Tomorrow Is Turkey Day! Be Thankful!

Happy Thanksgiving to all the readers of this blog. Be sure not to overindulge at the dinner table tomorrow evening.

If there is a community fridge in your area, please donate any canned and/or perishable food items to help those less fortunate.

The community fridge concept, reported an article in The Christian Science Monitor Weekly (May 10, 2021), "first appeared in Germany around 2012." They have since "emerged," said the magazine, in the United States "as a grassroots response--neighbors feeding neighbors." These "community fridges let anyone give and take food freely."

Silence, Please!

Archival photos of four children's reading rooms in the New York Public Library system appeared as a back page feature in the New York Times Book Review (November 12, 2023). The photos were gathered by Erica Ackerberg, the Book Review's photo editor.

Out of the four photos, the one that especially caught my attention is the photo taken in 1903 in East Harlem's Aguilar branch, named, said the caption, for Grace Aguilar, a 19th-century Anglo-Jewish writer. Above the checkout counter was a sign that said in big letters SILENCE.

I'm old enough to remember the days when libraries were quiet sanctuaries for bookworms like me. They were places where speaking loudly was unthinkable. Not anymore. And it's not just the patrons. The library staff, not setting a good example, are just as loud.

The only time a patron is admonished is when their mobile phone starts to ring. "Please turn your phone off in the library," a library staffer will announce. Otherwise, the loud talk is ignored and not a word of disapproval is uttered by the librarian or other library employee.

James Baldwin Was A Lefty

I have read several biographies of the black novelist/essayist James Baldwin (1924-1987) and seen many photos and documentaries about him. None, as far as I can remember, indicated which hand he favored when he set pen to paper.

Just when I thought I knew all there was to know about Baldwin, it turns out that not only did he lean leftward in his socio-political views, he also wrote with his left hand. (I wonder if any of his teachers ever tried to dissuade him from left-handed writing, since most people are right-handed.)

In the book, The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Debate over Race in America by Nicholas Buccola (Princeton University Press, 2019), which is about the famous 1965 war of ideas between the two men at Cambridge University in Britain, there is a photo of Baldwin at his writing table. The photographer beautifully captured Baldwin as he sat, shirt collar open, necktie untied around his neck, deeply concentrating on what he was writing. Between the fingers of his right hand was the ever-present cigarette, in his left hand a pencil. Near at hand was a Dixie cup either of water or his favorite booze. It was probably the latter.

I acquired the book more than a week ago when it was among several hardcover books my local public library was offering for free. When I begin reading it, I am sure I will discover other details of Baldwin's life previously missing from other books.

After seeing that photo, I began wondering if the two James Baldwin biopics that are soon to be released noted his left-handedness. I will be paying close attention to their accuracy.