virtues & values: the children’s book

When we were kids, we had a few books from a series that had a great influence on us. They helped steer our imagintion and moral compass in the way that good children's books really should. However, they did not effect such a great influence that we remembered their series title.

For most of our book shopping life, we have been looking for a series called "The Virtue of…" They were tall, thin, white books that each focused on a single person from history: Lincoln. Louis Pasteaur, Will Rogers, Helen Keller, Christopher Columbus, etc. All thes, we had. And each story told the historical person's life through the lense of a virtue they were perhaps known for or that guided their lives.

We knew we wanted these books for our children. And we wanted them for ourselves, to relive our younger days and look at the old footprints by which we once measured our own feet. In every used and new bookstore we entered, we asked after this series. And, to a bookseller, each said, "Wow, that sounds like a great series, but I have never heard of it." We've been seriously buying books for the better part of 15 years now, and it's been a fruitless search.

But you, dear kind reader that you are, knew this tale would have a happy ending. And so this one does. Behold! They are not "The Virtue of…", but "The Value of…" The series itself is called ValueTales. How happy we were to find a "shrine" for ValueTales right here on our very own Internets. We came across their true name through ebay, and there are many for sale on ebay, and some for sale on amazon. But the most we found for sale are through abebooks. And this makes us so very very happy. Alas, they are out of print, but just knowing they are alive and well (and exist! they exist!) on the used books scene is good enough for now.

year of the fire dog

Well folks, it’s Chinese New Year time (although the kindly woman at the local Chinese restaurant assures us it’s New Year for Asian countries in general), and that means the changing of the animal. 2005, the year of the Wood Rooster, was not great to us, but it was a building year. Now, let’s set that cock on fire. I mean, well….

We love that not only do the years have animals, but that they have elements as well. For instance, 2006 is the year of the Fire Dog, which means its a mix of fire (duh) burning on top of the earth (the “dog” part of it).

The last time we had a Fire and Earth Dog year was 1946 at the end of World War Two, the first year of peace and recovery. The United Nations General Assembly had its first meeting in London in 1946 and elected its Secretary General. The verdicts of the Nuremberg Trials were first handed down and many Nazi war criminals condemned to death. Leaders of many world governments stepped down as the war ended and new leaders took their place – France, Argentina, Italy, Albania, Hungary, Japan, Sarawak and Czechoslovakia all experienced changes in leadership and status.

’46 was a good year. And we hope it’s a good one for all of us, as well as each of us:

• Aries
• Taurus
• Gemini
• Cancer
• Leo
• Virgo
• Libra
• Scorpio
• Sagitarius
• Capricorn
• Aquarius
• Pisces
  

Or go by the month with Master Rao:

The stars will help you to multiply contacts, to meet people who’re likely to be interested in your ideas or projects.

Marvelous understanding with the one whom you love or whom you’re going to meet this time

You’ll be inclined to indulge in food excesses, and your stomach is well likely to have to pay for it

It’ll be the moment to start making a strict saving program and to manage your budget strictly; otherwise, you’ll let yourself go to crazy spending and will soon find yourself in a blind alley.

children of the corn maze

Last night on American Idol (yes, you will now endure the next few months with periodic updates. Deal with it), there was a set of sisters from Spring Grove, IL. They boasted that they had the world’s largest corn maze in their town (Google concurs). And, wouldn’t you know it, it is a dedication to the 1985 world chamption Chicago Bears. (“It was 20 years ago today….”)

Man, we wanted to get a good view of that one. Sadly, though, the maze was not up (corn not in season, maybe?) when Google Maps flew over and took its pictures. The official address of the maze is 9407 Richardson Road. It’s all brown. So we just have to take the Richardson people’s word for it (more info). It appears that they change around their maze every year, which is pretty neat.

It turns out that there are a lot of corn mazes in the United States. The most well known of the Victorian garden mazes is probably the one from The Shining (though it doesn’t exist in America). No, in America, we don’t do just shrubbery mazes, we like corn mazes. Like, a lot. There are 2 in Texas, and we don’t even hardly grow corn!

Anyway, the sisters from Spring Grove were good singers, and they made it “to Hollywood”.

what you think and what you know

We really like the Edge Foundation. They and the GBN (Global Business Network). Almost anyone who is affiliated with these two amazing orgs, and there is frequent cross-over which is no surprise, I will enjoy reading or listening to.

Every year, the Edge Foundation asks 1 big question of its members. They are usually big, open-ended questions to get you thinking. This year, it’s “What is your dangerous idea.” Go ahead and click them down the side. Andy Clark, as usual, pulls in one of our favorites (and it’s remarkably akin to Malcom Galdwell’s recent research in blink. While you might think Clark is cribbing, keep in mind he’s been doing this work for years).

And while we have GBN on the mind, let’s check in with one of our favorite features on the web, the GBN Book Club. The freebie web version is always a few months behind the paid-member one, but we are totally cool with that. Nov 2005 is about Terror. GBN has thrown up a number of books in the past couple years about Terror and trying to understand it. Mostly, they talk about how Terror organizations work, cells of chaos, disruptions, communications networks. All interesting stuff. But what we want to know about Terror is that (and we will put this as politic as possible) given that most Terror organizations in the world are backed by a radical Muslim ideology, A) what is the ultimate end-goal of this form of Terror, B) why does it cling to Islam, and C) why does Islam (radical or not) prop up such a view? While we continue to gain insight into how people communicate to perform Terror acts, we know little as to the how or why.

For instance, we saw last night on the news a story about the Iranian president speaking out against the Holocaust again. A “childhood friend” was interviewed who said he “didn’t really believe that”, but what the hell do they think happened? The president’s podium was decorated with a sign which read, “A world without Zionism.” We can understand an Arab hatred of Jewish-occupied Israel; we get it. It’s about land, okay. But there is a deeper hatred there, which lies seething. The news story concluded with the Iranian president talking about moving forward with a nuclear weapons plan. And then we remembered a Jerusalem Post article we saw yesterday that the US might be planning an attack on Iran.

On another note, one of the perils of turning a new year is the inevitable lists and comparrisons with previous years (although ESPN’s year-end fawning over USC being the “best team ever” sure didn’t mean much last night–what happens to “SC wins” shirts?). Most of these lists we dread. Although the BBC’s list of 100 things we didn’t know last year, with facts like “A single ‘mother’ spud from southern Peru gave rise to all the varieties of potato eaten today,” is fun. And first cousin to the lists are the year in pictures. Here’s 2005 by MSNBC and Time magazine.

BigSleep666 recently told us about Learning to Love you More, a series of artistic “assignments”. We tend to enjoy these sorts of generative experiments. Chalk it up to early OuLiPo influence in our formative years.

literary history 2 – living the history

We took a major break last year. It’s the first paid vacation we have had in 5 years (at least). It was a scant 4 and a half days from work, but with national holidays and weekends, we managed to parlay it into 11 days off. In that time, we had to say an official goodbye to our original site, which fills us with deep sorrow. We traveled some (nothing of note, really), sent out a lot of cards, set up a new computer (a really good deal on an old Apple G3 from Discount Electronics), set up the HD of the HDTV (just in time for the Rose Bowl–Hook ’em Horns!), and appeared in 2 First Night Austin pieces, including one where we managed to draw the ire and curses of standersby during a family friendly show. And last in the wrap up news, we finished our last book of 2005, Bee Season.

We confess that we picked up Bee Season originally when we saw a preview of the movie a few months back, mostly likely in front of March of the Penguins or Murderball. It was something that the father figure, played by Richard Gere, says in the preview that caught our attention. It appears that he is driving in a car, and he talks about how it is our job in the world to help complete creation. This, if you know, is the Jewish doctrine of Tikkun Olam, a strange thing to hear from the mouth of that quirky Buddhist. Anyway, we never actually ended up seeing the movie, but we finished the book while traveling. Was it good? Is it worth recommending? We wish there was another chapter, actually, but over all, it was good. We suppose our desire is a desire to spend more time in Myla Goldberg’s world.

A great book we came across this break is the first volume in a 7-volume set called My People’s Prayerbook. This excellent series describes the origin, history, and meanings of the Siddur, as well as its varieties and editions. (Though we link to amazon.com for the book, we recommend, as always, using addall.com for finding the best overall prices on your books.) Also, on the topic of prayer, we were fortunate enough to find a CD of Shlomo Carlebach music for Shabbat services. Earlier last year, we met his widow and traveled with her, but that is another story.

Thanks to Jason Kotke and his Best of ’05 links, we have come across 2 great interviews of people we greatly admire. The first is Chip Kidd. While not an interview of him, it is an interview by him of Milton Glaser, and that is good enough for us. The second is an interview of Errol Morris, whom we have loved since we caught Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control at the Dobie.

literary history

While looking for books from our past, we came across a great guide on the Google Answers pages. Someone asked for recommendations for a young child and got back a world of information. Here is the great answer, and it’s broken down by age group. Scroll down past the disclosure part and begin at “The Preschool Part”. Great books.

A different part of our past is the music of a people. Recently,  PBS ran a “Great Performances” show called From Shtetl to Swing. It an excellent compendium of the history of the influence of first-generation Jews on popular music, using Irving Berlin as its main frame.

Nisht geshtoygn un nisht gefloygn

Ah, denial. Where would we be without it? Jeff Goldblum famously said in The Big Chill that a rationalization (a form of denial in our books, in most cases) is more important than sex. “Ever gone a week without a rationalization?” Ya know, Cleopatra wasn’t the only queen of Da Nile.

Today’s header comes from the Yiddish phrase which means “utter nonsense”. Michael Wex tells us, though, that its literal translation means, “It didn’t climb out and it didn’t fly up.” (Here he is on Fresh Air, so you can hear him.) Us? We love Yiddish, a language based on denial, on rebellion, on fighting back. Here are some handy Yiddish phrases, my little boychicks.

But back to denial. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently denied that the Holocaust–you know, that little PR problem Germany has with the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, intellectuals and non-“Aryans”– ever happened. What chutzpah. Oh, if only he spoke Yiddish so he could hit us with a good Nisht geshtoygn! Oh, if only it didn’t happen! Of course, then “that shitty little country Israel” (to quote the French ambassador to London) wouldn’t exist. And we love that shitty little country.

In fact, we love it so much that we built a special compass to find it. Behold, the “Incredible Jerusalem Compass“. Anywhere you are in the world, if you get a little ferblunjit, open this badboy up and find your way home. Now your bubbe will kvell with noches.