Mom Was Right: Go Outside

Nice article in today's Wall Street Journal, yes a Saturday edition. It's all about how our Mom's were right to tell us to go outside, especially when our presence underfoot started to grate on them. It never helped matters that air-conditioning didn't become ubiquitous in suburbia until the late 1970s. We didn't have it until 1975 and the basement was the coolest place in the house. The WSJ article goes on the say that the effects of communing with nature, instead of technology provide benefits across all age groups and raise our levels of creativity in ways that answering email, playing video games or posting to FaceBook will never be able to accomplish. The research suggests we need to make time to explore our surroundings, even if those are in the city. We need, "to make time to escape from everyone else, to explore those parts of the world that weren't designed for us." When we were kids this meant the nearby streams and ponds, or if we were feeling evil the roof of Willard School. I can still drive by Willard, even after it recent addition of a second story to what we always called "the New Wing" and see that the best way to get on the roof is still within my grasp. I will withhold the clues for fear you will try it yourself. This Memorial Day Weekend heed your old Mom or Dad's advice from long ago and Go Outside. If only to let people know what you have been doing when you eventually return to the tethers of the Internet.

Maurice Sendak 1928-2012

It has always been easy for me to recall sitting around on the carpeted floor at the feet of our librarian at Willard School while she read some book to us. Where The Wild Things Are was one of those books. It was at first glance scary to look at the Sendak pictures of monsters but as the story unfolded in the safety of the Library the fears were replaced by wonder. My life long love of reading was nurtured here in the Willard School Library and in our home. We had a rule at home that we had to read, it didn't matter too much what because our parents kept us supplied with books. we only had to be prepared to read to our father when he came home at night from work. We would sit together in his chair in the living room and read books like Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle. We had the complete set and it began like this:

Once upon a time, many years ago when our grandfathers were little children--there was a doctor; and his name was Dolittle-- John Dolittle, M.D. "M.D." means that he was a proper doctor and knew a whole lot.

He lived in a little town called, Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. All the folks, young and old, knew him well by sight. And whenever he walked down the street in his high hat everyone would say, "There goes the Doctor!--He's a clever man." And the dogs and the children would all run up and follow behind him; and even the crows that lived in the church-tower would caw and nod their heads.

This Dr. Dolittle was nothing like the Rex Harrison or Eddie Murphy versions. It was much more high-minded and serious, though mixed with moments to make children like me laugh and smile.

I'm so very glad to be a reader, even in a digital age where paper books are being replaced by digital ones. The important thing is still the same: to do the reading itself and hopefully in an encouraging atmosphere like the one I grew up in at the Willard School Library and on my Dad's reading chair.

Red Apple Rest

Found this photo on a site called Abandoned New York.

Abandoned New York

"The Red Apple Rest was a cafeteria-style restaurant along New York State Route 17, in the Southfield section of the Tuxedo, New York. The Red Apple Rest was a stopping point for many families headed to the Catskill Mountains region of upstate New York. Before the New York State Thruway was built, the travel time from New York City to the Catskill Mountains could be four or five hours. The Red Apple Rest, located almost halfway, became a major roadside stop. The restaurant was opened in May 1931 by Rueben Freed, whose clothing business went bust in the stock market crash. The Red Apple Rest boomed in business during the 1940s and 1950s. The Thruway, which was built in 1953, was not the reason for its demise, but the casinos built around the area. The Red Apple Rest closed in 2006 for no apparent reason but a sign on the wall that mentioning a vacation and graduation. The Red Apple Rest was condemned on January 23, 2007 for roof damage. Now, locked and lonely, the Red Apple Rest is the ruins of a New York long-dying, if not dead - The New York City that summered in the Catskills."

I can recall my friends and I riding our bicycles to this spot, having a huge meal like a stack of their pancakes, then turning around and riding home. It made for a good Saturday.

When we got older and could drive we also visited for those same stacks of pancakes and coffee.

NY Mets 50th Aniversary Celebration

Here is an exerpt from a wonderful article in the April 27th 2012 issue of The New Yorker magazine. RHS alumna Judy Van Sickle recently spoke at Hofstra University during a conference celebrating the NY Mets 50th anniversary. She makes a truly inspired literary comparison in her talk. She juxtaposes the love played out between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, in one of my favorite novels, The Great Gatsby, with the return of star athlete Jose Reyes to his original team. Judy no doubt helped to mend the hearts of every discouraged Met fan in attendance and taught them a bit of how life can imitate literature.

"Judy Van Sickle Johnson, a former English teacher at Phillips Academy, presented “Literature, the New York Mets, and the Tug of Baseball.” She summed up Reyes’s return with a local literary comparison:

It’s a little like Jay Gatsby seeing Daisy Buchanan again—the woman he loved so passionately and innocently in his youth, hated losing, and now she’s back in his life, as beautiful as ever. But she doesn’t really want him anymore, and he can’t have her. It’s a bittersweet experience—the love he feels for her is still genuine and it’s still there, but his affection is mixed with the ache of longing and the sting of loss."

In “The Great Gatsby,” Fitzgerald described a stretch of wasteland along West Egg as a “valley of ashes.” Since 1964, the Mets have called that spot home. Read more:

The Mets Go to School