Things I Learned This Week
Kids' books, Zora Neale Hurston, Roger Brown, Orhan Pamuk, and My Old Ass
Who knows what today will bring, but this week has been another buster of the balls. There was a lot to complain about, remember, be sad about, and live through, but these are the good things that floated to the top.
Two of my favorite children's book authors have started a Substack called, aptly enough, Looking at Picture Books. Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett will be exploring how picture books work. This is a total dream collab for anyone interested in kids' books. Fangirling hard on this one.
Caught the American Masters episode on Zora Neale Hurston this week, and man, what I didn’t know. I knew she was an author, but I did not know she was an anthropologist and a folklorist who traveled the American South collecting audio, video, and stories that portrayed racial struggles in the early 20th century. Her story is empowering and heartbreaking, as she died forgotten until Alice Walker plucked her books and archive from relative obscurity. Thank goodness.
I have become a big fan of miniatures in the last few years. This week in art class, we talked about Roger Brown, a Chicago artist from the 70s and 80s who was raised in Alabama and found his style through folk art, religion, and social injustice. I was familiar with his distinct paintings, but I just learned his stone house was a museum and that he made things like this spectacular miniature tin diner. That and I saw Calder’s miniature circus the last time I was in NYC, and WOW—love, love, love.
My husband and I rewatched Memento this week, and it still holds up, even if it is not quite as mind-blowing as it was when it came out. Fun to see how Christopher Nolan’s filmmaking has evolved and stayed the same. The reverse-order film still works, but boy, is seeing a man with full-body tattoos not shocking anymore. At all. Also, we saw My Old Ass at the theater after a rave on the Slate Culture Gabfest. The film is being sold as a comedy, but the title, poster, and whole marketing campaign are terrible. It’s more of a sweet (and sometimes funny) coming-of-age story. We loved it, especially the female lead, Maisy Stella. I told my nineteen-year-old son it was a very Gen Z movie, but he and his girlfriend both hated it, so maybe there’s more boomer in me than I thought.
Oceanography is endlessly fascinating. Did you know that back in the old days, they used to actually drop glass bottles with messages inside, imploring people to write in if found? Using the locations of where they ended up, that’s how they mapped the ocean's currents. They’ve done the same with cargo ship containers, like the ones that busted open with Nikes and another with bath toys in the 90s. They use more high tech stuff now, but cool (and horrifying) to think about all the crap floating in the ocean. Including all those dang Garfields!
My world lit class has a subtopic of time, and this week, we’ve been looking at Turkish authors, including Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for his 2008 book The Museum of Innocence. The book, set in Istanbul between 1975 and 1984, is a love story between a wealthy businessman and a poor distant relative. A subplot surrounds the idea of hoarding and collecting as a shameful act that becomes public and appreciated in the form of a museum. The cool part about this is he actually made a museum based on the museum described in the book. I can’t handle how meta and awesome this is—already planning a trip to Istanbul just to visit this Museum of Innocence.
Quote of the week.
“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
‘Til Tuesday kids.
Burgin
(I’m finishing college at 50+, follow along and read my story here.)