When You Reach Me

This Christmas holiday is pretty quiet.  I remember last year I was busily trying to finish up the corrections for my PhD thesis because I was about to start teaching in Los Angeles during UCLA's Winter Quarter.  Actually the last couple of Christmas holidays have been pretty busy, but this year I managed to have time to read three Newberry award books.  One of them is When You Reach Me.  I found it very engrossing and finished it in one afternoon.

I really like the structure of the book.  There are three themes going on in this mystery sci-fi: one is time travel, one is friendship, and one is related the TV gameshow $20,000 Pyramid. The chapter titles are related to the way clues in the game show are given to its contestants.

The story is also a homage to A Wrinkle in Time, another favorite book of mine.  Miranda, the main character, is constantly rereading A Wrinkle in Time, and several characters she interacts with start discussing the physics of time travel with her because she is always carrying it around.  However, she does not travel anywhere herself.  She stays in New York during the school year 1978-1979.

The characters are all well-developed, and there is a lot of humour when they interact.  One passage explains that when Miranda feels scared about walking around in New York City and is scarred of a stranger, she copes by turning to the person she feels anxious about and asking "Do you have the time?"  Miranda reasons that the strategy shows: I know you are there, but I've chosen to acknowledge you as a potential friend. Also, I have no watch or anything expensive and I am not worth mugging.

In another scene, Miranda is explaining to Belle, a friendly green grocer at a local shop that she spends time in, about the plot of A Wrinkle in Time. 
"Does this Meg character have a boyfriend in the book?" Belle asks.
"Um... sort of." Miranda says.  "But that's not the point."
Louisa May Alcott would be pleased to know that stories with girls have a weighty plot, not driven by romantic interested alone, and much more to to say about the world around them.

I think the book is brilliant, and I can see why it not only won the Newberry Award in 2010, but also 8 other awards including Publishers Weekly, the School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews' best (children's) book of the year, and listed as a notable book on The New York Times list for 2009.

A highlight from visiting the Harry Potter Studio in Leavesden, London

For my son's 11th birthday, last year, he got to ride a broom.  It was great fun.

More books to add to my reading list

Reddit, Quora, and online forums

Sometimes, I think I may have limited myself with this blog dedicated to Books, Film and TV.  On something completely non-topical and different as a genre, I came across a series of online "advice columns" where people post questions and the Internet, in the form of crowd sourcing, answers these people's questions, for example, questions are discussed in places like Reddit or Quora sites. I also recently heard a podcast talking about the "Ask a grown man", program, where where confused (usually girls) can ask a grown man a question or series of questions through letters, and whoever volunteers to answer these questions gives them an honest sincere answer (while making their identity anonymous). I thought that sounded cool, found an example of it with one of my favorite gurus, Stephen Colbert https://vimeo.com/102088000

On a different forum, I did find something amusing in response to the question "Can a guy hate you because he's in love with you?"  While many people commented that this sounded like the behaviour of a very young man (it was confirmed), there seem to be a surge in insightful and witty people out in the Internet ether. 

A response from handle name "imago": 
"Honey, we are men! We are complex beings capable of all manner of juxtapositions! We can bend the laws of physics. Just this morning, I ordered an extra large Pepsi in an extra small cup. 

I can hate you while loving you.

I have also been known to pay unfaltering attention to you while intensely ignoring you.

So the short answer is, yes."

It's interesting how advice columns have shifted from being broadcast through newspapers to radio, to online media.   Mode of communication has changed, but format had just adapted to new technology. Indeed-- what interesting times we live in!

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, refugees, and lessons for Western Governments today

Most of the time when WWII atrocities are brought up (usually by American politicians) it’s to talk about the terrible acts the Nazi committed against the Jews and how we must position ourselves to fight the next Hitler.  But more needs to be discussed about how Western governments failed to help ordinary people they were meant to protect, especially refugees. One of my favorite children’s author/illustrors is Judith Kerr, best known for When the Tiger Came to Tea and series of picture books on Mog the Cat. She also wrote a trilogy (based on the style of Wilder’s Little House series) about her life growing up as a refugee fleeing Nazi Germany.  

In When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, she talks about first fleeing to Switzerland, then to France and finally to England because her father, a secular Jew and famous writer had written against the Nazi party, prior to their coming to power.  In the second book of the series Bombs on Aunt Dainty, she talks about living in England and how because of their German nationality, her brother (along with thousands of others) was picked up and then interned on the Isle of Wight for serval months.  There were three classes that foreign nationals in any way related to Germany were categorized into: “Aliens”, “Enemy Aliens” and “Friendly Enemy Aliens.”  Most Friendly Enemy Aliens were German Jews.  

The thought that Jews would betray English or French to Hitler is ludicrous today (the French interned them as well and when the Nazis marched into Paris it made the job of rounding up Jews easier), but the “security of the general public” and that “Nazis can hide among the German Jews,” was what justified these actions.  

Any security program that tries to round up/black list people that is not based on actual evidence against individuals themselves, but based on a broad set of categories like “nationality” or “religion” or “race”, is stupid. It is also counter- productive.  Instead of actually looking for people who cause trouble, resources have to be wasted on people who are not a threat but just “look” like one.

Post script: After her brother was released from the internment camp, he went to fight the Nazis as an RAF (Royal Air Force) fighter pilot.  

The Elephant House, Edinburgh

I've been in Edinburgh the past two weeks doing research. This evening (my last in Edinburgh) I decided to do something touristy, so I went the the Elephant House for a lovely slice of cake and a hot chocolate with a touch of Baileys Irish cream.  The Elephant House's tag line is the "Birthplace of the first Harry Potter Novel," since this is where JK Rowling, while a single mother on welfare with her first baby in-tow, used to sit and write.  I ended up at a table next to a Canadian flight attendant, named Jake, and we talked about Harry Potter.  The table where we were sitting had drawers full of Harry Potter fan mail.

So here is my yummy food and drink, and some of the lovely letters.  I don't envy the person who's job it will be to archive this latter. : )  But considering all the letters and journals and financial records I've been going through at the W. & R. Chambers archive, these letters were such a treat to read.

Transcript of this letter:

Dear JK Rowling: 
Thank you for my childhood, for my happiness, & for making a shy and quiet 8-year old feel like she could be a Hermione.  The impact your words have had on my life are inexplicable.  You've united the world through the love of your imagination.  There truly are no worlds to explain what an effect Harry Potter has had on me.  I cannot thank you enough for bringing magic into my life.

Thank you (One last time in writing), 
Courtney Smith
Sunberry Austraila
28/10/2014

When my new flight attendant friend took off, I sat quietly and read more from my book on the history of the OED.  It's background reading for my PhD, you know, 19th century stuff.

A drawing of Harry's Owl Hedwig kept me company, and looked on in approval.

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

Just saw this film last night.  It's a very good documentary, and like everything that Arron worked for and valued, is free on the Internet. It's available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58

Arron was a child prodigy, and most definitely in his short life, showed that he was a genius. At 3 years old, Arron taught himself to read.  When he was only 14 years old, Aaron co-authored RSS, the specification used for updating news and blogs on the Web.  While still a teenager, he helped create the Creative Commons.  Before he was 20 he founded a company that would become Reddit.  When he was 20 he created the Open Library for the Internet Archive.  I found out about this film after looking at Howard Besser's website (my former advisor at UCLA).  Howard writes that:                                      
                                                                             
"Most of Aaron's work was driven by his passionate belief that society would be a better place if people had access to original material that shaped their lives and environment.  He sometimes employed direct action tactics to shame governmental and non-profit organizations into releasing works that they kept behind economic walls. And he was one of the major architects of the campaign to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the co-founder of Demand Progress, an activist organization fighting against Internet censorship.                                                                   
                                                                              
In 2009 he downloaded millions of documents from a pay-per-view database of Federal Court decisions (PACER) and made these publicly available on a website dedicated to making government information freely available to the public. (we all know that government information can't be copyrighted, right?)                                                                       
                                                                              
The troubles that likely led to his death began about 18 months ago, when he brought a laptop to MIT and downloaded a massive number of journal articles from the library journal archive service JSTOR.  The US Department of Justice prosecuted him for this even though the alleged "victim", JSTOR, declined to press charges.  And recently, JSTOR announced that it would make more than 4.5 million of its articles freely available, likely a result of Aaron's action.  But the US Attorney continued to vindictively prosecute him on charges that might have resulted in 35 years jail time and $1 million fine."

I love the fact that Arron loved libraries, so much so that he advocated for them and for what they stood my previous post on Oranges and Peaches.  I also like it when people I've met get interviewed for documentaries.  Brewster Kahle speaks about Arron.  Of course listening to his parents and siblings and the people who know him is very moving.  Although the film is about his life and death, it's hopeful and fascinating and very much worth watching.