Since time immemorial, anytime, anywhere, I’ve loved to read. At age 2, I would turn the pages and marvel; transported by adventures beyond my limited knowledge of different cultures, histories, and societies.

At age 4, reading introduced me to life and people in real and fantastic ways. It ignited my imagination, taking me around the world. Without ever leaving home or school, I could walk in someone else shoes.

Fortunately, in first grade, my reading ability was encouraged by my teacher. When it was reading time, I sat with two others in the hallway with advanced story books while the rest of the class was still making their way through Dick and Jane —  look, see, say. Like most every kid in the 1950’s I teethed on Dick and Jane and Spot the dog and Puff the cat. I was unaware of the sub-text of gender stereotypes because my mom and dad were living the 50’s dream. My mom stayed at home to take care of the children (me) and keep house, while the my dad went to work. I did not even know that racial and cultural diversity was missing because of the white middle class milieu I was growing up in. But, books offered possibilities beyond the constraints of my neighborhood.

Although my parents were proud of my academic prowess and encouraged my success, books were not much in evidence in our household. My mainstay was a set of World Book Encyclopedias where I poured over the illustrations of international costumes and customs, beckoning me to a wider world, showing me how different people lived and expressed themselves through their dress. My curiosity piqued, I longed to know more about everything. 

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In college and thereafter I was able to realize my need to live surrounded by books. Even when money was scarce, buying books came first. I would purchase some to read right away and some for the future. Sometimes, even if I felt was not ready for it, I would buy a book and put it under my pillow, hoping that as I slept the wisdom would seep in.

With Richard I met my match. His love of books is at least equal to mine….so over the years we have amassed bookshelves full, that spill over on to the floor and stack high on our bedside tables. We never seem to find the time to organize the hodgepodge on our shelves so they remain in a mishmash of genres with no sorting of fiction and non-fiction: science is mixed with travel adventure, poetry is interspersed with memoir.  Try to find a book? HA! The good thing about this lack of a system is that one never knows what one might find.

Oh, if only, to live with an orderly arrangement like Chris Cobb’s rainbow display at Adobe Books, SF, 2004.

Buying books can be an addiction and now with online vendors of used books Thriftbooks and Abes Books it is especially easy to fuel. The obsession can easily be justified because the booksellers tout their environmental efforts that save millions of old books a year from the landfill.

To run with the gamut from potboilers and classics to paperbacks and rare fine artists books, with walls lined with stories is both challenge and comfort. In the night when I can’t sleep I’ll go to the bookshelf and slide out an old friend — reassured that the story is there again and again for me to enjoy. Grateful to the author who struggled to put their words to paper and grateful to the team of people: editors, illustrators, publishers who invested time and energy to bring those words to the public (me).

I have no recollection of when or how The Little Indian Weaver book came into my life some sixty or so years ago. But I can recall how much I enjoyed learning about people different from myself. Although today some of the descriptions might be passé even offensive, it remains a touching story about the friendship between a white boy and an Navaho Indian girl. 

As a filmmaker and author Madeline Brandeis devoted herself to telling stories geared towards use in the elementary-school classroom illustrated with photographs she took on location with “Ref”, her trusty reflex camera. She produced 14 volumes in the popular series The Children of All Lands. After her untimely death in 1937 at the age of 39, four additional book were completed.

This dedication by Madeline Brandeis so beautifully expresses why I love this book:
To every child of every land,
Little sister, little brother,
As in this book your lives unfold,
May you learn to love each other.

All of Brandeis’s books can be borrowed from the Internet Archive.
Project Gutenberg’s copy of The Little Indian Weaver.
A film of The Little Indian Weaver in the Prelinger Archives

 

This photo is one of only three that I have of my Great Grandmother Mary. It is especially precious given how limited photography was in the 1910’s. Although Kodak’s Brownie was already popularizing photography, I can only surmise that in Montana taking a picture was still a rare occasion. That Mary wanted to stage a scene of her reading to her boys – my Grandfather, Edward 1901b (right) and his brother Art 1894b (left) is evidence of the value she placed on reading.

As a child my wildest imagination was stoked by the likes of Winnie the Pooh, Mole, Rat and Mr. Toad, Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, The Little Prince, Huck Finn, Dorothy from The Wizard of OZ plus the fairytales of Grimm and Andersen.

My roll call of characters continues to grow. A few of my classics include:
Doc in John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row
Stephen Dedalus, in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Father in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
Gregor Samsa in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

This week Mind Games bring us closer to the closest character in our play book — a deep look at the possibilities in being someone else and in experiencing someone else being you. As an exercise in role playing we will explore how empathy and understanding can be enhanced to benefit interpersonal relationships.

This can be played with a partner or while looking at yourself in a mirror.