A Little Piece of Heaven

I have to admit that I've never done the tourist thing in New York. I've just never had the time as I passed through for business meetings or when rushing to get from one airport to another to make flights. But this article in the Miami Herald makes me want to hang out near the intersection of Manhattan's East 41st Street and Madison Avenue. From the sounds of it, a bibliophile could happily spend an entire vacation within a few feet of that spot.

He would walk on Library Way, reading the author plaques embedded in the sidewalk every few feet, find shade in the shadow of the grandiose New York Public Library on the next block, revel in the rare manuscript collection at the Pierpont Morgan Library a few steps to the left and sleep in a book-lined room at The Library Hotel.

...

The Library Hotel is a civilizing oasis of comfort and care. Vacant for six years prior to its current reincarnation, the former office building, constructed in the 1920s, was renovated into a boutique hotel of 60 rooms.

Within the 14-story hotel, floor and room numbers are dispensed with and replaced by Dewey Decimal code. Following the traditional library cataloging system, each of the 10 floors corresponds to one of the 10 categories originated by Melvil Dewey. Floors are devoted to math & science, technology, philosophy and literature among others. Upon each floor are subclassifications.

On the religion floor, room number 1200.005 is devoted to Native American culture and spirituality. The titles on the bedside floor-to-ceiling shelves include Crazy Horse by Larry McMurtry, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen and Southern Cheyenne Women's Songs by Virginia Giglio. A colorful print of a Native American topped with a war bonnet adorns the wall between two large windows.

...

Along East 41st in front of the hotel is Library Way, where 96 bronze plaques embedded in the sidewalk celebrate renowned authors and their words.

The former New York City resident and essayist turned Maine saltwater farmer E.B. White is memorialized with this witticism, ``I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.''

Library Way may be followed to Patience and Fortitude, the two lions guarding the entrance of The New York Public Library. Inside are 88 miles of shelves, an extensive rare book and map collection and a glass case enclosing one of the few extant Guttenberg Bibles.

I'm particularly intrigued by The Library Hotel, but with room rates beginning at $379 per night, I'm not likely to ever experience it. But who said that a little piece of heaven would be cheap?

Kite Runner Movie Premier Delayed by Six Weeks

The opening of the movie version of The Kite Runner has been delayed for something like six weeks because of concerns over the safety of two of the Afghani child actors who are prominently featured in the film. According to several news sources, including the Los Angeles Times (with thanks to Annie for first bringing this to my attention), the children will be taken out of the country for their own safety before the movie will be seen publicly.

Three Afghan boys who appear in the film "The Kite Runner" will be brought to the United States on a temporary visit and could go on to reside in United Arab Emirates after concern for their safety was raised over a culturally inflammatory rape scene in the film.

"The kids have been told they've been invited to the United States and they are going to spend their summer vacation, essentially, because they are out of school on Dec. 6," said Megan Colligan, a spokeswoman for Paramount Vantage, which is distributing the movie. "They resume school at the end of March, so they know they are being asked to leave the country for that period of time."

The film will now be released in selected U.S. cities on Dec. 14 instead of the previously announced Nov. 2. The New York Times reported Thursday that the studio was postponing the movie's release to give the three child actors the chance to leave Kabul for safety reasons.

...

Ahmad Jaan Mahmidzada, whose son, Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada, plays Hassan, told the Associated Press that Paramount Vantage "promised us that they will solve whatever problem that we have now or we might have in the future."

Mahmidzada worries the story will stir ethnic tensions because it plays on stereotypes of Afghan ethnic groups, pitting a Pashtun bully against a lower-class Hazara boy.

...

"People believe there is a variety of opinions about whether or not the boys would be secure if a pirated copy entered the country," Colligan said. "We are taking a pretty conservative approach. If any credible person believes there is a credible risk for them, we are making sure the boys are safe. We moved the release day in case the boys want to serve out their school year."

"Our primary concern is the safety and welfare of the kids," director Marc Forster said Thursday in a phone call from Chicago.

The director said the controversy over the rape scene took him by surprise because the film is rated PG-13 and the scene itself is "impressionistic."

He noted that the father of one of the children who is now complaining never protested while they were in rehearsals.

...

Forster said they showed the father the script along with the book. "We talked about it. We rehearsed the scene twice with the father present and he never said anything."

Having lived in an Arab country for a number of years, this doesn't surprise me. I don't want to be too explicit about the rape scene in the movie (and in the book) because it would serve as a spoiler for those who have yet had the experience of reading the book. I'll just say that what is depicted in that scene is punishable by the death penalty if adults in some Arab countries are caught doing it, so there is definitely the possibility of some backlash toward the actors in that scene. Why no one figured this out before is beyond me.

Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life

It is impossible to ignore all the gloomy predictions about what will soon happen to the Social Security system in the next two decades. Newspapers, magazines and television news shows are filled with items about the inevitable collapse of the system as the huge baby boom generation leaves the work force and eases its way into a retirement lifestyle largely dependent on monthly Social Security checks. Experts tell us that the system is bound to collapse under the combined weight of a huge increase in the number of beneficiaries and the massive decline in the number of people paying into the system.

Proposed solutions to the problem have generally fallen into two categories, or some combination of the two: increased payroll taxes on those still working and contributing to the system or decreased benefits to those receiving checks. Marc Freedman, in Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life, offers a third possibility. Friedman argues that the system could be saved, requiring no increase in taxes or decreases in benefits, by simply offering incentives to workers to stay in the workforce longer and continuing to pay Social Security taxes and delaying collection of their checks.

Encore serves as a handbook for those nearing the end of their careers either because they have been pushed out the door into an early retirement or because they have become so burned out by their jobs that they leave voluntarily. Freedman knows that, at that point in their lives, many people begin to think about finding the kind of job that they have dreamed about for years while working at something they may not have enjoyed. They often find that they can afford to trade a certain amount of income for more meaningful work and they are anxious to make that trade. But where do they start?

Freedman is suggesting that potential retirees should not settle for the traditional, and usually low paying, “bridge jobs” that are so common today, jobs that are used to ease a person into retirement over a two or three year period. As he points out, there are increasing worker shortages in fields like education, health care, and the non-profit sector, areas in which a person contemplating a career shift in his fifties still has plenty of time to find a meaningful second career. In fact, some are likely to find that their second career will last almost as long as their first one.

Of course none of this will be possible unless employers and the government join together to make it possible for older workers to stay in the work force. Employers need to understand that retaining, rather than discarding, experienced workers is good for business because that experience will be almost impossible to replace from a shrinking pool of potential employees. The government must offer incentives to workers to keep working at least to their normal retirement age of 65-67 years of age so that Social Security taxes can continue to be collected from them. Those who work beyond that age should be exempt from paying Social Security taxes because, by simply not drawing from the system, they are helping to keep in solvent.

Encore is filled with inspirational stories told in their own words by people who have carved out meaningful second careers for themselves. The book’s appendix is filled with suggestions on how to begin a second career and has contact information for organizations in several fields that offer information and advice on how to do just that. This is an important book.

Rated at: 4.0

Dear Heloise - 2

I can't believe that I've found another book-related item in the "Dear Heloise" column, but there it was in my morning paper. This one regards the fact that books loaned out to friends don't always come back home and offers a unique reason why that might happen.

Dear Heloise:

I've read several hints in your column offering methods for ensuring that books are returned promptly to their owners after they've been loaned out. It occurred to me that one of the reasons people don't return books in a timely fashion is because they didn't ask to borrow those books in the first place.

I know many well-meaning friends have loaned books to me that I had no interest in reading. Since I'm afraid that when I return one of these unsolicited books the owner will ask me how I liked the book and I'll have to confess that I didn't read it, those are the books I'm always slowest to return. Your readers might have a better rate of return on the books they loan if they lend only books that people have asked to borrow.

PAM, Sacramento, Calif.

I suppose that it makes a certain amount of sense but it's not something that I've experienced because I never push books on my friends and would never bother to let them push an "unreadable" book on me. In fact, I cringe when friends ask to borrow books and I have a canned response that I use to let them know that I just don't loan books to others. Now, I don't mind giving books away, especially spare copies and a few that I just don't see any reason to keep. But when I do that, I don't want, or expect, to ever see them again (the books, that is, not the friends).

Have you guys ever experienced anything akin to what is described in this letter?

The Jungle Book

This is what I needed this morning to lighten my mood, an old movie trailer for Disney's version of Kipling...something that Kipling would never have imagined in his wildest dreams.






Smile along with me and Mr. Kipling as we consider the path from this 1894 first edition copy of The Jungle Book to Disney's fantastical 1967 version of some of its stories.

The Monsters of Templeton

Those of us who grow up in small town America often cannot wait to escape those towns. We tend to head for the big city as soon as we can, hoping to create a new life, one where we can carve ourselves into images of the people we have always dreamed of becoming. But it is to the comfort of those same small towns that we return to recharge our batteries if things in the big city do not go our way.

That is exactly why Willie Upton found herself reluctantly sneaking back into Templeton, New York, early enough one morning that she hoped to make it to her old bedroom without being noticed. She had no other place to go and she hated to admit that to herself. All she knew was that she had probably burned her bridges at Stanford University forever and that she needed a place to hide.

But it was not going to be that simple because, in Templeton (loosely based on the author’s hometown of Cooperstown), Willie Upton was somebody, a direct descendent of the town’s founder, an historical link with the past and someone in whom the whole town seemed to take great pride. And Willie had failed to consider the reception that she was going to receive from her mother, the former ‘60s flower child who had, unbeknownst to Willie, recently become a born-again Baptist. Willie would simply not be allowed to sit around the house nursing her wounds or to hide in her bedroom.

Sensing that what her daughter needed to get her through her crisis was a project to give her some focus, Vivienne let slip that Willie was really not the product of the free love that her mother had experienced in a San Francisco commune. Rather, she was the result of a Templeton one-night stand and her real father lived within walking distance of her. Refusing to name him, Vivienne offered Willie only one vague clue as to her father’s identity but that was just enough to set Willie off on a quest through her family tree as she attempted to find the father she had never known.

The Monsters of Templeton is a remarkable first novel that will appeal to history buffs, mystery lovers, and fans of good writing alike. Lauren Groff lets many of Willie Upton’s ancestors tell their own stories, with whole chapters written in their individual voices, and she manages to give each of them a distinct and unique personality. Some of them are likable, others not, and it soon becomes apparent that there are more monsters in this story than the one that dies in the town’s deep lake on the same morning that Willie comes home.

Even though this novel will not be published until February 2008, I don’t think that it is too early to put it on your “to be read” list. I have been meaning to make it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, for several years now and, when I finally do get there, I will not be able to keep myself from thinking about the fictional Templeton and all of Willie Upton’s amazing ancestors. It will be a little like coming home.

Rated at: 4.0