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Ramblings by Rose Mary (column archive July-Aug 2007)
Please refer back to the
Ramblings by Rose Mary main page for columns published in other issues. Rose Mary can be contacted via e-mail at
rwclarke@mibor.net.
Travel Essential to Well-Rounded Life
Thank goodness! Bill found my wallet on the floor of the coat closet. Dunno how it got there. I must have been having a Senior moment.
Last week’s column about air travel’s being one of my visions of Hell struck a nerve. A niece wrote that during a flight she was on, a baby screamed so much that its frantic mother passed it around to fellow passengers, hoping that someone could quiet it down. A woman struggled with two kids while her husband sat two rows forward and pretended he didn’t know her. Mary Jo continued, "I’ve been to Hell on airplanes. Now I’m taking Bible Study." Niece Barbara wrote that if she were ever foolish enough to travel on an airplane again, she’d ask for a wheelchair. Her best story took place during landing in St. Louis shortly before dawn. A man stood up and started screaming, "We’re all going to die! Repent!".
A friend said, "Why do people rush so to get on the plane when they’re all going to arrive at the same time?" We’re amused by the people who hurry to get their bags out of the overhead bins and then stand in the aisles or hunched over under the bins for fifteen minutes until the door is opened. Our friend agrees, "They all have to wait at the same luggage carrousel." I know the reason: Like sheep we allow ourselves to be herded into airplanes’ cramped quarters, and like sheep we wait. Baa, baa, baa!
At least the toilets on our planes didn’t back up and send a stream of sewage down the aisle as happened recently. On the other hand, modern air travel permits many people to see a world that they’d never visit otherwise which is why we put up with Hellish journeys.
"The world is a book. He who does not travel reads only one page." Thomas Aquinas
We returned home from Paris to a nearly empty refrigerator and a depleted bank account, but, as Vivian Forst advised, it was worth every penny. Eighteen-year-old boys are not gushers who constantly emote about their pleasure. However, they were there long enough to get a sense of this wonderful place.
When he saw Notre-Dame de Paris Tony said, "It’s like a picture on a post card. I could look at it forever." "It’s so huge!" said Chris. That sort of experience enriches people’s lives in years to come. They did all the touristy things: climbed the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, bought souvenirs, rode on the Metro and the Batobus that stops at various points around the Seine, learned their way around and got to know the neighborhood around the Place Maubert. They saw a new side of Bill who is very expert about finding his way around Paris. They were also surprised to hear Grandma speak French without even having to think about it.
"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are dining on crumbs." Auntie Mame
Their diet is limited..They wouldn’t dream of eating a mushroom--"After all, it’s a fungus, Grandma, and cannot be good for you." Thus, the glories of French cuisine were wasted on them. They survived on the wonderful bread, pain au chocolat (rolls with a slab of chocolate) to which they became addicted, pizza, pasta, French fries, crepes, and an occasional steak. They liked fondu and raclette. Raclette is a dish where they bring a table-top heater in which you heat raclette cheese, boiled potatoes and ham. They became connaiseurs of the Croque Monsieur grilled ham and cheese sandwich. We got milk shakes at a Mcdonalds which is always packed with French people as well as tourists.
Paris was the same as ever: The art was still lovely; the lemon tarts at our favorite bakery in the Place Maubert were still so luscious that they make one shriek with delight; the long, slender, crusty baguettes were still the best bread on planet Earth; the open-air market still displayed everything from eighty kinds of cheese to silk scarves; the cleaning ladies at the Hotel Abbatial were still compulsive cleaners; and the French were as charming and nice to us as ever. We hope that this trip added some pages to the boys’ books of life and gave them a little taste of the marvelous banquet.
Treasured Freedoms Are Not Shared By All
July 4 is one of those dates that is freighted with memories that are imprinted on my internal being. Last night we watched the TV coverage of the festivities that took place on the enormous Mall. Two years ago we watched from the steps of the U.S. Capitol with grandsons Tony and Chris.
That morning we had joined the throng outside the National Archives where enactors portrayed parsonages such as Ben Franklin and read the Declaration of Independence. Then we waited for over an hour to view the Declaration and the Constitution. I suppose I’m growing sentimental, but there’s something about the Declaration, the Constitution and the Gettysburg address that brings tears to my eyes. They were the result of a new way of thinking, and, to me, they sum up America.
This year’s headliner was the incomparable Little Richard who pounded away at the piano, rolled his eyes and gave his signature, falsetto "w-o-o-o-h". A Broadway star sang "All That Jazz" and "Cabaret" Little Richard had the crowd on their feet, dancing, clapping, singing. He invited them to join him on the stage. There was a mixture of young and old and various nationalities All over the Mall, Mothers jiggled little babies; Dads jitterbugged with daughters; couples swayed back and forth together; teenagers hopped and pranced. . Most of the people wore shorts; some were barefoot. One man who was wearing a suit was on his feet with the rest of them, dancing. Then came the fireworks, and I could imagine the children exclaiming, "Ooh . . . ahh!"
For one evening, regardless of their political, social and ethnic differences, people came together at events all over the country to celebrate America. They were the living embodiment of Jefferson’s revolutionary ideal of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Those concepts still do not exist in much of the world. In Venezuela, the President recently shut down a popular TV company. Our friend, Vadel, was imprisoned and tortured in Mauritania. They threatened to jail an Iranian acquaintance and his wife because she was caught on the street, wearing makeup. A Congolese e-mail correspondent begged me to adopt one of her daughters so that she would have a chance at a decent life.
As I watched the celebration, I thought about what this country would become if extremists prevailed: The publishers of this newspaper wouldn’t be permitted to criticize officials. Women would be in shrouds rather than shorts and would have few rights. Men would have to wear beards. There would be no jazz, rock and roll or Broadway. The voices of people like Little Richard would be silenced. Simple and harmless pleasures that we take for granted would be forbidden.
On July 7 we attended the funeral of Bill’s brother. At the beginning of the service a small group of veterans performed a military ceremony. Afterwards I was touched by the playing of taps and the ceremonial folding and presentation of the flag to Bill’s sister-in-law.
Rick Clarke, his brothers and my family’s brothers-in-law all served in World War II. One wonders what the world might be like today if they and all the others like them had not prevailed, and Hitler had his Thousand Year Reich.
Our eldest grandson, Bill, couldn’t go to Washington with us because he was spending the summer in National Guard training. He said that he was joining because he wanted to serve his country. He’s going to be sent to Baghdad in a few months; and, no, Grandma is not happy about his going off to what she has considered from the beginning to be a premature and inadequately prepared undertaking, no matter how noble the hope of bringing liberty to an oppressed people.
Our news is full of silly trivia about the likes of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears. We seem as foolish as the Romans. One can only hope that one day "Taps: will not sound for America..
Strange Tales of Hopdoodles and Gnomons
Our trip to Paris provided much food for thought and ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. June 21, the Summer Solstice and the longest day of the year never had any special significance to me before, but henceforth I shall remember it.
My
computer’s screen saver is an image of Stonehenge, the fascinating stuff of myth
and mystery. Who built it? How? Why? There it has stood since about 3200 B.C. on
the Salisbury Plain of Wiltshire, England. Many insist that it was built by the
Druids of ancient Britain even though scientists attribute it to Neolithic
man. It was also part of the Arthurian
Legend. It started as a henge - a system of earthworks. Then two circles of huge
stones were added and placed so that the sun appears at a certain spot during
the equinoxes and the Summer Solstice. It’s estimated to have taken 600 people
to drag each one from a quarry 20 miles away.
I was disappointed when we visited it several years ago with Bill’s English cousin. I wanted to walk among the stones, touch them and muse about the past much as I do. When I visit the cemetery at my family’s Old Home Place. Alas, they were roped off and guarded. A bullhorn in a helicopter circling above was used to warn people to keep back.
Latter-day “Druids” want to take over the site, claiming it as their place of worship. “Latter-day Hopdoodles,” my mother would have said. Hopdoodle was her term for silly people.
The boys and I had read the DaVinci Code, so we visited the lovely church of St. Sulpice which is one of the book’s locales. Even though Dan Brown, the author, asserts that it’s merely a work of fiction, it intrigued the public and created as much controversy as if it were nonfiction. You can even take a guided tour of its Parisian locales. Its exciting plot is full of riddles and mysteries about real locations such as the Roselyn Chapel in Scotland which purportedly has an unopened underground chamber. At St. Sulpice, Brown has a nun murdered by a strange monk who is looking for a deadly secret and uses the church’s gnomon as a clue.
“Gnomon” means instrument of knowledge in Greek and sundial in Latin. The gnomon of St. Sulpice is a very precise instrument by which one can set one’s watch. A priest had it installed in 1727 by a famous clockmaker and astronomers from the Paris Observity because he wanted to broadcast the exact time of day to the parish by tolling bells.
Set between narrow strips of white marble, a brass meridian line runs across the floor in front of the communion rail and up an obelisk surmounted by a globe. High in an opposite window there’s an iron plaque with a small hole in it through which the sun’s rays enter and cast a circle at different points along the line, depending on the time of day and month of the year.
Needless to say, the parishioners of St. Sulpice were not pleased by having a murder occur in their church. Further, Brown wrote that his description of real places was accurate and described St. Sulpice’s gnomon as evidence that a pagan cult had exited on the site and that the gnomon was a vestige of pagan practices. Not so, according to a pamphlet that we bought. What is interesting, according to the pamphlet’s author - rather than Brown’s “absurd fantasies” - is the blending of science and religion and that a purely scientific instrument is in a church, “rather like placing a portrait of Darwin in a place of worship of Christian fundamentalism.”
Just as ancient peoples were interested in the passage of the sun, it was also important to Christians to establish the date of the Pascal (Spring) Equinox and Passover because of Easter. The Latin script on the obelisk’s pedestal reminds visitors of the brevity of their lives: “Behold thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and my age is nothing before thee” and other references about God’s setting the boundaries of time. In addition to zodiac symbols for the equinoxes and the solstice, there’s also a representation of Christ in the guise of the Pascal lamb.
Bill and I returned at noon on June 21, the time of the solstice. The gnomon works. More to come: we mingle with hopdoodles.
Nonsensible' Enjoy Sights, Sounds of Paris
"Youth will be served." -- Shakespeare
It's delight to tap into one’s own memories while vicariously sharing the experiences of others. We sent the boys on an overnight tour of Normandy that included what the French call La Merveille. It is, indeed, a marvel. Perched high on a small island that’s connected to the mainland by a causeway, its uses have ranged from the sacred to the profane: monastery, corsairs’ den, prison and is now the most frequently visited place in France.
I pictured the boys tromping up the steep lane where restauranteurs try to entice people into their establishments such as La Mere Poularde where the omelette was invited. I’m sure that when they reached the ramparts high above the English Channel they hoped that the tide--the fastest in the world--would roar in across the dangerous flats where there are patches of quick sand, just as I did when I was there as a young woman . . . so long ago . . .
Later I went there with Bill. We arrived at the Mount during a heavy rain. It was only 10:30, but we entered a restaurant. Bill said, "I’m chilled. I want a brandy." The owner came to our table. "Madame, Monsieur voudrait (would like) un cognac," I said. She informed me that it wasn’t normal to drink cognac in the morning.
"Mais le Monsieur pense qu’il est en train d’attraper un rhume a cause de la pluie." (But the mister thinks that he’s starting to get a cold because of the rain.) "Oh le pauvre Monsieur!" She brought the cognac and fawned over "the poor gentleman" throughout the meal. It was "le pauvre Monsieur" this and "le pauvre Monsieur" that while she barely deigned to refill my glass.
The boys were disappointed that their tour of the Normandy beaches was so short, but they did enjoy St. Malo, an ancient, walled town on the coast that had to be rebuilt after the bombing of World War II. Bill and I once spent two nights there and went there with Bill and Jean.
While the boys were away, we returned to St. Sulpice on the 21st to see if the sun would cast a circle on the gnomon at noon, the moment of the Summer Solstice. Later we walked a block from our hotel to the Place Maubert where a band was playing near to the sidewalk cafe. What fun to hear songs being sung in English with a French accent! The waiter said there’d be music all night because of a Summer Solstice Festival. Two other groups were playing near our hotel.
From the sublime to the ridiculous: That evening we strolled over to Notre Dame. What a sight! There was a huge traffic jam on the street that runs along the Seine; and I’ve never seen so many young people gathered in one spot. Thousands of them packed the plaza in front of Notre Dame and the nearby streets. I think that we were the oldest people there--sensible elders stayed home.
The "music" was the primal beat of jungle drums--boom,-boom, boomety-boom-boom, BOOM! Ah youth! They jerked like marionettes and leaped around. Girls giggled and batted their eyelashes while boys made wise cracks and flirted--all to the compelling drumbeat that wouldn’t let you stand still. The boys would have had a blast! I wondered what those who built Notre Dame would have thought.
Homeward bound, I said, "Tell me I’m not seventy years old." "You’re seventy." "But I don’t want to be seventy,, I wailed. "I want to be twenty and jump around all night with the hopdoodles." Instead we discovered a quiet, wonderful little restaurant where we had luscious, perfectly cooked filet mignon with peppercorn sauce. To each generation its pleasures! The\n we went back to the hotel and closed the windows to shut out the cacophony of three competing bands and the sound of youth.
Vacation Rush Leads to Kitchen Disaster
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! I’m in a terrible rush, trying to get ready for our annual houseboat vacation. It never fails that whenever we try to leave town, things go awry.
Two years ago, we went out for dinner and left a pot of turkey bones simmering on the stove. When we returned home the fire department had been in our house which reeked of smoke. We moved furniture into the tiled dining area so that Bill could shampoo the carpet, hoping to get rid of the odor. Instead, it made matters worse. Two days later, Jean and Bill arrived to spend the night before we left for Lake Cumberland. "I hate to say this," Jean said, "But your house smells like pot!"
Before coming in here to finish this column, I moved out the refrigerator and scrubbed the kitchen floor for the third time since my bare feet were still sticking to it and wiped down the cabinets in an effort to get rid of the smell of beer.
I was frantically dashing around yesterday afternoon, cleaning and answering business calls when I had a daft household disaster that equaled that of a few Christmases ago when I knocked a two-pound bag of confectioner’s sugar off the top of the fridge which still has white powder in its door screws.
Preparing to mop the kitchen floor, I set a carton of beer up on the bar that separates the Pullman-style kitchen from the family room. Somehow I managed to knock the beer off the bar with the mop handle. It crashed straight down onto the ceramic floor. Some of the bottles shattered, sending shards of glass flying all over the kitchen. (Needless to say, I was barefooted.) The caps flew off the others so that the entire kitchen was showered with beer--not one of my favorite aromas. A puddle of beer foamed and flowed across the floor and under the fridge.
I ran to the linen closet and grabbed bath towels to throw on the puddle. Then I laboriously swept up the glass and mopped the floor twice. In the midst of this for some reason I touched my hearing aid. Eek! Something didn’t feel right. I took it out of my ear. It had come open, and its innards were dangling! Panic stricken, I left an urgent message for John Payne, my hearing aid specialist.
Bill came in from shopping for groceries just as I was finishing. "I have an I-hate-to-tell-you," I said. This is our signal to prepare our spouse for bad news. "I’ve done something really bad." He said in that special tone of resignation that long-suffering spouses use, "What now?" "Well, I was mopping--and don’t ask me how I did it--somehow I managed to knock your beer off the bar with the mop, and the bottles broke!"
Stricken, he said, "My Michelob Lager?" . . . "Did all the bottles break?" he asked hopefully. "No, the caps just blew off the rest of them. They’ve still got beer in them." "You said that glass went everywhere. Do you suppose it got in those bottles?" "I don’t know. Maybe you could pour the beer through our finest strainer." "ROSE MARY!" In the end I promised him that I’d buy him some more beer which means a trip to the grocery that I hadn’t planned. At least it wasn’t the expensive bottle of champagne that my colleagues gave me for m birthday that broke.
I’m feeling very sorry for myself because cleaning the kitchen, buying beer and visiting the hearing aid specialist are taking time that I planned to use for myself. I’ve been so good, worked so hard that I deserve an indulgence--something just for my own pleasure. I’ve been getting up at 4:00 AM to try to get everything done so that I would have time to read new Harry Potter book that Bill went out and bought for me at midnight last week.
Never mind--in a few days I’ll be living a life of luxury on the boat where the most strenuous thing I do is help with the cooking, munch cookies, raise my glass, lie in the sun, float around on a raft, hoist myself out of the lake onto the ladder, and change for dinner which consists of putting on a different swim suit..
Sigh . . . Bill has just disgustedly informed me that he has mopped the kitchen again as his feet were sticking to the floor.
The True Memoirs of a Sometime Sybarite
Tuesday on "The Good Ship Lollipop"--Memoirs of a sometime Sybarite
I’m having a difficult time writing out on the front deck of the houseboat. I’m used to rising before Bill gets up and writing back in our office where there’s little to distract me other than looking at the sunrise--unless I want to straighten the desk, and I rather write than do that.
Here I stop to watch the play of sunlight on the lake and the ducks that come by to mooch. The water’s hypnotic lap-lap seeps into my mind, and my thoughts dwindle away. Soon other early risers will come out, and I’ll close my laptop. Time with these friends is golden. Also, writing is a solitary process.
The biggest problem is that I’ve been transformed during the past week. I have become a Sybarite, a lover of ease and pleasure. We Sybarites don’t like schedules, deadlines, work and thinking.
My transformation started last week when we attended a Jimmy Buffet concert with some of the house boaters. A Buffet concert is a participatory, sybaritic experience. Both men and women wear coconut bras and grass skirts or Hawaiian shirts and crazy hats. Smoke from the grills of tailgate parties rises above the parking lot. Some vans are ornamented with palm trees. I’ve never seen so many stretch limos in one place. Buffet’s carefree songs were a good prelude to the houseboat cruise.
One of our friends said, "Rose Mary! Is that your laptop I see? Don’t tell me that you’re working on the houseboat!" "I have to write a column." "Couldn’t they just run an old one?" The editors wouldn’t object. For example, I could use the column about our annual summertime visit to Aunt Laura’s Michigantown home for Sunday dinner followed by a pilgrimage to the Old Home Place.
That’s not the point. To me, this isn’t a duty. Since Eric Cox first asked me to write for The Banner nine years ago, I’ve written an essay 52 weeks a year during good times and bad and regardless of vacations, Christmases, illnesses and the deaths of loved ones. Daily writing has become part of the very warp and woof of my being. It is every bit as much of a compulsion as my reading: I need to write, must write, cannot stop writing. A day doesn’t start well for me until I’ve written something.
Jana showed me an article "Inside the Writer’s Mind" in Oprah’s O magazine. O isn’t a typical "women’s" magazine. It is literate and contains interesting articles. A long piece by novelist Walter Mosely shows how to write within a year that book that many of us have within us. Were I an English teacher, I’d certainly get that issue of O.
You absolutely must write even a few words--or edit what you’ve written or jot down ideas-- seven days a week. I know that I’m not a Hemingway, Conroy, Twain or Capote. However, I do try to write to a high standard. I know that Mosely is right when he says that writing is primarily an unconscious activity where the connections, metaphors and experiences that you call up while writing come from a place deep inside you. What you write consciously comes from being connected to your internal being, and you must make that connection every day..
Henry David Thoreau wrote that we should live consciously because life is so precious. My writing and the subconscious process that lies beneath it make me more aware of my existence and help me explore not just the breath of living but, also, the depth of it.
Meanwhile, come with me up to the top deck. I slather myself with coconut-scented, sun-warmed oil. I try to read Harry Potter, but end up lying supine while the boat’s gentle rocking and the sun’s heat tempered by gentle breezes have their way with me and set my mind as free as a little boat to wander an ocean of half-formed thoughts and dreams. Ah! Life just doesn’t get any better than this! Fellow Sybarite Jana said as we prepared to leave, "This is the first time I’ve worn anything but pajamas or a bathing suit since we came on board. Can you beat that?"
Saturday: The bubble has burst, and I’m back in my everyday persona. I don’t suppose that I’d want to be a full-time Sybarite, but it sure was fun while it lasted.
Travel Is One Aspect of Writer's Journey
I love writing in our rich language.. It is an individual act that is uniquely mine--something that I alone create.. It causes me tap into my internal being and see that the events of my life are interconnected like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that come together to form the whole.
People have asked how the twins and we got along in Paris and if it’s possible for septuagenarians and eighteen-year-old boys to share a room amicably for ten days. They can if they’re grandparents and grandkids because grandparents are the fun patrol. We’re not responsible for their upbringing, success in school, nutrition or the neatness of their rooms even though we may cluck around about it.
We weren’t worried as we’ve been traveling with them since they were little boys. In my mind’s eye I can see Bill at King’s Island with a twin on each side, clinging to his index fingers. We learned to give them what they liked to eat rather than what we wanted them to eat--forget things like peas, lettuce and broccoli! In Paris they were a blessing as they hauled my rollator up and down steps.
One of the smartest things that I did when they were little was to buy a bingo game and lots of cheap prizes to keep them busy. Later, they learned to make change when we played Monopoly. These days they’re vicious canasta players. The only time that they pout is when Bill and I beat them.
Also, however much grandparents may dote, they put up with little nonsense such as disobedience, sulking, back-talk and whining. Our grandboys learned when they were small that we mean business. We usually have to tell them to do a thing only once. Perhaps our age confers a built-in respect. On the other hand, we love them unconditionally and try to respect their reticences, quiet moods and opinions.
The curly-headed rascals who once threw a fifty-pound bag of birdseed on brother Bill are young men with beards now. They’re probably too young to understand that we wanted to have a last fling with them and expand their horizons by taking them abroad. As it should be, we shall be left behind as they embark on the next stage of their journey through life and enter realms where we cannot follow. It’s a wrench when the young leave the nest. I hear of "helicopter" parents who are in daily contact with their college-aged children. I say leave them alone. Set them free to learn and grow, take responsibility for themselves and find their own paths.
Attending their commencement carried me back to 1955 when L. E. Rogers presided in the old gym. I was sad to see this ending, but excited about going to college. I thought that it was a miracle that I was going to college because we had no money. Looking back, I see how cocky and naive I was. I sort of expected the means to go to college to fall into my hands like mana from Heaven. I had a state scholarship that paid for my books, $100 from Tri Kappa, and my mother eked out $15 a week from the meager salary she made at the greenhouse and from babysitting. I should have kissed her feet for the dire sacrifices that she made. Later Mr.. Rogers arranged a Kiwanis loan for me. Also, at one point I worked at three jobs.
And now Tony and Chris are undergoing the same rite of passage as they head for engineering schools--Tony to Rose Hulman, Chris to Purdue. Brother Bill is getting married and then is due to be shipped to Iraq.
Just as they’re moving into a new phase, so are Bill and I. A trip to Italy with Vicki this fall may be our last trip to Europe unless there’s a drastic change in the exchange rate. I hate the thought of "last" things--that is what happens when one grows old--the last car, last home, last trip . . .
Although I feel the winds of the winter of my life fast approaching, I still believe in Auntie Mame’s credo "Live!", and I intend to do so as well and as long as I can. I must make better use of my resources and each precious, fleeting day. Life is full of good things! My companionable spouse, friends, books, music, writing, perhaps a purring kitty snoozing on my lap once our travels are over, and my memories will keep me warm when winter comes. My e-mail address is rwclarke@mibor.net.
Potter Books Have Much to Offer Readers
Some say that Americans are illiterates who read only sports magazines and trashy romances, but I believe that many Americans crave imaginative, well-crafted writing. The mind-boggling success of Jeanette Rowing’s Harry Potter proves my point.
I read the first book in 1998, loved it and gave it to the grandboys who were aboudyeleven years old. A week later, I called. "How do you like Harry Potter?" "Well, Grandma, we haven’t started it because we’re not all that interested in it." "Put your mother on the phone." "Vicki, I’d like you to read a chapter a day to the boys." One of the philosophers said that the greatest gift a mother can give her children is to read to them. I know that this is true.
One chapter was enough. They took turns reading it themselves. They set an alarm clock, and when one boy’s time was up the book was snatched away even if he were in the middle of a sentence. That book taught them that they loved to read. Soon they were reading at an adult level.
I clucked a little at their reading the likes of Stephen King and Ann Rice at such a young age, but the main thing was that they became proficient readers. Then, too, I remembered that my parents forbade me to read The Scandalous Mrs. Blackford that my brother had loaned them, and they kept it hiidden.
Naturally, I searched until I found it. Whenever they’d leave, I’d avidly read until I’d hear them arriving home .Ah, forbidden fruit is so sweet! Such escapades turned me into a speed reader. Alas, one day the book was gone from its hiding place. They’d returned it to Earl, and I never did find out how it ended! It didn’t seem to have hurt me as my life has been about as far from scandalous as you can get. Further, the boys haven’t become monsters of depravity or practitioners of black magic.
They went to the store at midnight to buy the final volume of Harry Potter and read it in one sitting. One of my nine-year old great nephews could hardly wait to get it. Think of it: a nine-year-old reading a book that’s over seven hundred pages long! It’s purportedly a children’s book, but most children’s books don’t have such long sentences and words like "doppleganger."
One of he nifty--the grandboys would say "cool"--things about the series is that they’ve grown up along with Harry. They’re eighteen, and Harry turns seventeen in the last book. He underwent changes as he grew older, including the moodiness of adolescence and worrying about the opposite sex.
The houseboat was rather quiet this year because three of us were racing through the book so that we could discuss it with those who had already read it. Then one of the husbands started reading it. "This boat has turned into a darned library!" exclaimed one of the fellows.
Each suspense-filled chapter leads the reader on to the next so that one reads faster . . . faster . . . Ooh what deliciously evil characters such as Dolores Umbridge who tries to camouflage her wickedness by wearing pink and having pictures of cute kittens on her office walls! She makes the wicked witch of the East in the Wizard of Oz look angelic by contrast. Oh the horrors of giant spiders and Nagini, a terrifying snake who is fed one of the professors for dinner by Him Who Is Not Named! Oh the shivery thrills of following Harry and his friends into dark and mysterious places during his struggle against the supremely evil Voldmort--and what a wonderful name that is as "mort" means "dead" in French.
The books are an enchanting mixture of good and evil, light and dark, fun and fear, and tales of derring-do! Each reader has favorite characters, incidents and magical items. I love the magical red train that takes the kids to Hogwarts and the splendor of the dining hall at Hogwarts School for Sorcerers that’s lit by candles suspended in air and where the most delectable food magically appears. Then there’s Hermione’s purse that expands to hold books, a tent, a rug, a battered easy chair, clothing and a conglomeration of items and then shrinks so that it can carried in a pocket when Harry, Ron Weasley and she go on their last quest. What an imagination Rowings has!
More to come. Alas, some people are not wild about Harry. My e-mail is rwclarke@miibor.net.
'Children's' Books Have Message for All
When I was eight years old, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz turned me into a " real" reader as old Granny called us compulsive readers. It had everything needed to set a kid’s imagination on fire.
As others have written, I’m just wild about Harry--Potter--that is! The Potter books follow a long tradition of story-telling and have many elements in common with the Oz books, Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings and C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. There have both black and white magic, unusual characters and creatures, dangerous quests, tales of derring-do and grand adventures where the weak triumph over the powerful.
Some believe that the books are anti-religious or encourage belief in magic. In a Time essay, Lev Grossman slammed Rowling's’ books as godless. He praisied Lewis’s religiosity in the Narnia books which, indeed, Lewis intended to be "Christian" stories. He points out Tolkien’s ardent Catholicism as making Tolkien's books superior to Rowling's. What twaddle! I’ve read The Lord of the Rings many times, and see nothing especially religious about it.
"Eek!" other cry. "Ghosts and ghouls, witches and wizards, wars and horrible beasts! Oh, how traumatized the little children will be."
"BOO!"
Good grief, Charlie Brown! What is the world a-coming to that we take every little thing so seriously? Children are wiser than we give them credit for. I knew that there wasn’t really a witch who was fattening up Hansel and Gretel before eating them, magical ruby slippers or the flying machine made of two sofas lashed together and sprinkled with magic dust in the Oz books.. Vicki knew that Lewis’s magical wardrobe through which the children passed into the land of Narnia and the cruel Snow Queen didn’t exist any more than Tolkien’s wizards, orcs and dragons. We knew the difference between reality and fiction, and so do today’s kids.
Unlike children, some fuzzy-minded, unimaginative adults confuse fiction with fact and go overboard about the Potter books as was done with the DaVinci Code. Others, including a smart-alec, Indianapolis radio personality trivialize them and poke fun at those who read them. I wonder if they’re literate enough to read a seven-hundred page book as did my eight-year-old grandnephew Aaron. There, take that! Another fellow who announced that he was going to reveal the ending on his radio show decided that this would be unwise after someone threatened to shoot him. Don’t mess with devoted "Potterers"!
The books build up to a very serious message in the final volume. If I had children whom I wished to be aware of racial, ethnic or religious prejudice and stand up and fight against it, I’d want them to read these books.
The world that Rowlings created is double-sided. There’s the ordinary, visible world inhabited by people like you and me who are called "Muggles" by the wizards who inhabit an invisible, magical world. At best, Muggles are thought to be stupid. At worst, they’re considered an inferior race by Valdmort and his followers who call them "Mudbloods."
Valdmort sets out to exterminate the Muggles. Wizzards with Muggle blood are forced to register with the government and may be sent to the dread prison Azkaban. The wife of a minor employee of the Ministry of Magic is put on trial with the awful Dolores Umbrage as the presiding judge. Tearfully, the poor woman tries to show that her Muggle ancestry is less important than her wizard bloodline. Some Muggles flee to places like Australia. The quest of Harry and friends is to slay Valdmort.
Does anything seem familiar?
Social Studies teacher Sherry, one of the houseboaters, asked me, "Rose Mary, what do you see in this last book?" "The Holocaust." I said. "Right on!" she replied.