If someone runs into me on the street (unlikely) and says, "How about this weather?" I resolve to reply "I am forbidden by a personal protocol from talking about that subject!" With this kind of chill people keep off the streets most of the time, anyway, so I doubt I'll be running into anyone much. It's a sort of ghost town out there and it's been that way for months.
So do not ask, please. Soon it will be a new season and I will be happy to talk about it. Catch me then. Thanks!
First off, I would think that these are ideal books for the intelligent kid who needs not to be talked down to, is intensely curious and loves a good yarn. That's what she/he will surely get with both The Extraordinary Love Story of Aye Aye and Fedor 46 pp, paper, Ruby Flower Publishing, and How Aye Aye Met Roibeard the Giraffe 41 pp., paper, Ruby Flower Publishing.
Ms. Ordonez has a doctorate in Animal Biology. That and her creative, insightful, artistic nature gives these two books a special tone. Ana wrote the stories and also did all the illustrations, which have a refreshingly naive, youthful quality that kids should identify with. I did, too.
It's all about Aye Aye, an endangered species of lemur, and her adventures. In volume one she meets and falls in love with Fedor, a rare white lion, when she wanders unwittingly into a zoo. She ultimately rescues the zoo inmates from their captivity after a powerful storm disturbs the equilibrium, knocking off roofs and scattering the human zookeepers. All the animals go to live in the Musical Forest, a hip place where you can get some jams going, be cool natural-habitat style, etc. (sounds good to me).
In the second volume Aye Aye gets to know Roibeard, a brilliant but maladjusted giraffe who has wings and can fly. Aye Aye is restless and uninspired but Roibeard is worse off--he cannot connect with people and has isolated himself, disgruntled with life. In the end Roibeard learns the virtue of giving and Aye Aye finds in turn fulfillment in helping Roibeard discover his way.
These are books with a didactic message--kids learn the value of freedom, of directedness, selfless concern for others, and love, and also begin to appreciate the collective value of each animal on this earth and the need to preserve their habitats. Ana has a warm way and a quirky humor kids will appreciate, as well as adults. The volumes are only the first two in a projected series. They are available in Spanish and French as well. Go to Amazon for info.
When somebody says, "you are in for a treat!" you tend to perk up. Life sheds its grey filter and the full color of existence appears momentarily, anyway, as sheer potential.
We grow up with more-or-less periodic cycles where treats are given out and time is punctuated. It can differ depending on your culture and persuasion. In the world I occupied there was summer vacation, Halloween, Thanksgiving, the Happy Holidays for Christians and Jews, and, more regularly, the weekends, Friday night and Saturday morning being especially looked forward to.
Right now my main form of amusement is to devilishly go where I shouldn't, splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions. I can do this here, though quite obviously it is not something for which I am paid, nor is it something I am paid for.
That is my treat right now. And those fully periodized treat times of childhood mostly have gone. As you get older you may find that your expectations of continuity, of a life that is "fun," where you break the cycle of what adults did--like they went to work no matter how bad the weather, worked most of the summer, (I wasn't going to live like that, no!)--it turns out to be stupid stuff that existed in your young fantasy future, and all that just didn't follow.
But there are compensations. What? Elvis? No, not Elvis. Anyway those compensations are something YOU have to create, mostly. Good luck with it.
If on some occasion you see me pass by
And you know me
Say hi.
We don't know how many more winter snows, summer rain
squalls,
Holiday cheers,
Or traversing halls,
We might see again.
For we are finite creatures
With some end to forever sogg the crispness
of autumn leaf with others
Piled neatly or no,
And we aren't sure where we will go
When our passings by stop
Dead.
Another year coming and I wish all the best. Hurricane Sandy and another storm locked me out of all internet and phone connections for almost three weeks last quarter and I realized how much I take the net for granted now.
I've decided for my new yr resolution to try and post more on this page. All I have to say right now is that I am glad it's Friday, sunny, that I am alive and well, and that there is some sort of hope that things will be better this time next year.
Now I must also tell you that as a writer, I could use some work!@! Happy daze.
When I was a young fellow and got my first transistor radio, anybody with a set who was my age in the NY Metro area (and many who were older) listened to WABC-AM. It had lots of transmission clout so that even a cheap transistor radio in a valley like where we lived could pick up the signal clearly. And of course the station played top-20 hits then, over and over and over. But every half-hour there was five minutes of news and, in the late afternoon, there were other things, like Howard Cosell's sports show.
Back then Cassius Clay was making his first bid for the Heavyweight Championship and Cosell covered Clay's outspoken/poetic persona heavily during his show. I was fascinated with the attitude of the man, and how he expressed it. Of course I was one of many who began following the fighter, his pronouncements, his incredible moves, his conversion to Islam and renaming as Mohammad Ali, his stand against racism and the Vietnam War, imprisonment, release and his miraculous regaining of the championship title again and again before finally going down to defeat.
Ali was larger than life and a huge part of American culture. As a boomer I experienced Ali first-hand. Watching the clips of his fights now reaffirms that he was an amazing boxer, probably the greatest in modern times. We may never see his likes again.
All this is portrayed rather well in the 60 minute documentary DVD Ali: The Man, The Moves, The Mouth (MVD Visual 5396D). It has extensive documentary footage of his press conferences, interviews, fight highlights and a reasonably inclusive narrative spoken by Bert Sugar. Since I get DVDs for review I was sent this one and I am glad to have watched it. It recaptures a time from the vantage point of an important figure and does it informatively and entertainingly.
I once had a friend who one night told me she watched TV sometimes at night "because there was nobody to talk to and it was a voice." This was before i phones, the internet, cyberspace, video conferencing and all the things we have now.
And now we have all these things, so now we should never feel lonely, right? I don't know about you, but it seems to me there are less real voices in one's life than ever, so that that feeling if anything has increased, to my way of thinking. And this cyberspace with all its social media and endless variations on simulated sociality, to tell you the truth, sometimes seems a lot worse than the reality of being truly alone like in the days when there were four walls and either there were people or there weren't and that was it. Or some toothpaste jingle on the radio or TV to console you. There never was an illusion that it was going to work. A Saturday night spent alone was just that and no bones about it.
But of course the new generations coming up are so used to the virtual that they sometimes seem like face-to-face seems unreal to them. At least that's the impression I got sometimes when I was selling musical instruments and met up with a younger person.
So what does it all mean? We are as a society a conglomeration of people who are more and more isolated in a group sense, are less likely to congregate in groups than ever before, am I right? It's even seen, after 9-11, as a danger. Get a group together--well, you sure better search them, just in case.
I don't like the way things feel anymore, that lack of togetherness. I can measure the lack, at least in my life, and I find it unpleasant. But then I like people, generally speaking. And I have also spent an awful lot of time in the last few years in front of a computer as an occupation.
Have you noticed this sort of thing? Or is it just my life that has changed?
