took a seat next to a kid and settled in. The show started fairly promptly. It was hosted by James and Jon Scieszka the international ambassador of children's books or something like that. He was a fun and weird, that's what matters. James wore funky tux and Jon tails. Nobody told me this was going to be formal. James is fun and weird too. He wrote Odd Fish he's friends with Carey, of course he's fun and weird. He looked like Kenneth Brannagh in the Harry Potter movie, the one I think of as Harry Potter and the Annoying People.
They started off with A Wrinkle in Time made by James's niece. My favorites were the ones that realized the humor inherent in condensing an entire book into 90 seconds. There's a somewhat obscure but amazingly good one act play by Tom Stoppard called Dogg's Hamlet that includes 20-minute, 5-minute, and 2-minute versions of ,Hamlet that is hysterical. Some of these films captured that spirit.
Some of the others were charming, some were clever and some were a bit of an eye opener. You don't expect pupils at a Quaker school to come up with a graphic splatter film claymation but they did.
They mixed things up with some live performances and gameshows. One was deciding whether a particular line came from A Newbury Award winner or Snooki's book. It was not as easy as you might think.
It turned out that many of the children in the audience including most of the large groups were kids that submitted films. Some of the went on stage and answered questions.
After the show I waited to talk to James. I knew the natural pecking order. The kids came first, then the cute young women. Creepy old men come last.
I said, "Hi James, I'm Carey's friend Gordon."
"Gordon Nash, right?"
Facebook is scary. People always know my last name. How many orders of protection are out against me? He told me that Carey warned him that I was going to sing to him and not to believe what I said, What's funny is that I was prepared to tell him to not believe what Carey said about me. We talked for a bit then the guards told us we had to leave and were preparing the tear gas canisters so I thought I better take them seriously.
I loved being Carey's stalking proxy and shining in her reflected glory. I love when I send other people to stalk in my place when my friends are in distant places. When you stalk for me I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. That's the general idea. It's why I do it. It bonds me with James. It bonds me with Carey. It makes the world a little small and friendlier and more fun. It's a good thing.
Now here's the thing. I love kids stuff. I was a voracious reader as a kid. They've been giving the Newbury Awards since 1922. Know how many of them I have read? Two; The 1964 winner It's Like This Cat and the 1944 winner Johnny Tremain. I started the 1953 honoree (in addition to the medal winners some books get honorable mentions) Charlotte's Web. That was a big deal in first or second grade. I got to the first chapter, read it was all about a pig not a spider, felt cheated, and never read the rest of the book. Now that I've not only seen a 90 second film of it but also a dramatization of it I think I made the right decision. I think it was Avun Halliday one of the adults whose part was to say, "Charlotte dies!" and have a tantrum. It makes sense of course. James divides all the winners into three categories, animals, death, and animals and death.
So here's the thing, the kinds of books that win Newbury's were not and are not my kinds of books. The two I read I read for school. I liked Johnny Tremaine, it was about the American Revolution, an exotic time and place but didn't really affect me much. All I remember is that he scarred his hand with molten metal so he couldn't fire a gun and at the end they cut through the scar tissue without using any kind of anesthesia so he could. No coincidence that was written in the middle of WWII.
It's Like This Cat reinforced all my childhood prejudices about official children's books. It was banal. The only thing I got out of it was some New York geography. It was the first I heard of Gramercy Park and Inwood Park, or was that Fort Tryon? My life was as interesting as the protagonist's. Making a story about a kid never made it more interesting to me.
What kid's books do I remember reading? Before I could read I loved Little Black Sambo. Sure it's racist but the image of the tigers running around the tree so fast they turned to butter then Sambo making pancakes to put the butter was wonderful. Somebody needs to rewrite that without the offensive parts. I loved Alice in Wonderland and through the Looking Glass. Yes even as a little kid I had a thing for 19th century literature. I didn't get to The Wizard of Oz till I was 10 but I loved that too. Oh yes, I had The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, not the original. I'd have loved to have read more Dr. Seuss but for whatever reason we didn't have any in the house.
I read some of the books that other kids read, the kinds that taught us lessons. I remember Follow My Leader about a blind kid and his dog that was the hot book in the class and was not impressed. I liked the Mrs Pickle books that were still around when Carey was a kid 20 years later. But that's about it. So what did I read? I read science books. I had this great math book that I still have around. From before I could read I had dinosaur books. I read pretty much every one I could find. In fourth grade I found this amazing book simply called Science. It was huge and had everything in it and was the best book I ever read when I read it. I remember another great one called Atomic Energy with what I thought was a cool cover. It was all black with nothing on the cover but the title and a white Bohr model of the atom. I was a non-fiction reader. I read books about ancient civilizations. By the time I was in fourth and fifth grade I was pretty much through with children's books per se. I discovered Jules Verne and from him H.G. Wells and from then on I was hooked on Science Fiction. I remember buying "Astounding Taless from the school book club and my mother's friend Rita gave me the classic Giant Anthology of Science Fiction. When I was 11 Alison gave me the Hobbit All these books are still favorites of mine. I wonder if I still have Lost Cities and Vanished Civilizations which I later discovered was by the science fiction writer Robert Silverberg. It's still my reference point for archeology. I read my mother's college mythology textbook that I greatly preferred to Edith Hamilton's that I also owned. That's where I discovered Norse Mythology that I knew about before I read the comic Thor. I liked the comic because I liked the myths, not the other way around.
Looking back my I was an even weirder kid than I am an adult. In addition to Dr. Seuss I wish had a read Roald Dahl and Maurice Sendek. I've read them as an adult and they have the guerilla war on reality mentality. I'd have loved them at any age. If I had a kid now they'd get them and of course the Tiffany Aching books of Terry Pratchett.
After I left the library I went to the holiday market in Bryant Park. Yes it now starts after Halloween not Thanksgiving. The chocolate place that also is at the market by my school was there though not my friend that I buy from every year. I was going to go to the great Irish chocolate place across the street from the park for hot chocolate but the stand was selling their hot chocolate so I had that. It was divine. I then treated myself to Popeye's for dinner and headed home. Yes even in a long entry I have to tell you about the food.
I actually ate breakfast before I wrote today so I'm not going to eat now. I'm going to go out and get bagels instead and have one when I get back.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
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Horvendile November 06, 2011
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