(part 3 of travelogue)
Sunday morning, after a quick stop at a coffee shop that didn’t exist when I was in college, but which nevertheless seemed familiar, I wheeled my suitcase down to the bus station next to the roundhouse to catch a bus to Springfield and then on to New York. The bus offered its own nostalgia. I used to take it a lot on weekends. We all did.
I had meant to do work, but I ended up staring out the window the entire way, watching the clouds from the smokestacks at the edge of town frozen in the sky, the same way they looked on the day I first drove in with my mom and dad when I was 18. I watched the ice fisherman on the river, remembered every roadside rock and tree. My roots there run deep. After we changed busses in Springfield, I was lost in thought for hours until suddenly the bus made the turn by Yankee Stadium, when I finally shook loose the memories and started paying more attention to where I was now. A few minutes later, I was standing in Cranky’s apartment admiring her beautiful belly and fending off the good-natured pounces of Franny Banana. We ordered Chinese for dinner and chatted over the Puppy Bowl then watched Emma until we were both starting to doze off.
Monday, we went out to the diner around the corner for breakfast than back to the apartment so I could pick up my email and Cranky could work. I left her to crunch numbers at her computer while I headed into Manhattan solo to meet up with Magpie. Magpie and I had tried to meet once before when she was in Chicago, but I couldn’t get away. But it was lovely to finally see her in person. She showed me around the place she works, which I don’t think she talks about online so I won’t either, but it was a really interesting place to see and a beautiful, sun-filled building in one of my favorite parts of town. We had sandwiches at Le pain quotidian and got acquainted. She and I have some rather similar contours to our careers, so it was really fun to talk to her. We still haven’t identified any mutual acquaintances, but I feel certain that it is only a matter of time.
After another aborted attempt at finding a present for AJ, I headed back to Cranky’s. By the time I got there, I was starting to get nervous about the weather forecast, which was calling for heavy snow Tuesday morning in Chicago and all day Wednesday in New York. I called the airline and got myself on an earlier flight to try to get home ahead of the weather. I had hoped to cook dinner for Cranky, whose birthday is on Friday. But it seemed better to not get stuck in NY for an extra two days, so I said a sad goodbye and headed to the airport, where the incredibly nice and helpful person checking in my bag got me on an even earlier flight, which meant that I pretty much walked up to the gate and onto the plane.
I had an entire row to myself. The plane landed a half an hour ahead of schedule. My bag was the first one off the plane. It really could not have gone any more smoothly. I was walking in the door of my house by 8 pm. The whole trip door to door only took five hours, which these days is pretty damn amazing.
And now I’m back at my desk with renewed resolve, some new ideas and some deadlines. Let’s hope this ride goes as swiftly and smoothly.
(part 2, written yesterday evening, in transit)
Saturday morning came a little too early, but I dragged myself our of bed, made a pot of double strong coffee. By the time I’d showered and hit the cool morning air, I was feeling much more humane.
I was not totally prepared for what it was like to walk around this place that I once knew like the back of my hand, a place that, for reasons I am powerless to explain, always and still feels more like home than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. There were ghosts everywhere. The changes were fascinating and a little jarring. But the important stuff was the same.
The room that held the breakfast used to be the music department office. I got myself a cup of coffee and sat down on a sofa that stood where the desk of Anna Montgomery, our department secretary, once sat. Anna is long gone. She was elderly then. But here ghost was there. Those of us who remembered her talked of the many maternal kindnesses she did for us. Then it was time to start and we filed down to the small recital hall/classroom, which didn’t really exist when I was there, or at least not in its current formation. It helped a little to be in a less familiar room, but there were all of my music history professors, my two composition professors and the voice teacher who chaperoned me through my senior recital with one of her students and, after graduation, gave us furniture, a toaster and a teapot to start our new apartment. I still use the teapot.
The papers were great. At most conferences, you’re happy to hear a couple of good papers in a field of mostly mediocre ones. But these were without exception well written and well reasoned and most of them were well presented (one poor girl, the youngest there, was so overcome with nerves that I half wanted to run up there and hold her hand). Our collective post college credentials are pretty impressive. We go to or went to the very top schools in our field. And a couple of us teach at those schools. The topics were incredibly varied , which I think was an incredible statement about the kind and quality of education we got in that department. They taught us to think, to read and to listen. They taught us to explore. They didn’t teach us to be disciples. They taught us to be scholars.
When I got up to give my paper, I started, as did many, by thanking our host and my mentor. I also mentioned how terrifying it was to stand up in front of all our college professors, even twenty years on. I told them how I’d had a dream a few days ago that I’d gone into a music history class taught by one of the professors sitting in the audience and thought I was all prepared for the test. But when I turned my paper over, it turned out to be a sheet of calculus problems. Everyone laughed and I launched into my paper.
At the end, the first hand to shoot up was the professor in question. My stomach flipped as I wondered what difficult question he was going to ask. Instead he said, “I hope I gave you an A in my class.” I’ve been pretty much riding high from that ever since.
After the conference, we had an hour before dinner, which I spent with M and my Peppy, who’d come back to watch the papers, wandering around campus. Didn’t the pond look smaller than we remembered? Why did the distance from the music building to the quad seem so far back then? Remember where our music theory professor lived? And his singing cats? Remember the tree that used to be there with the swing? Remember, remember, remember. It was so good to be there with people who remembered so many of the same things. There were ghosts everywhere, and the one looming largest was the ghost of the girl I used to be, the one who used to open the window in the corner practice room, even in the winter, so she could hear the waterfall while she practiced wearing fingerless gloves to keep from freezing. The one who once spent an entire weekend in the music library listening to every recording of Monteverdi’s Orfeo she could find because she thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. The one, as M reminded me, who used to sit in the back of Music History working the New York Times crossword puzzle, carefully razored out of the paper, hidden inside her textbook. The one who sat with a friend with a broken leg at a party and invented crazy chair dancing to keep her company. The one who took a swimming test in the middle of the winter so that the minute the daffodils bloomed on the island in the middle of the pond in spring, she could take her books out in a rowboat and flop down among them to study. She was a girl who threw herself headlong into everything she loved. I was so happy to be reminded of her.
M and I said goodbye to Peppy and headed to the President’s house for dinner. I walked in and saw more ghosts. There’s where the piano was at my senior recital. There’s where my violin teacher was pacing back and forth and there’s where our conference host sat beaming.
The room where I once played Handel and Telemann was full of beautifully set tables on Saturday night. The president and her husband greeted us at the door. The president had attended the entire conference, which I thought was rather impressive, especially since this isn’t her field. We had cocktails by the fireplace, attended by a large dog named Dallas, who lay down in the very center of the festivities so that everyone had to step over him. He was very endearing. At dinner, I was seated at a table with my mentor, the conference moderator (who wrote an article back in the 1970s that largely inspired my dissertation), the president and her husband, my friend M, and one other former student. The president told me at least four times during the course of the evening how much she liked my paper and made me describe it to her husband in great detail and asked me lots of questions.
When the president spoke at the beginning of the conference to welcome us, she said that when you’re a scholar, there are your real children and your intellectual children and that we were their intellectual children. And that’s really how it felt, like some uncommonly friendly family reunion, when you all stare at each other and recognize the ways in which you’ve imprinted one another. I came away appreciating my college education even more than I did before. I feel so very lucky to have known and studied with each and every one of these people. And remarkably, I think they all felt the same way about us. I think about my relatively miniscule amount of teaching experience and I can see why you remember the ones who are engaged, caught up in the things that interest you too. But I never thought they actually would, not after twenty years. I feel very grateful to have had the chance to tell some of the people who have greatly affected my life for the better how much they did for me and how much I appreciated them.
I had come into this conference feeling like a total professional failure – still in school, not working. I’m going home feeling humbled by the kindnesses of others and my own sheer luck and, thanks to them, feeling much better about my current place in the world.
I’m also going home with a couple of promises to myself about what now and what next. The conference was a much needed clearing of the head. I was sorry to see it all end.
(written yesterday evening in transit)
I’m on the plane 17 hours early, trying to get home ahead of a snowstorm that looked as if it could have delayed my planned return by a couple of days. I’ve only been gone for 3 days but it feels like a week, and I mean that in a good way. There is a lot to say, and I think I will break it up into smaller pieces. That way I can bore you a little at a time instead of all at once.
Friday morning I flew to Hartford where Peppy Pilot Girl and her three beautiful children met me at the airport. Peppy and were friends in college, where we met in the Glee Club and Chamber Singers when I joined in our junior year. I haven’t seen Peppy in 13 years. I last saw her at her wedding, which was held in the pretty Catholic church next to our college campus and at the hotel on the edge of town.
My plane was early enough that we were able to spend a few hours at her beautiful turn-of-the-century house, where here children provided us with all kinds of entertainment. At one point, I found myself sitting in an enormous comfy armchair in a sunny window with a girl on each knee and a cat on my shoulder. It was a lovely afternoon.
After saying a brief hello and goodbye to Peppy’s husband when he got home from work, Peppy and I headed out sans kids to the town where we went to college. It felt a little like a pilgrimage. Although she lives nearby, she doesn’t get there often and I hadn’t been there since her wedding.
I used to know that road from Hartford so well. I took ownership of it. Seeing all the familiar buildings (and some new ones) – the blue and gold dome, the basketball hall of fame (now a gym, as a new and fancier hall of fame was built right next door), the white steeples of New England churches and the smokestacks of the factories along the river – was like seeing old friends. From the very first time I came here, I felt like I was coming home. It still feels that way.
Peppy and I drove into town and we started cataloging the things that were the same and different and remembering things. There was the restaurant where my parents took me after graduation. There’s where that Chinese restaurant used to be. There’s a store that used to be my bank and a bank that used to be a store. I checked into the hotel just early enough that we were able to have a drink in the tavern downstairs. The hotel was built in the early 20th century. The man who built it had had a relative who’d owned a tavern in the 18th century in a town not far away. When the younger man opened his hotel, he had his ancestor’s tavern moved to the site, so the hotel bar has more atmosphere than you’d generally expect.
After drinks and promises to see each other the next day, Peppy dropped me at the Indian restaurant where all the conference speakers were meeting for dinner with our host and former teacher. It was one of the first restaurants I went to in this town and it was, I think, the first place I ever tried Indian food. My roommate freshman year was from Mumbai (although we called it Bombay then) and she had taken me and a couple of our other friends there. She ordered for me and I thought it was some of the most amazing food I’d ever eaten. I’m still a huge fan.
I was the last to arrive and sat at the end of the table with some younger alums. We did not talk shop, but talked a lot about coming back and about our collective nervousness about speaking in front of our former professors. After dinner, I found my friend M, who graduated a year behind me and with whom I had a lot of classes, and we prowled around the one Main Street shop that was open that late, looking for souvenirs for our kids (she was successful; I was not) and remember what it used to look like. I collapsed into bed afterwards, exhausted after a couple of nights of next-to-no sleep. Alas, that was not the night to catch up. A car alarm outside my window woke me up at 2 a.m. and kept me up for several hours.
I’m here at Cranky’s house without easy internet access, as she has this idea that when she’s working at home she actually needs to do some work. I know, I don’t understand it either. But I hope to be back home tomorrow (weather permitting), whereupon I will bore you all to tears with my adventures, which hopefully will include a meeting with Magpie later today. Wish me luck tomorrow as I head home into a snowstorm.
I am in the fancy hotel in the town where I went to college and I’m kind of overwhelmed with being here and the conference and everything. I will write about it. I will. But tonight, I think I have to digest. But I will say this: Your professors remember you a lot better than you think they do. My undergraduate counterpoint exercises were invoked in a post-dinner speech. Seriously. I have spent the day in the company of some mighty intelligent and interesting women in a place I love dearly. Needless to say, I am having a marvelous time. Tomorrow I’ll spend a few too many hours on two busses and two subway trains and a short walk and then I will be at Cranky’s house, which I am also very much looking forward to. In the mean time, here is something I wrote on the plane on the way here.
_____
Travelling provides the perfect opportunity to ponder some of life’s more important questions. For instance,
• Was I so distracted by the mother and daughter wearing matching leopard patterned Uggs that I nearly went to the wrong concourse? Should I have blamed Lindsay Lohan for the fashion don’t?
• Did you know that it costs $5.50 to buy a tiny tube of toothpaste in the airport? Shouldn’t the people making money on the security regulations have to fork some over to pay for the security?
• Why are all airline captains basso profundos?
• Did you know the Target closest to O’Hare has an enormous red target painted on its roof? Do you think helicopters ever accidentally land there?
• If you realized, as you were waiting in line to get on the plane, that you were standing one soldier, two nuns and three joking Jamaicans, would you a) try to find a punch line? or b) expect the first words the captain will speak over the loudspeaker will be, “Don’t call me Shirley!”?
• Will I make it through this bumpy flight without impaling myself on my own fingernails? [Reader, I did – it helps to type]
• O Connecticut River, how could I forget how beautiful you are?
• Is this where I was from in a former life? How else can I explain my need to weep every time I arrive or leave from this place? Is it joy or relief?
• O Hartford airport, how quaint that you have only two stalls in your bathroom and you have to do your own flushing.
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_ _ _ _ _
I thought we were home free when AJ barfed last weekend. You see, AJ has a knack for getting sick any time I go to a conference. I figured if he was sick last weekend, he wouldn’t be sick this weekend. But I didn’t bargain on Mr. Spy getting sick. Mr. Spy never gets sick. Except this time he did. As if I didn’t feel guilty enough for leaving.
So now I’m trying to figure out how I’m getting to the airport tomorrow. Mr. Spy says he’ll drive me, but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.
And I’m also worrying about the snowstorms in various parts of the country and am hoping it’s not a bumpy ride.
And I’m also worrying about a million other things that could happen but probably won’t.
But I’m very much looking forward to seeing Peppy tomorrow. The last time I was in that part of the world was for her wedding in the beautiful Catholic church on the edge of our college campus. I’m also looking forward to meeting her three children.
And now it’s time to pack.
I made my weekly trip to the Mart of Wall, which is the grocery store of choice around here for things that are not carried by Barterer Joseph. I have always been distinctly in the NOT A FAN club of the Mart of Wall. But this store, being the best option for local groceries, is actually relatively pleasant, at least when I usually go there first thing in the morning. I always run into a lot of my friends and neighbors and it all feels very small town and friendly-like. Today, though, I went to yoga first and ended up at the Mart of Wall at noon, which is apparently when these people show up. And let me tell you, there were some frightening things to behold. But most of them were not in the produce section, so it was still a relatively problem free trip, if not quite as pleasant as usual.
I also had the pleasure of dumping a big box of Sweet Tarts in my cart. This probably doesn’t seem like that big a deal, but I am currently suffering from a food allergy which has had me avoiding sugar in just about every form for weeks now, including (and actually especially) fruit (with a couple of exceptions and even then only rarely). But I have recently been informed that Sweet Tarts actually act as medicine in certain situations(if you really want to know, I could explain it, but I’ll spare you the details otherwise), and since I’m going to be traveling in a couple of days and will mostly be unable to control my diet, it seemed like a good think to lay in some supplies. Medicinal candy! It’s true! AJ will be so jealous. Or at least, he would be if I told him, which I am not dumb enough to do. But the diet is so restrictive — I’m supposed to avoid wheat too. And beer. And red wine. And not too much white. — that buying something so clearly bad for me kind of made my day. I’m getting tired of oatmeal and white rice.
I am in the middle of the last mad panic before my five day trip. There are lists to be made, checks to be deposited and written, a birth certificate to be found, handouts to be finalized, laundry and mending to be done, and so on and so on until my head starts to spin. I always start to have second thoughts at moments like this. It wouldn’t be so bad if AJ had school tomorrow. Or if I didn’t have two teacher conferences at two different schools (don’t ask). Which means I’m going to be pulling a late evening tonight to get it all taken care of.
I’m also getting very nervous about my paper and wondering if it was a good idea to take the easy way out that I did. Too late now to do anything about it, but I’m still concerned. I hope it’s okay. I hope my former professors will not laugh at me. Or at least, if they do, that they will have the courtesy to keep it to themselves.
Ack. It’s already time to pick up AJ. Where did the time go? Gotta run.
Yesterday, AJ came home in a panic. His school’s soon-to-be-fired art teacher runs a snowman sculpture contest every year. AJ’s been dying to do it, but it’s only for third and fourth graders, so this is the first year he’s eligible. He got the notice about it two wees ago, but I haven’t been able to get him to work on it. The sculptures can be made of “anything but ice and snow,” seeing as they spend a couple of weeks on top of the cubbies inside the school, and “please no food,” because in the past, sugar cube sculptures have attracted mice. I’ve asked AJ several times if he wanted to go to the Craft Raft to get supplies, but he always had other things he’d rather be doing. So I stopped mentioning it. Then yesterday, he came home demanding an immediate ride to the store.
“I’m sorry, I can’t.”
He started to argue.
“AJ, I can’t. I’ve got to teach this afternoon and then it’s going to be dinner time. If you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to do it with things we’ve got it at home. I’ve offered to take you to the store several times, but you didn’t want to go. Now you’ve got to figure this out yourself.”
After he stopped ranting, I suggested he make some balls out of tin foil, an idea inspired by the large balls of foil we made last weekend with the leftovers from our solar oven project. And then I left.
Reportedly, AJ asked Mr. Spy to help, but Mr. Spy had some more work to do, so he told AJ to get the things together that he needed and that he’d help him when he was finished. After Mr. Spy went back in his office, AJ got a piece of paper and made a list, complete with boxes to check when he found things. This may not seem like a big deal, but AJ is incredibly disorganized by nature, so this was a huge step. He figured out what he wanted to do, what materials he wanted to use, and he checked things off as he found them.
When I came home, I found Mr. Spy and AJ working on his mostly finished sculpture. “It’s a SnowBot,” he said proudly. The perfect theme for a snowman made of tin foil. He has googly eyes, arms made of silver pipe cleaners, a mouth made of twisted red and white electrical wire and a nose made of a red screw anchor. AJ made a control panel, painted on black construction paper, which we glued to his chest. For the finishing touch, AJ attached the antenna from his Playmobil Airport on his head. We attached him to a base of cardboard covered in tin foil and he was done.
Pictures forthcoming, I hope. I neglected to photograph SnowBot before he made it into school.
• • • • •
Today’s entry in the category of dubious activities for children is brought to you by an organic farm somewhere in the midwest that runs a series of summer camps for childrenages 6-12 from the beginning of June through the end of August. As a former city-dweller, the idea of sending a child off to a farm for a nice rural experience sounds kind of idyllic. But as a former city-dweller, I don’t tend to think to much about all the work involved. The list of activities in “A Typical Farm Day” at the camp, though,sounds anything but idyllic. It sounds daunting to me, let alone to a six-year old:
MORNING
• rise, make beds
• milking
• breakfast
• chores (livestock, feedroom, garden, kitchen, house)
• projects (livestock, garden, food preparation, canning, repairs, construction, wool mill, corn shelling, hay making, etc.)NOON AND AFTER
• lunch
• chores
• projects (M)
•hilltop games (T/W)
•creekwalk/cookout (TH)EVENING
• supper
• chores
• tarp meeting
• showers
• cocoa
• indoor quiet games
• meeting to recap day’s events
• to bed in the farmhouse, very tired!AT OTHER TIMES
• there is “farmstead time,” a time to just be on the farm, in the loft, or with a favorite animal.
Now in fairness, the farm’s website makes this look like a fabulous experience and it is a beautiful place. It stresses that the farmers are Montessori teachers and talks about their mission with the farm and the camp. But the brochure makes the whole venture sound a lot like Bart Simpson’s foreign exchange experience on a French vineyard. Get paid for free labor? A brilliant business plan.
I wonder if I could start a gardening summer camp? Maybe a home repairs summer camp? My house could use a coat of paint.
We received our annual newsletter on AJ’s school’s drug prevention program called “The Pr3venti0n C0nn3cti0n.” I am not in any way opposed to the message “drugs are bad” getting out there early and often, but this newsletter is pure comedy gold and I look forward to it every year. Why? Because the evils of drug use and abuse are reinforced through the use of puppets and cartoons. Here are some examples, straight from the newsletter, of key segments in the third grade curriculum:
•[Students] listen to a puppet called Foxy tell them about ways to stay out of trouble. Foxy is a hand puppet who not only introduces the lessons but also is featured in videos and on work sheets and posters.
• Monica the monkey teaches her brother Manny about staying away from alcohol in an animated cartoon developed specifically for the curriculum. Luckily, King the orangutan sings a song that teaches Monica – and the class – all about alcohol.
• Foxy and a cat named Pinto tell students the story about an alcoholic family, and they learn that they can’t control alcoholism, they can’t cure it, they can take care of themselves, and things can get better.
• They listen to the song, “Express Yourself!” and, in teams, express feelings like happiness, embarrassment, and excitement in an original dance.
I’m thinking they should expand this series to cover other dangers in life. How about Davy the dung beetle teaching his sister Doris about the potential dangers of fecal fetishism? Or Sadie the spider and Frank the fly talking about the importance of safe words and mutual consent in B&D scenarios? And do I even need to mention how you could use all those rabbit hand puppets?
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go express my befuddlement at elementary education in an original dance. No, you can’t watch.
This weekend has been full of Non! Stop! Action! Although largely the kind of action that makes you stay in the house. So maybe less like a marathon and more like running on a treadmill to nowhere.
Yesterday morning, AJ and I put the finishing touches on his Pinewood Derby car and then ran some errands before the race. The errands involved depositing a few checks at the bank and getting AJ a long overdue haircut. The first errand started off okay, but the ATM ate my checks, which was aggravating in the extreme. We spent the next half an hour sitting inside the bank waiting for some nice man to try and iron out the mess. I seem to be under a bad star for money this week. One check that was supposedly “in the mail” has been delayed. School of Rock couldn’t pay me on Friday because they’d run out of checks. And then the ATM. All money should be where it needs to go by Wednesday. But unfortunately, bills are due tomorrow. I hate that. On the plus side, AJ was very patient sitting in the barren cubicle at the bank. And the banker could not have been more sympathetic and helpful. The bank had images of three of the checks the machine ate and I know what the fourth one is and can probably get another copy if needed. But still, I’m feeling like I’ve got some bad karma that I need to address.
We got AJ his haircut, but the delay meant we had to race through lunch to arrive in time for racing. We narrowly made it. AJ was looking forward to the Pinewood Derby, but if truth be told, I wasn’t so much. Last year, he came in dead last. Each car races 6 times against two other cars and they average the times. AJ came in last in every race but one, when he came in second. But yesterday, he had a much better run. He came in last in only one of his races. He came in second in 4 and first in 1. So he ended up just above the middle of the pack. He was thrilled. He was, I think, the only one who made his car without the aid of any power tools (or any competent parent assistance). His good friend C, the other kid in the gifted program with him, won first place and AJ was able to celebrate with him.
C and his mom came over afterwards. AJ and C are doing their science fair project together this year. We had planned on running some experiments using the solar house model that AJ got for Christmas. But when looking through the experiment book, AJ and C decided that they wanted to build a solar oven. And by they, I mean mostly me and C’s mother, because the process involved cutting up a lot of pieces of corrugated cardboard with sharp knives. The process too hours, but the corner of my office is now housing what looks like an enormous satellite dish covered in tinfoil. It dwarfs the battered rocking chair, which is Mrs. Stein’s preferred bed. It will be amazing if it doesn’t fall apart before the science fair.
Today would have been a great day for running the first experiment. We’re having the first truly sunny day we’ve had in months. But unfortunately, that’s not an option. Last night, shortly after C went home, AJ started complaining of a stomach ache. He nibbled up the vegetables I gave him to eat while his pizza, a Saturday night treat, was in the oven. But when the pizza came out, he said he couldn’t eat it. A couple of hours later, while I was reading him the first chapter of the first Percy Jackson book, The Lightning Thief (which AJ has read several times before, but I have not), he threw up nonstop for about ten minutes. And then it was every 20-30 minutes for the next five hours at least. Neither of us got much sleep last night. Today he’s been able to keep down a piece of toast and little banana, but he’s been listless and pale, not even up for video games, which I’m pretty sure has never happened before. He’s finally dozed off a few minutes ago. I hope he sleeps through his basketball game this afternoon. He will miss it in any case, and maybe school tomorrow.
AJ gets sick so seldom, that I’m always a little horrified when it happens. He looks so unhappy. I feel so helpless. The one good thing about sickness, though, is time. We’ve gotten halfway through the Percy Jackson book already. We’ve been working our way through D’Aulaire’s Greek myths since Christmas, and all the way through the Jackson references are dawning on him, he’s been pointing out the connections — Chiron, Perseus, Poseidon. This time through I think the book is probably making more sense, although now he’s questioning why a Perseus is the son of Poseidon when the original Perseus was the son of Zeus. We are both looking forward to the movie coming out in a couple of weeks. And now that I’m reading the story, my interest in the film is no longer based solely on the presence in the cast of Pierce Brosnan, who even in a shaggy beard is easy on the eyes.
The Lightning Thief is very much in the Harry Potter mold, almost formulaicly so. Jackson is orphaned early in the book. He has strange powers he doesn’t understand and can’t control. He goes to a camp for other kids like him — who knew there were other kids like him? — where he finds that he’s more of a celebrity than he had any reason to believe previously. He experiences his first true friendships but learns that he’s ultimately alone. He learns that some adults can be trusted and others can’t. He learns he has more strength than he knows. He’s in a life and death battle that is both personal and affects the entire world he is just beginning to know. The mythology adds another level, though, that Harry doesn’t have. But with the cleverness of the mythology and some of the wordplay, which I thoroughly enjoy, I think some of the characterization suffers. So I’d say I like it at least as well as the Harry Books, but maybe for different reasons.
AJ has always liked both Percy and Harry, but he’s had a clear preference for Percy, and that was before he had read the mythology that it’s based on. I think it’s because Percy narrates his own story and he’s a bit of a smart ass sometimes. The first person narrative also makes it a fun story to read out loud. And while Andy doesn’t get all the jokes — I had to explain to him why I found so funny the passage where the Naiads at the same summer camp are taking underwater basket weaving and Percy remarks a little jealously that it must be nice to have a useful skill — he gets that it’s funny, even if he doesn’t quite know why.
I am definitely warming up to Percy myself and am impatiently waiting for AJ to wake up so we can read the next chapter.
