dr seuss would have understood

read across america is a year-round program of events, resources, and partnerships which was launched by the national education association in 1998 with the goal of encouraging kids and teens to read. in the beginning, read across america was just a one-day celebration. the NEA chose march 2 as the one day to celebrate reading because it is dr seuss's birthday. 

today is read across america 2021, and to celebrate, the organization dedicated to preserving dr seuss's legacy - dr seuss enterprises - announced that six of his books will no longer be publised. woo! happy b-day dr s!!

the reason these books won't be published is that they, according to dr seuss enterprises: "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong". two of the books on the list were ones that were a big part of my childhood: on beyond zebra and scrambled eggs super. they were read to me, i read them to my younger brothers, i wrote my name in the family copy, and still have those very editions with me. of course, both are missing their covers - WEIRD. don't know how that happened, but the pages are intact and bound, and if you were here, i could take you right to them on the shelf. this morning when i heard they were now VERBOTEN, i took myself right to them on the shelf and picked them up and looked through them and here's my analysis: they are nonsense. the words, that is. in keeping with most of dr seuss, the words are loosely held together by a bit of a plot which is simply a framework from which to hang non-sense words and ludicrous situations. there is nothing offensive about the words, unless you are a stickler that your words not be completely made up out of thin air and comprised of sing-songy rhymes. 

as far as plot goes... on beyond zebra is a twist on the alphabet book. in it a younger boy is learning his alphabet and an older boy shows him the wonders of 20 letters that come after Z. nonsense. scrambled eggs super is - i think? - the same boys. they travel to far flung and obscure places to collect unique eggs for their meal. non. sense. nonnnnnn. sensssssssse. 

the problem is the pictures. dr seuss drew these fantastical illustrations, and there are one or two per book that purport to portray humanness. most everything he draws are animalish beings of which most resemble muppets. the humans are rare, but as is his tendency, he aims for the exotic. unfortunately, what was deemed exotic in 1955, and apparently every day since then up to yesterday, is now racist. 

i know that perceptions change plus people get tired of being inaccurately portrayed plus people get woke. i know all that, and really, you know what? that's life and change and progress and that's all good. all good. what i wonder is why didn't they go about this in a different way. they could have taken the existing books out of print and issued new versions with new illustrations. i realize the words and the pictures together are THE THING - it's a creation the the good doctor created to go together. however, times change and it's time for new illustrations. the existing ones are really tired and horribly outdated. even putting they offensiveness aside, they have a sadness to them that screams 1950s suburbia.

there is a joy to imagining letters beyond Z. there is a whimsy to collecting eggs from odd places. childhood needs joy and whimsy, now more than ever. dr seuss would have understood.

nb255

i have lately been working to organize my home office, which is also now my office office, so i spend a good bit of time in there. for years it has also been a sort of catch-all room. like the junk drawer in the kitchen, it's actually filled with useful stuff, but everything has been all jumbled in there together. 

i get uncomfortable in a cluttered room. it makes me anxious. i have been coping these past months... er, this past year! by just staring at the people on the screen and doing my work, then leaving the room. there is just so long you can ignore all that tho. so, i got some paper trays for the paper and some decorative storage boxes for the keepsakes and have been generally sorting and straightening. 

one of the things i ran across is the toshiba netbook i used to pound out everything from bill payments to blog entries to old navy orders. hey, little buddy! it's a toshiba nb255, which apparently was introduced in 2010. a few years ago, windows was bogging it down so badly, i installed peppermint, a lightweight linux. i don't know why i gave it up... not exactly... i mean, i started using my laptop from work to pay the bills and this little buddy is pretty slow at loading web pages. but it seems to work fine for blogging - much better than typpie typing on my phone. 

welcome back, nb255. i kind of missed you! 

sweet ivy

13 march 2020, word came down from the CEO's office that we'd indefinitely be remote workers. 

14 march 2020, a saturday, i went to the office to grab some things i needed. almost as an afterthought, i took my plant, sweet ivy. i was convinced we'd be back in the office real soon, but you know, just in case...

i can't remember who gave me the sprig that i first stuck in a pot of dirt, and i can't even remember when that was. alls i know is sweet ivy has kept me company in several different offices across two different buildings. she's been on the top floor and in the basement and in between. she's had natural light and fake light and practically no light. she can go a long time without water, but is consistently thankful to get some. she has always lived in the same white plastic pot tucked into an admittedly somewhat pricey-for-the-situation "m hadley" cereal bowl. 

so i brought her home and she's been just fine until a week or 10 days ago. she sort of started to droop, so i watered her, but it didn't help. i put her outside when the weather allowed, but it didn't help. some of her leaves were turning a sickly yellow-brown, and she had developed a serious case of the droops.

so today i repotted her. the soil was pretty musty, and the pot and bowl were stained and looking sad. despite its supposed value, i threw away the bowl along with the plastic pot, and it was oddly freeing. i took the musty soil to the back of the yard in case it was diseased or something. 

sweet ivy shed the old dirt like taylor swift sheds boyfriends -- just dropped it off and didn't look back. ivy roots are naturally shallow, so there isn't much to her hidden parts. i tucked her into some clean, rich, store-bought soil in a freshly rinsed terra cotta pot, and gave her a small drink of water. 

time will tell. send your loving thoughts sweet ivy's way. 

longer

when i was a sophomore in high school, i received for christmas an alarm clock radio, among other things. on the first morning of school after christmas break, the alarm went off to dan fogelberg's "longer". it was the first time i had heard the song and my first thought was: welcome to the world of knowing about the music the rest of the world (i.e. my classmates) are listening to, ya giant dork. my next thought was: wow, excellent song. and so, longer than there've been fishes in the ocean, that song will have a special place in my heart.

that clock radio saw me thru the remaining years of high school and on through college. 8 o'clock classes were no match for my trusty alarm. i got a radio station sticker from somewhere and damned if i know where i got it or, at this point, what station it was. i stuck that sticker and a small red heart on him, and that was it, that was enough. he's cute but not fancy. 

he rolled on & on for many years after college, but time passed and his volume & tuner got glitchy and we'd wake to blaring or static or blaring static. a crew originally from honduras painted our house one summer and they asked if they could have him. ah, sure. what the heck. go, fly, and be free! 

i miss him, but i like to imagine he's raucously blaring static-infused tejana on demand, ad infinitum... longer than...

Longer by Dan Fogelberg. https://www.shazam.com/track/5586628/longer

in the zone

the bomb fell in the earthquake zone

and the water rose so fast

that all the people were alone

when jesus floated past. 

delicious tea and a sense of whimsy

we got really into tea a few years ago. really into. a kettle and tea bags and leaves and a box to store it and a teapot to brew it. i've not yet used the teapot altho i have used the hell outta the kettle. 

not really sure why i bought so many teas... the only one i really like is called constant comment. it's a type of spice tea made by the bigelow tea company. it comes in black and green, and used to be i could only find the green on trips to NYC but now it is of course available from amazon, the killer of all adventure and whimsy. 

bigelow is a family owned tea company, in business for 75 years, with constant comment being the flagship product. from the company's website:

"In 1945, inspired by an Early Colonial recipe, Ruth Campbell Bigelow disappeared into her New York brownstone kitchen to create a better cup of tea."

they sell all sorts of gifts off their website including a nicely engraved wooden tea chest and, for this one i'd take an adult M, the bigelow tea shirt.

delicious tea and a sense of whimsy. what's not to love?

pet peeve #389

it is entirely possible that i have mentioned this before; however... it's no less true for the repetition. 

it peeves the hell outta me when fiction authors give two main characters names beginning with the same letter. 

i mean, come ON. these are made up people with made up names. go ahead and splurge on ANOTHER LETTER. there are literally 26 to choose from. 

the book i am currently reading has two L named women. i have just started it, so i don't know enough about Libby to tell her from Lucy, or Lucy from Libby. 

did you see that? uh-huh, that's right - L startings and Y endings. 

OH MY GOD.