Tag: Harry Potter

Check-Out Champ

We had a good drop of snow the other night; the best we’ve had since the new year began. The flakes fell quickly, adding inches to the front porch and everything in the yard beyond. As I surveyed the vast, white blanket before me, my mind wandered to snow angels and snowmen, to pulling the sled out of the garage. I pictured wandering lines of deep footprints, far as the eye could see, or snowballs piled up and ready, waiting for a battle with the neighborhood kids. Without knowing it, I was effectively ticking the list of images from Ezra Jack Keats’ 1962 children’s classic, “The Snowy Day”.

Confession time. I didn’t remember the story of “The Snowy Day” until I stopped by my local bookstore the other day for a copy (destined to my granddaughter’s bookshelf). It’s a simple book: the snow-filled adventures of a little boy on a winter’s day, captured in less than two hundred words. The images tell the story as well as the words, including the boy’s disappointment when he realizes a snowball carefully packed into his coat pocket melted moments after entering the warmth of his house.

Why all the fuss over a short children’s story, authored almost sixty years ago? Consider this: “The Snowy Day” is the most checked-out book in the 125-year history of the New York Public Library (NYPL). That’s 485,583 individual borrows, putting the book comfortably ahead of hundreds of thousands of others. (Safe to say the “Jeopardy” writers jotted down that bit of trivia for future use.)

You’d think I’d have checked out “The Snowy Day” when I was little. After all, the library was a weekly – if not bi-weekly destination as a kid. My older brothers took music lessons right across the street, leaving the library as a convenient “babysitter” while Mom went to the grocery store. I’ll always be grateful to her for that strategy, which generated countless check-outs and a lifetime love of reading.

I find it remarkable the NYPL maintains complete records – most of them on paper – backing up its check-out claim for “The Snowy Day”. The book topped several other bestsellers I would’ve chosen instead. Take “Fahrenheit 451” (#7 all-time checked-out), or “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (#9). How about other children’s titles like “The Cat in the Hat” (#2) and “Where the Wild Things Are” (#4)? “The Snowy Day” sits atop the list with fewer words and fewer pages (except perhaps #10, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”) Good on you, Ezra Jack Keats.

Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” seems out of place in the NYPL top-ten (#8) – the only non-fiction read on the list. I’ve never checked out a Carnegie self-help book, let alone bought one (not that I couldn’t use the help). For that matter, I’ve never checked out any of the NYPL top-ten. Maybe #6 Charlotte’s Web, but that was a long time ago.

“The Snowy Day” brought to mind storybooks from my own childhood, I took a few minutes to recall the following favorites (sans Google search):

  • Harold and the Purple Crayon
  • Clifford the Big Red Dog
  • The Red Balloon
  • Make Way for Ducklings
  • Blueberries for Sal
  • Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel
  • Are You My Mother?
  • Sparky’s Magic Piano
  • Caps for Sale

The brain is remarkable. I can give you a complete synopsis of each of the above stories, fifty years after I first read them. Furthermore, “Harold and the Purple Crayon” and “The Red Balloon” manage to tell their stories without a single word. Nothing but photos and illustrations. They make “The Snowy Day” look like a novel.

I can’t tell you the last time I set foot in a library, but I know it’s been years. I’d say I’m “overdue” and should “check out” one of the nearby branches. After all, the stories of my childhood have endured the test of time, waiting patiently on the shelves; perfect reads for the next “snowy day”.

Some content sourced from the 1/13/2020 Wall Street Journal article, “These Are the Most Frequently Checked-Out Books in the History of the New York Public Library“.

Thirst (for) Knowledge

Water.

Two parts hydrogen compounded with one part oxygen.  Transparent, odorless, and tasteless, yet we can’t survive more than a few days without it.  If not for oceans, lakes, ponds; rivers, streams, and creeks; and a whole lot of underground aquifers, we humans would be in a heap of trouble.  With due respect to Harry Potter, water is the elixir of life.

63-elixir

It’s fair to say most of us don’t drink enough water for optimal health. The long-held belief that eight glasses a day is sufficient has been replaced by the following formula: your body weight in pounds, divided by two, expressed in ounces. For most of us that means even more than eight glasses.  Gulp.

Somewhere along the way of several years of working out, I developed the habit of drinking small amounts of water during exercise, instead of chugging just before or just after.  On the treadmill for instance, I take a slug every time I complete a kilometer.  In the cycle class I drink every time the instructor says to pick up the bottle.  In a road race I never pass up the tables of water cups.  No question; the body works better with a regular intake of water.  Or at least a splash to the face.

Whenever I know I’m not drinking enough water I recall two vivid memories where I reached full-on dehydration status.  The first occurred as a child, when I was driving in the desert with my family.  I let the day go by way too long without taking a drink, and before I knew it my throat was so parched I could barely speak.  The heat of the day surely made it worse.  I pleaded to my grandparents to stop at a gas station (or anywhere with a halfway sanitary drinking fountain), which we eventually did, and I’m sure I took in a quart or more to quench my thirst.  Here’s a little irony: my desert dehydration is a fond memory because I can still hear my grandfather’s distinctive voice, saying, “need to wet your whistle, do ya?”  That was over forty years ago.

My second “parchment” occurred just short of the summit of Pikes Peak here in Colorado Springs – the first time I climbed it.  Pikes Peak is the highest mountain in the southern Front Range of the Rockies, at just over 14,000 feet.  Using the popular Barr trail it’ll take you five or six hours to get to the top.  Despite recommendations to carry a lot of water I only brought one 12-oz. bottle in my pack, which I refilled at a campsite halfway up the mountain.  I was getting by okay until the very last mile, when I ran out of water and my body literally began to shut down.  The combination of the effects of dehydration and altitude was devastating.  I could only walk a hundred yards at a pop, taking a seat on the rocks each time to recover for several minutes.  Mercifully I was close enough to the summit that I finished the hike, but not before realizing I’d been woefully unprepared.  In extreme circumstances the body demands a lot of water.  Certainly more than half your body weight in ounces.

If an elixir is defined as “a magical or medicinal potion”, then water qualifies in my book, and especially here in the high altitude of the Rocky Mountains.  It took a few years for me to gain a little thirst knowledge, but now my water bottle is my constant companion.  On that note, I think I need a drink!