April Fool's Day a look back...

I know that most people look forward to April Fool's Day with anticipation. I am not one of those people. My husband is particularly good at practical jokes. So while most people cannot wait for the fun to begin, I wonder, 'What's going to happen next?’  This year is going to be different. I am going to take the bull by the horns (figuratively speaking of course) and plan some good pranks of my own. I am investigating pranks a plenty and I will finally have my day! To insure my success I have studied the world wide web and found some helpful books.

While I was trying to discern how to prank someone successfully, I wondered how April Fool's Day began. It isn't a legal holiday, yet most countries celebrate it in some form. Some historians believe the celebration began back in 1582 when the Gregorian calendar changed the start of the new year from the week of April 1 to January 1. Word spread slowly and some foolish people were reluctant to accept the change. They continued celebrating the New Year on April 1st. These individuals thereby earned the title of ’Fool’. People in their wonderful prankful way decided to send these 'fools' on errands. Thus began the April Fool's Day Frivolity.

During my quest for pranks I learned that even big business enjoys jokes.  Starbucks created a Plenta size (128 fl. oz.) and Micra size (2 fl. oz.) coffees to appear on April 1st of last year.  One website even went so far as to remove all the vowels in their transmission on April 1st. I laughed myself silly over that one.  I think I recall thinking there might have been a computer glitch last year. Of course, my savvy husband was aware that this was an April Fool's Day Joke (Sigh).

Sorry I digress, You, lucky readers, (whether you are cowering in dread of the April Fool's Day antics or gleefully rubbing your hands together waiting to catch some innocents by surprise) shall benefit from my investigation. I hope these books and websites help you get the most of your holiday frolic! I am sure I will finally succeed in tricking someone this year. I know I can do it. Wishing you success and lighthearted fun this April Fool's Day!

 

 The Practical Jokers Handbook collected by Tim Nyberg

51 High Tech Practical Jokes for the Evil Genius by Brad Graham

Cubicle Warfare: 101 office traps and pranks by John Austin

Sir John Hargrave's Mischief Maker's Manual by Sir John Hargrave

http://www.practicaljokebook.com/

www.aprilfools.us

Nicaraguan Authors and Poets

Ruben Dario would have been 144-years-old this year.  Born in Metapa, Nicaragua in 1867, he is one of the greatest poets in the Spanish language.  I first learned about Dario when I was in college and took a Latin American literature class.  He is a household name in Latin America but he is barely known in the the English-speaking world because his works are difficult to translate.  He began publishing poems at the age of 12 and his rustic birthplace is now named Ciudad Dario.  He traveled all over Latin America, worked as a journalist, visited France and New York, was married twice, and became a diplomat. He fathered several children, wrote an autobiography, went bankrupt, and died of pneumonia at the age of 49.  More than a century after his death, he is revered as a folk hero around Central America. A huge portrait of him greets arrivals at Managua's international airport.

This is my favorite poem by Dario translated into English:

El Nacimiento de la Col (The Birth of the Cabbage)

In the Garden of Eden, on a clear day when the flowers were created, and before Eve was tempted by the serpent, the evil spirit approached the most beautiful new rose, at the moment when she was offering to the caress of the celestial sun the red purity of her lips.
"You are beautiful."
"Indeed I am," said the rose.
"Beautiful and happy," continued the devil. "You have the color, the grace, and the scent.  However..."
"However?"
"You are not useful.  Can you see those tall trees bent with the weight of their acorns?  Those, besides being leafy, feed multitudes of live beings that come to rest underneath the branches.  Rose, to be beautiful isn't much..."
The rose then- tempted as a woman would be after- wished to be useful, so much that she became pale.
The Good Lord passed by the next morning.
"Father," said the floral princess, trembling in her scented beauty- "Would you make me useful?"
"So be it, my daughter," the Lord answered, smiling.
And so the world saw the first cabbage.

Try Dario's works along with these other talented Nicaraguan writers.

Songs of Life and Hope by Ruben Dario

Stories and Poems by Ruben Dario

Homage to the American Indians by Ernesto Cardenal

Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand by Gioconda Belli

The Scroll of Seduction by Gioconda Belli

Road from Ar Ramadi by Camilo Mejia

The Adults

The Adults, Alison Espach's debut novel, has left me feeling a bit discombobulated.  It is wryly, tragically humorous and the dialog between characters is so smart, it reads like an Aaron Sorkin or Amy Sherman-Palladino script.  (Nobody I know talks like this in real life, but it's fun to imagine they do.)  Still, the humor is laid like a thin veneer on top of a very troubling story.  It is the story of Emily Marie Vidal, an appropriately disaffected 15-year-old from an appropriately dysfunctional family in a wealthy neighborhood in suburban Connecticut.  It is the story of her father's infidelity with the neighbor, her parents' subsequent divorce, and the apparently-related suicide of the neighbor's husband.  It is the story of the illicit love affair between Emily and her 24-year-old English teacher that grows amidst the tragedy.  And, ultimately, it is the story of growing up, even if what that means is different than what it seemed in childhood to be. 

None of the characters escape Espach's pen in the assessment of the 21st century disaffected, ironic, suburban culture.  Each of the characters, including Emily, is portrayed with flaws.  Each seems to be striving toward something they're not: older or younger; richer or more beautiful; more intelligent or less.  The most disappointing aspect of the book is the disconnect between Emily's teen years and her young adulthood.  College is treated with a few cursory sentences in retrospect from the vantage point of her early twenties. Jumping from (chronological) immaturity to (chronological) adulthood glosses over a key time when the transition that is, or ought to be, made.  Each review of this book that I've seen is a little better than the last, but I'm not sure I came away liking the book, and I definitely didn't have much affinity for the characters.  Still, the story is interesting in its unsettling ways and offers a lot to think and talk about.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: 100 Years Later

On March 25, 1911, New York City was the location for one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U. S. history.  The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, most of them immigrant women.  Many of the workers could not escape because the managers had locked the doors to the stairs and exits.  The fire led to legislation that improved factory safety standards and led to better conditions for factory workers.
This month is the 100th anniversary of the fire and this year's commemoration event will be different. The five women and one man that had previously been unidentified were finally given names and the complete roll of the dead will be read on March 25, 2011, in New York. 
I don't know why this horrible event has always fascinated me.  Empathy for the victims and their families?  Bittersweet gladness at the improved labor laws? Or is it that my birthday (March 25th) is always a constant reminder?  Whatever the reason, I am happy that the families of the six will finally have closure and that their loved ones can now be recognized.

Triangle: the Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle

Triangle by Katharine Weber--large print fiction

Lost by Jacqeline Davies--young adult fiction

Threads and Flames by Esther Friesner--young adult fiction

Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix--young adult fiction



This memorial sits over the graves of the previously unknown. These are their names:

Maria Giuseppa Lauletti
Max Florin
Concetta Prestifilippo
Josephine Cammarata
Dora Evans
Fannie Rosen

Cinderella Ate My Daughter

As I handed out vitamins over breakfast this morning, a debate ensued over who got Belle and who got Ariel.  As I walked out of the house, after handing over pink lunchboxes and backpacks, I tripped over a pair of rhinestone-encrusted pink shoes while looking at the 3-story pink doll house.  As I pulled out of the garage, I glanced at the lavender and pink princess-adorned bikes in the corner.  And as I read Peggy Orenstein's new book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, I read it not as a dispassionate book reviewer, but as the mother of two young daughters.  By page 20, I was ready to do a sweep of the toys in my house.  But, the further I read into the book, the more I realized Orenstein wasn't advocating an end to the pink, frilly culture so much as she was using her investigative skills to try to resolve a personal dilemma: how do I parent my young daughter in today's culture?  She was writing it with the same questions I had as I read it. 

As a journalist, Orenstein's spent the past 20 years writing about issues that affect girls and women.  Clearly, she was coming at the princess brigade with a slightly jaundiced eye.  However, she approaches the question of the impact of the hyper-sexualized images and toys that we present young girls in a fairly open, questioning manner.  She is forthright with her ambivalence, which I found refreshing both as a reader and as a parent.  She doesn't provide any clear answers, but neither does she shy away from more controversial topics.  As she said in an interview on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, she can't point to a clear-cut causality that exposing little girls to everything pink is going to turn them into overly sexualized, depressed teenagers.  However, there are trends and patterns of which we should be aware.  She raises some points similar to Cecelia Rivenbark's Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: And Other Words of Delicate Southern Wisdom (Best. Title. Ever.). 

I once pledged to have a princess-free household (clearly, this was before the girls were old enough to express opinions), but have since played various roles from the queen, to the fairy godmother, to the evil stepmother.  Cinderella Ate My Daughter raised interesting questions about the implications of the various things to which my daughters are exposed in a way that both comforted me and cautioned me to consider thinking about the implications.

It only takes a moment

  It's funny how one moment or event can make time slow and make you look at your life.  The book written by Lisa Genova, Left Neglected takes a glimpse at life for Sarah and her family.  Sarah was independent and a work-a-holic. She enjoyed her family but making time for them was another item on her long to-do list. This to-do-list came to a crashing halt the day she was looking for her phone while driving. It changed her family's life forever.

Lisa Genova follows up her NY Times best seller, Still Alice, with another surefire hit.  Left Neglected  is another fantastic book that details the lives of those who are brain injured. Her new book focuses on Left Neglect, an unusual brain injury, that is caused by damage to the right cerebral hemisphere. This injury causes the person to visually neglect the left-hand side of space. This means that the person with this injury cannot feel, recognize or see things on their left side. It could be the left side of a room, the left side of their body or even the left side of their plate.

Genova approaches this serious subject with humor and candor. She shows us what it is like as Sarah begins to realize all the changes she needs to make in her life to cope with her disability.  I highly recommend this book and hope you will look at your own priorities.  Perhaps one of the choices you will choose to make is not texting and driving.

The Informationist- A Terrific Debut Thriller

Debut novels, especially debut thrillers, scare me.  Is the plot going to be too convoluted?  Will it be too easy and you can guess how it ends by the second chapter?  Writing an effective thriller is extremely difficult, but Taylor Stevens has done a tremendous job with her debut novel The Informationist.

Vanessa Munroe is our main character.  She travels the globe compiling information for private and public companies about various foreign countries, such as local customs, nuances to the languages and who are the most powerful people.  At the beginning of the book she finishes one job only to find herself in quite a different one.  Oilman Richard Burbank hires Munroe as a last ditch effort to find his daughter, Emily, who went missing in Cameroon four years earlier.  Our heroine is very familiar with Cameroon, in ways both good and bad, and reluctantly takes the case. 

Munroe must trace Emily's steps through Africa with the assistance of Miles Bradford, a friend of Richard's whom he insists keep track of Munroe's movements.  However, Munroe has plans of her own as she hires the skills of Francisco Beyard.  Beyard is a gun-runner in Cameroon and has a past connection with Munroe.  As the three of them go through the heart of Africa, they soon begin wondering who they can trust.  It seems that everyone is trying to keep them from finding the truth behind Emily's disappearance.

Also, check out Taylor Stevens' website for information on her past life.  Very powerful stuff.