Harper Lee Gives Advice to Young Writers in One of Her Only Interviews Captured on Audio (1964)

in Books, K-12, Literature, Radio, Writing | January 3rd, 2022

You know the char­ac­ter Boo Radley? Well, if you know Boo, then you under­stand why I wouldn’t be doing an inter­view. Because I am real­ly Boo. 

– Harp­er Lee, in a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with Oprah Win­frey

Author Harp­er Lee loved writ­ing but resist­ed inter­views, grant­i­ng just a hand­ful in the fifty-six years that fol­lowed the pub­li­ca­tion of her Pulitzer Prize win­ning 1960 nov­el, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird. 

Go Set a Watch­man, her sec­ond, and final, nov­el began as an ear­ly draft of To Kill a Mock­ing­bird, and was pub­lished in 2015, a year before her death.

Roy Newquist, inter­view­ing Lee in 1964 for WQXR’s Coun­ter­point, above, prob­a­bly expect­ed the hot­shot young nov­el­ist had many more books in her when he solicit­ed her advice for “the tal­ent­ed young­ster who wants to carve a career as a cre­ative writer.”

Pre­sum­ably Lee did too. “I hope to good­ness that every nov­el I do gets bet­ter and bet­ter, not worse and worse,” she remarked toward the end of the inter­view.

She oblig­ed Newquist by offer­ing some advice, but stopped short of offer­ing career tips to those eager for the low­down on how to write an instant best­seller that will be adapt­ed for stage and screen, earn a peren­ni­al spot in mid­dle school cur­ricu­lums, and — just last week — be crowned the Best Book of the Past 125 Years in a New York Times read­ers’ poll, beat­ing out titles by well regard­ed, and vast­ly more pro­lif­ic authors on the order of J.R.R. Tolkien, George Orwell, Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez, and Toni Mor­ri­son.

“Peo­ple who write for reward by way of recog­ni­tion or mon­e­tary gain don’t know what they’re doing. They’re in the cat­e­go­ry of those who write; they are not writ­ers,” she drawled.

Harp­er Lee’s Advice to Young Writ­ers

  • Hope for the best and expect noth­ing in terms of recog­ni­tion
  • Write to please an audi­ence of one: your­self
  • Write to exor­cise your divine dis­con­tent
  • Gath­er mate­r­i­al from the world around you, then turn inward and reflect
  • Don’t major in writ­ing

Lis­ten­ing to the record­ing, it occurs to us that this inter­view con­tains some more advice for young writ­ers, or rather, those bring­ing up chil­dren in the dig­i­tal age.

When Newquist won­ders why it is that “such a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of our sen­si­tive and endur­ing fic­tion springs from writ­ers born and reared in the South,” Lee, a native of Mon­roeville, Alaba­ma, makes a strong case for cul­ti­vat­ing an envi­ron­ment where­in chil­dren have no choice but to make their own fun:

I think … the absence of things to do and see and places to go means a great deal to our own pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We can’t go to see a play; we can’t go to see a big league base­ball game when we want to. We enter­tain our­selves.

This was my child­hood: If I went to a film once a month it was pret­ty good for me, and for all chil­dren like me. We had to use our own devices in our play, for our enter­tain­ment. We did­n’t have much mon­ey. Nobody had any mon­ey. We did­n’t have toys, noth­ing was done for us, so the result was that we lived in our imag­i­na­tion most of the time. We devised things; we were read­ers, and we would trans­fer every­thing we had seen on the print­ed page to the back­yard in the form of high dra­ma.

Did you nev­er play Tarzan when you were a child? Did you nev­er tramp through the jun­gle or refight the bat­tle of Get­tys­burg in some form or fash­ion? We did. Did you nev­er live in a tree house and find the whole world in the branch­es of a chin­aber­ry tree? We did.

I think that kind of life nat­u­ral­ly pro­duces more writ­ers than, say, an envi­ron­ment like 82nd Street in New York.

Hear that, par­ents and teach­ers of young writ­ers?

  • Nur­ture the cre­ative spir­it by reg­u­lar­ly pry­ing the dig­i­tal device’s from young writ­ers’ hands (and minds.)

Bite your tongue if, thus deprived, they trot off to the the­ater, the mul­ti­plex, or the sports sta­di­um. Remem­ber that iPhones hadn’t been invent­ed when Lee was stump­ing for the ton­ic effects of her chin­aber­ry tree. These days, any unplugged real world expe­ri­ence will be to the good.

If the young writ­ers com­plain — and they sure­ly will — sub­ject your­self to the same terms.

Call it sol­i­dar­i­ty, self-care, or a way of uphold­ing your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion…

Read an account of anoth­er Harp­er Lee inter­view, dur­ing her one day vis­it to Chica­go to pro­mote the 1962 film of To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and attend a lit­er­ary tea in her hon­or, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Harp­er Lee Gets a Request for a Pho­to; Offers Impor­tant Life Advice Instead (2006)

Harp­er Lee on the Joy of Read­ing Real Books: “Some Things Should Hap­pen On Soft Pages, Not Cold Met­al”

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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When Maurice Sendak Created a Dark Nutcracker Ballet

in Books, Dance, Design, K-12 | December 24th, 2021

Chil­dren are the per­fect audi­ence for The Nut­crack­er. 

(Well, chil­dren and the grand­moth­ers who can’t wait for the tod­dler to start sit­ting still long enough to make the hol­i­day-themed bal­let an annu­al tra­di­tion…)

Mau­rice Sendak, the cel­e­brat­ed children’s book author and illus­tra­tor, agreed, but found the stan­dard George Bal­an­chine-chore­o­graphed ver­sion so trea­cly as to be unwor­thy of chil­dren, dub­bing it the “most bland and banal of bal­lets.”

The 1983 pro­duc­tion he col­lab­o­rat­ed on with Pacif­ic North­west Bal­let artis­tic direc­tors Kent Stow­ell and Fran­cia Rus­sell did away with the notion that chil­dren should be “cod­dled and sweet­ened and sug­arplummed and kept away from the dark aspects of life when there is no way of doing that.”

Tchaikovsky’s famous score remained in place, but Sendak and Stow­ell ducked the source mate­r­i­al for, well, more source mate­r­i­al. As per the New York City Ballet’s web­site, the Russ­ian Impe­r­i­al Ballet’s chief bal­let mas­ter, Mar­ius Peti­pa, com­mis­sioned Tchaikovsky to write music for an adap­ta­tion of Alexan­der Dumas’ child-friend­ly sto­ry The Nut­crack­er of Nurem­berg. But The Nut­crack­er of Nurem­berg was inspired by the much dark­er E.T.A. Hoff­man tale, 1816’s “The Nut­crack­er and the Mouse King.”

The “weird, dark qual­i­ties” of the orig­i­nal were much more in keep­ing with Sendak’s self pro­claimed “obses­sive theme”: “Chil­dren sur­viv­ing child­hood.”

Sendak want­ed the bal­let to focus more intent­ly on Clara, the young girl who receives the Nut­crack­er as a Christ­mas present in Act I:

It’s about her vic­to­ry over her fear and her grow­ing feel­ings for the prince… She is over­whelmed with grow­ing up and has no knowl­edge of what this means. I think the bal­let is all about a strong emo­tion­al sense of some­thing hap­pen­ing to her, which is bewil­der­ing.

 

Bal­an­chine must have felt dif­fer­ent­ly. He benched Clara in Act II, let­ting the adult Sug­arplum Fairy take cen­ter­stage, to guide the chil­dren through a pas­sive tour of the Land of Sweets.

As Sendak scoffed to the Dal­las Morn­ing News:

It’s all very, very pret­ty and very, very beau­ti­ful… I always hat­ed the Sug­arplum Fairy. I always want­ed to whack her.

“Like what kids real­ly want is a can­dy king­dom. That short­changes children’s feel­ings about life,” echoes Stow­ell, who revived the Sendak com­mis­sion, fea­tur­ing the illus­tra­tor’s sets and cos­tumes every win­ter for 3 decades.

In lieu of the Sug­ar Plum Fairy, Sendak and Stow­ell intro­duced a daz­zling caged pea­cock — a fan favorite played by the same dancer who plays Clara’s moth­er in Act I.

The threats, in the form of eccen­tric uncle Drosselmeier, a fero­cious tiger, and a mas­sive rat pup­pet with an impres­sive, puls­ing tail, have a Freudi­an edge.

The paint­ed back­drops, grow­ing Christ­mas tree, and Nut­crack­er toy look as if they emerged from one of Sendak’s books. (He fol­lowed up the bal­let by illus­trat­ing a new trans­la­tion of the Hoff­man orig­i­nal.)

The Sendak-designed cos­tumes are more under­stat­ed, thought Pacif­ic North­west Bal­let cos­tumer Mark Zap­pone, who described work­ing with Sendak as “an incred­i­ble joy and plea­sure” and recalled the fun­ny ongo­ing bat­tle with the Act II Moors cos­tumes to Seat­tle Met:

Maurice’s design had the women in quite bil­lowy pants. So we ripped them out of the box, threw them on the girls upstairs in the stu­dios, and Kent start­ed rehears­ing the Moors. And one by one, the girls got their legs stuck in those pants and—boom—hit the floor, all six of them. It was like, “Oh my God, what are we going to do about that one?” They end­ed up, for years, twist­ing the legs in their cos­tumes and mak­ing a lit­tle tuck here and there. It was a rite of pas­sage; if you were going to do the Moors, don’t for­get to twist your pants around so you won’t get stuck in them.

Rent a filmed ver­sion of Mau­rice Sendak’s The Nut­crack­er on Ama­zon Prime. (Look for a Wild Thing cameo in the boat­ing scene with Clara and her Prince.)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

Mau­rice Sendak Sent Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Let­ters to Fans — So Beau­ti­ful a Kid Ate One

Mau­rice Sendak Illus­trates Tol­stoy in 1963 (with a Lit­tle Help from His Edi­tor)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Oscar-Winning Animation of Charles Dickens’ Classic Tale, A Christmas Carol (1971)

in Animation, K-12, Literature | December 20th, 2021

I HAVE endeav­oured in this Ghost­ly lit­tle book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my read­ers out of humour with them­selves, with each oth­er, with the sea­son, or with me. May it haunt their hous­es pleas­ant­ly, and no one wish to lay it. — Charles Dick­ens

Some twen­ty years before Tim Bur­ton’s The Night­mare Before Christ­mas, anoth­er ani­mat­ed enter­tain­ment inject­ed “the most won­der­ful time of the year” with a potent dose of hor­ror.

Sure­ly I’m not the only child of the 70s to have been equal parts mes­mer­ized and strick­en by direc­tor Richard Williams’ faith­ful, if high­ly con­densed, inter­pre­ta­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol.

The 25-minute short fea­tures a host of hair-rais­ing images drawn direct­ly from Dick­ens’ text, from a spec­tral hearse in Scrooge’s hall­way and the Ghost of Marley’s gap­ing maw, to a night sky pop­u­lat­ed with mis­er­able, howl­ing phan­toms and the mon­strous chil­dren lurk­ing beneath the Ghost of Christ­mas Present’s skirts:

Yel­low, mea­gre, ragged, scowl­ing, wolfish; but pros­trate, too, in their humil­i­ty. Where grace­ful youth should have filled their fea­tures out, and touched them with its fresh­est tints, a stale and shriv­elled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twist­ed them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, dev­ils lurked, and glared out men­ac­ing. No change, no degra­da­tion, no per­ver­sion of human­i­ty, in any grade, through all the mys­ter­ies of won­der­ful cre­ation, has mon­sters half so hor­ri­ble and dread… This boy is Igno­rance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that writ­ten which is Doom, unless the writ­ing be erased. 

Pro­duc­er Chuck Jones, whose ear­li­er ani­mat­ed hol­i­day spe­cial, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas!, is in keep­ing with his clas­sic work on Bugs Bun­ny and oth­er Warn­er Bros. faves, insist­ed that this car­toon should mir­ror the look of the John Leech steel engrav­ings illus­trat­ing Dick­ens’ 1843 orig­i­nal.

D.T. Neth­ery, a for­mer Dis­ney ani­ma­tion artist and fan of this Christ­mas Car­ol explains that the desired Vic­to­ri­an look was achieved with a labor-inten­sive process that involved draw­ing direct­ly on cels with Mars Omnichrom grease pen­cil, then paint­ing the backs and pho­tograph­ing them against detailed water­col­ored back­grounds.

As direc­tor Williams recalls below, he and a team includ­ing mas­ter ani­ma­tors Ken Har­ris and Abe Lev­i­tow were rac­ing against an impos­si­bly tight dead­line that left them pulling 14-hour days and 7‑day work weeks. Report­ed­ly, the final ver­sion was com­plet­ed with just an hour to spare. (“We slept under our desks for this thing.”)

As Michael Lyons observes in Ani­ma­tion Scoop, the exhaust­ed ani­ma­tors went above and beyond with Jones’ request for a pan over London’s rooftops, “mak­ing the entire twen­ty-five min­utes of the short film take on the appear­ance of art work that has come to life”:

…there are scenes that seem to involve cam­era pans, or sequences in which the cam­era seem­ing­ly cir­cles around the char­ac­ters. Much of this involved not just ani­mat­ing the char­ac­ters, but the back­grounds as well and in dif­fer­ent sizes as they move toward and away from the frame. The hand-craft­ed qual­i­ty, cou­pled with a three-dimen­sion­al feel in these moments, is down­right tac­tile.

Revered British char­ac­ter actors Alis­tair Sim (Scrooge) and Michael Hordern (Marley’s Ghost) lent some extra class, repris­ing their roles from the ever­green, black-and-white 1951 adap­ta­tion.

The short­’s tele­vi­sion pre­miere caused such a sen­sa­tion that it was giv­en a sub­se­quent the­atri­cal release, putting it in the run­ning for an Oscar for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Sub­ject. (It won, beat­ing out Tup-Tup from Croa­t­ia and the NSFW-ish Kama Sutra Rides Again which Stan­ley Kubrick had hand­picked to play before A Clock­work Orange in the UK.)

With the­aters in Dal­las, Los Ange­les, Port­land, Prov­i­dence, Tal­la­has­see and Van­cou­ver can­celling planned live pro­duc­tions of A Christ­mas Car­ol out of con­cern for the pub­lic health dur­ing this lat­est wave of the pan­dem­ic, we’re hap­py to get our Dick­en­sian fix, snug­gled up on the couch with this ani­mat­ed 50-year-old arti­fact of our child­hood.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christ­mas Car­ol Just as Dick­ens Read It

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

A Christ­mas Car­ol, A Vin­tage Radio Broad­cast by Orson Welles (1939)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Secrets of Beethoven’s Fifth, the World’s Most Famous Symphony

in Animation, K-12, Music, TED Talks | November 24th, 2021

Revered by music lovers of tem­pera­ments as var­ied as Peanuts’ Schroed­er and A Clock­work Orange’s Alex, Lud­wig van Beethoven is one of the most cel­e­brat­ed com­posers in the West­ern clas­si­cal music canon.

Sym­pho­ny No. 5 in C minor is sure­ly one of his most rec­og­nized, and fre­quent­ly per­formed works, thanks in large part to its dra­mat­ic open­ing motif –

dun-dun-dun-DAH!

Music edu­ca­tor Hanako Sawa­da’s enter­tain­ing TED-Ed les­son, ani­mat­ed by Yael Reis­feld above, delves into the sto­ry behind this sym­pho­ny, “one of the most explo­sive pieces of music ever com­posed.”

Mid­dle and high school music teach­ers will be glad to know the cre­ators lean into the height­ened emo­tions of the piece, depict­ing the com­pos­er as a tor­tured genius whose pierc­ing gaze is bluer than Game of Thrones’ Night King.

Beethoven was already enjoy­ing a suc­cess­ful rep­u­ta­tion at the time of the symphony’s 1808 pre­miere, but not because he toiled in the ser­vice of reli­gion or wealthy patrons like his peers.

Instead, he was an ear­ly-19th cen­tu­ry bad ass, pri­or­i­tiz­ing self-expres­sion and pour­ing his emo­tions into com­po­si­tions he then sold to var­i­ous music pub­lish­ers.

With the Fifth, he real­ly shook off the rigid struc­tures of pre­vail­ing clas­si­cal norms, embrac­ing Roman­ti­cism in all its glo­ri­ous tur­moil.

The famous open­ing motif is repeat­ed to the point of obses­sion:

Through­out the piece, the motif is passed around the orches­tra like a whis­per, grad­u­al­ly reach­ing more and more instru­ments until it becomes a roar.

Besot­ted teenagers, well acquaint­ed with this feel­ing, are equipped with the inter­nal trom­bones, pic­co­los, and con­tra­bas­soons of the sort that make the piece even more urgent in feel.

Just wait until they get hold of Beethoven’s Immor­tal Beloved let­ters, writ­ten a few years after the sym­pho­ny, when the hear­ing loss he was wrestling with had pro­gressed to near total deaf­ness.

Whether or not it was the com­pos­er (and not his biog­ra­ph­er) who char­ac­ter­ized the cen­tral motif as the sound of “Fate knock­ing at the door,” it’s an apt, and riv­et­ing notion.

Take a quiz, par­tic­i­pate in a guid­ed dis­cus­sion, and cus­tomize Hanako Sawada’s les­son, “The Secrets of the World’s Most Famous Sym­pho­ny,” here.

Lis­ten to the sym­pho­ny in its entire­ty below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beethoven’s Unfin­ished Tenth Sym­pho­ny Gets Com­plet­ed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Hear How It Sounds

Did Beethoven Use a Bro­ken Metronome When Com­pos­ing His String Quar­tets? Sci­en­tists & Musi­cians Try to Solve the Cen­turies-Old Mys­tery

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Beethoven’s 16 String Quar­tets: An Ear­ly Cel­e­bra­tion of the 250th Anniver­sary of His Birth

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday. 

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Behold 84 Great Novels Reinterpreted as Modernist Postage Stamps

in Design, Education, K-12, Literature, Music | November 2nd, 2021

Ali John­son and Jim Quail of Liv­er­pool-based design stu­dio Dorothy had a hit with their music-based graph­ics, which recast sem­i­nal alter­na­tive, psy­che­del­ic, elec­tron­ic, and post-punk albums as over­sized postage stamps.

Now, they’ve turned their atten­tion and knack for high­ly con­densed visu­al respons­es to the realms of lit­er­a­ture.

Their Mod­ern Clas­sics col­lec­tion, above, syn­the­sizes 42 titles into some­thing emblem­at­ic and essen­tial.

How many have you read?

How many would you be able to iden­ti­fy based on image alone?

It’s easy to grasp why the hori­zon fig­ures promi­nent­ly in On The Road, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Road.

And under­stand­ably, the eyes have it when it comes to 1984, A Clock­work Orange, and Slaugh­ter­house-Five.

Else­where, the visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions cre­ate con­nec­tions that may take read­ers by sur­prise.

(Stay tuned for a mas­ter’s the­sis that teas­es out the­mat­ic par­al­lels between The Col­or Purple’s quilts and Hold­en Caulfield’s red hunt­ing hat in The Catch­er in the Rye.)

Accord­ing to John­son, she and Quail, avid read­ers both, fell out sev­er­al times over which titles to include (and, by exten­sion, exclude).

Eng­lish teach­ers at mid­dle and high school lev­el will rejoice at the num­ber of syl­labus favorites that made the cut.

Poten­tial stamp-themed cre­ative assign­ments abound.

The conch may be an obvi­ous choice for Lord of the Flies, but what of The Great Gats­by’s green light?

Why not the eyes of Doc­tor T. J. Eck­le­burg?

A swim­ming pool?

Or one of those beau­ti­ful shirts?

Dis­cuss!

Then make your own stamp!

Stu­dents are far less like­ly to be con­ver­sant in the 42 ear­li­er works com­pris­ing Dorothy’s lit­er­ary Clas­sics stamps, though musi­cal and movie adap­ta­tions of Lit­tle Women, Drac­u­la, and Les Mis­er­ables should pro­vide a toe­hold.

Our igno­rance is such, we may need to reread Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jane Eyre … or at least Google the sig­nif­i­cance of a spoon and all those orange and red tri­an­gles.

(Back in our pre-dig­i­tal youth, Cliff’s Notes were the pre­ferred Philis­tine option…)

Dorothy’s stamp prints of Clas­sics and Mod­ern Clas­sics are avail­able for pur­chase on their web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Good Movies as Old Books: 100 Films Reimag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers

157 Ani­mat­ed Min­i­mal­ist Mid-Cen­tu­ry Book Cov­ers

Clas­sic Songs Re-Imag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers Dur­ing Our Trou­bled Times: “Under Pres­sure,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” “Shel­ter from the Storm” & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A 110-Year-Old Book Illustrated with Photos of Kittens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

in Books, Education, Internet Archive, K-12, Photography | October 18th, 2021

 

Unlike our 21st-cen­tu­ry cat memes and oth­er such online feline-based enter­tain­ments, children’s author Eulalie Osgood Grover’s 1911 work, Kit­tens and Cats: A First Read­er was intend­ed to edu­cate.

Its relat­ed poems will almost cer­tain­ly strike those of us whose under­stand­ing of feline atti­tude has been shaped by LOL­Cats, Grumpy Cat, the exis­ten­tial Hen­ri, Talk­ing Kit­ty Cat’s acer­bic Sylvester, and the mor­dant 1970s TV spokescat Mor­ris as sweet to the point of sick­ly. But it boasts six hun­dred vocab­u­lary words, a rhyme struc­ture that pro­motes read­ing aloud, and a note to teach­ers with sug­ges­tions for class­room activ­i­ties.

Grover explained how her feline cast of char­ac­ters would win over even the most reluc­tant read­er, inspir­ing “much the same delight to the lit­tle read­er of juve­nile fic­tion, as do adven­ture and romance to the grown-up read­er”:

In one respect kit­tens take prece­dence over dolls. They are alive. They must be treat­ed kind­ly. They will not bear the abuse and neglect giv­en to many beau­ti­ful dolls. They demand atten­tion and com­pan­ion­ship, and they return a real devo­tion in return for kind­ness and care. There­fore we love them and espe­cial­ly do our chil­dren love them and delight in sto­ries of them.

The loose­ly struc­tured sto­ry con­cerns a grand par­ty thrown by the Queen of the Cats. Fol­low­ing some breath­less prepa­ra­tions, the guests take turns intro­duc­ing them­selves to her majesty, though unlike T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats (1939), there’s not much that could be cob­bled into a hit musi­cal.

Grover flesh­es out the nar­ra­tive with call­backs to a num­ber of cat-rich nurs­ery rhymes — Hick­o­ry Dick­o­ry Dock, Three Lit­tle Kit­tens, Hey Did­dle Did­dle, As I Was Going to St. Ives, Ding Dong Bell…

One lace-bon­net­ed char­ac­ter is rem­i­nis­cent of Tom Kit­ten’s moth­er, Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, and her unsuc­cess­ful attempts to wran­gle her ram­bunc­tious off­spring into cloth­ing fit for “fine com­pa­ny,” though the wit falls some­what short of Beat­rix Potter’s.

Head­gear abounds, as do restric­tive buntings that must’ve been a great help when deal­ing with unco­op­er­a­tive mod­els and long expo­sures.

Although the pho­tog­ra­ph­er is uncred­it­ed, the images are like­ly the work of Har­ry Whit­ti­er Frees, a “pio­neer of the anthro­po­mor­phic kit­ten pho­to­graph genre” as per the New York Dai­ly News. In his intro­duc­tion to his far more ambi­tious­ly posed 1915 work, The Lit­tle Folks of Ani­mal Land, Frees allud­ed to his process:

The dif­fi­cul­ties of pos­ing kit­tens and pup­pies for pic­tures of this kind have been over­come only by the exer­cise of great patience and invari­able kind­ness. My lit­tle mod­els receive no espe­cial train­ing, and after their dai­ly per­for­mance before the cam­era they enjoy noth­ing more than a good frol­ic about the stu­dio.

That’s a pleas­ant thought, though his­to­ri­an and post­card col­lec­tor Mary L. Wei­gley tells a some­what dif­fer­ent tale in an arti­cle for Penn­syl­va­nia Her­itage, describ­ing how only 3/10 of his neg­a­tives could be pub­lished, and his work was so “chal­leng­ing, time-con­sum­ing and nerve-wrack­ing” that he took 9 months out of every year to recu­per­ate.

Cats!

Down­load a free copy of Eulalie Osgood Grover’s Kit­tens and Cats here.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Why Humans Are Obsessed with Cats

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Mushroom Time-Lapses Are Filmed: A Glimpse Into the Pioneering Time-Lapse Cinematography Behind the Netflix Documentary Fantastic Fungi

in Biology, Film, K-12, Nature, Photography, Science | September 3rd, 2021

Mush­rooms are hav­ing a moment, thanks in part to pio­neer­ing time-lapse cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Louie Schwartzberg’s doc­u­men­tary Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi.

Now stream­ing on Net­flix, the film has giv­en rise to a bumper crop of funghi fantat­ics, who sprang up like, well, mush­rooms, to join the exist­ing ranks of cit­i­zen sci­en­tists, culi­nary fans, week­end for­agers, ama­teur grow­ers, and spir­i­tu­al seek­ers.

Schwartzberg, who ear­li­er visu­al­ized pol­li­na­tion from the flower’s point of view in the Meryl Streep-nar­rat­ed Wings of Life, is a true believ­er in the pow­er of mush­rooms, cit­ing funghi’s role in soil cre­ation and health, and their poten­tial for rem­e­dy­ing a num­ber of press­ing glob­al prob­lems, as well as a host of human ail­ments.

Fan­tas­tic Funghi focus­es on sev­en pil­lars of ben­e­fits brought to the table by the fun­gal king­dom and its Inter­net-like under­ground net­work of myceli­um:

  1. Bio­di­ver­si­ty

A num­ber of projects are explor­ing the ways in which the myceli­um world can pull us back from the bring of  deser­ti­za­tion, water short­age, food short­age, bee colony col­lapse, tox­ic con­t­a­m­i­nants, nuclear dis­as­ters, oil spills, plas­tic pol­lu­tion, and glob­al warm­ing.

  1. Inno­va­tion

Mush­room-relat­ed indus­tries are eager to press funghi into ser­vice as envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able faux leather, build­ing mate­ri­als, pack­ag­ing, and meat alter­na­tives.

  1. Food

From fine din­ing to for­ag­ing off-the-grid, mush­rooms are prized for their culi­nary and nutri­tion­al ben­e­fits.

  1. Phys­i­cal Health and Well­ness

Will the hum­ble mush­room prove mighty enough to do an end run around pow­er­ful drug com­pa­nies as a source of inte­gra­tive med­i­cine to help com­bat dia­betes, liv­er dis­ease, inflam­ma­tion, insom­nia and cog­ni­tive decline?

  1. Men­tal Health

Researchers at Johns Hop­kins, UCLA, and NYU are run­ning clin­i­cal tri­als on the ben­e­fits of psy­che­del­ic psilo­cy­bin mush­rooms as a tool for treat­ing addic­tion, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, PTSD and sui­ci­dal ideation.

  1. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty

Of course, there’s also a rich tra­di­tion of reli­gions and indi­vid­ual seek­ers deploy­ing mind alter­ing psy­choac­tive mush­rooms as a form of sacra­ment or a tool for plumb­ing the mys­ter­ies of life.

  1. The Arts

Direc­tor Schwartzberg under­stand­ably views mush­rooms as muse, a fit­ting sub­ject for pho­tog­ra­phy, music, film, poet­ry, art and oth­er cre­ative endeav­ors.

 

With regard to this final pil­lar, many view­ers may be sur­prised to learn how much of the 15 years Schwartzberg ded­i­cat­ed to cap­tur­ing the exquis­ite cycle of fun­gal regen­er­a­tion and decom­po­si­tion took place indoors.

As he explains in the Wired video above, his pre­ci­sion equip­ment excels at cap­tur­ing devel­op­ment that’s invis­i­ble to the human eye, but is no match for such nat­ur­al world dis­rup­tions as insects and wind.

Instead, he and his team built con­trolled grow­ing envi­ron­ments, where high­ly sen­si­tive time lapse cam­eras, dol­lies, timed grow lights, and more cin­e­mat­ic light­ing instru­ments could be left in place.

Set dress­ings of moss and logs, cou­pled with a very short depth of field helped to bring the Great Out­doors onscreen, with occa­sion­al chro­makeyed panora­mas of the nat­ur­al world fill­ing in the gaps.

Even in such lab-like con­di­tions, cer­tain ele­ments were nec­es­sar­i­ly left to chance. Mush­rooms grow noto­ri­ous­ly quick­ly, and even with con­stant mon­i­tor­ing and cal­cu­la­tions, there was plen­ty of poten­tial for one of his stars to miss their mark, shoot­ing out of frame.

Just one of the ways that mush­rooms and humans oper­ate on rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent time­lines. The direc­tor bowed to the shrooms, return­ing to square one on the fre­quent occa­sions when a sequence got away from him.

Pro­vid­ing view­ers an immer­sive expe­ri­ence of the under­ground myceli­um net­work required high pow­ered micro­scopes, a sol­id cement floor, and a bit of movie mag­ic to finesse. What you see in the final cut is the work of CGI ani­ma­tors, who used Schwartzberg’s footage as their blue­print.

Net­flix sub­scribers can stream Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi for free.

From Octo­ber 15 — 17, film­mak­er Louie Schwartzberg is host­ing a free, vir­tu­al Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi Glob­al Sum­mit. Reg­is­ter here.

You can also browse his col­lec­tion of com­mu­ni­ty mush­room recipes and sub­mit your own, down­load Fan­tas­tic Fungi’s Stoned Ape poster, or have a ram­ble through a trove of relat­ed videos and arti­cles in the Mush Room.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Cage Had a Sur­pris­ing Mush­room Obses­sion (Which Began with His Pover­ty in the Depres­sion)

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

The Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants: Dis­cov­er the 1977 Illus­trat­ed Guide Cre­at­ed by Harvard’s Ground­break­ing Eth­nob­otanist Richard Evan Schultes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Brood X Cicadas are her mush­rooms. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch 15 Hours of The Pink Panther for Free

in Animation, Film, K-12 | July 19th, 2021

Remem­ber Sat­ur­day morn­ings?

If you’re an Amer­i­can of a cer­tain age, you prob­a­bly spent a good chunk of them sprawled in front of the TV, absorb­ing a steady stream of net­work car­toons pep­pered with ads for toys and sug­ared cere­al.

One of Sat­ur­day morn­ing’s ani­mat­ed stars stood out from the crowd, a lanky, bipedal feline of a dis­tinct­ly rosy hue.

He shared Bugs Bunny’s anar­chic streak, with­out the hopped-up, motor­mouthed inten­si­ty.

In fact, he bare­ly spoke, and soon went entire­ly mute, rely­ing instead on Hen­ry Mancini’s famous theme, which fol­lowed him every­where he went.

Above all, he was sophis­ti­cat­ed, with a min­i­mal­ist aes­thet­ic and a long cig­a­rette hold­er.

Direc­tor Blake Edwards attrib­ut­es his last­ing appeal to his “promis­cu­ous, fun-lov­ing, dev­il­ish” nature.

John Cork’s short doc­u­men­tary Behind the Feline: The Car­toon Phe­nom­e­non, below, details how Edwards charged com­mer­cial ani­ma­tors David DePatie and Friz Fre­leng with cre­at­ing a car­toon per­sona for the Pink Pan­ther Dia­mond in his upcom­ing jew­el heist caper.

DePatie, Fre­leng and their team draft­ed over a hun­dred ren­der­ings in response to the char­ac­ter notes Edwards bom­bard­ed them with via telegram.

Edward’s favorite, designed by direc­tor Haw­ley Pratt, fea­tured the icon­ic cig­a­rette hold­er and appeared in the fea­ture film’s trail­er and title sequence, ulti­mate­ly upstag­ing a star stud­ded cast includ­ing David Niv­en, Clau­dia Car­di­nale, Robert Wag­n­er, and Peter Sell­ers as Inspec­tor Clouse­au.

The car­toon panther’s sen­sa­tion­al debut prompt­ed Unit­ed Artists to order up anoth­er 156 shorts, to be released over a four to five year peri­od. The first of these, The Pink Phink, not only estab­lished the tone, it also nabbed the Acad­e­my Award for 1964’s best ani­mat­ed short.

Although he was cre­at­ed with an adult audi­ence in mind — the nar­ra­tor of the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal trail­er asks him about bed­room scenes — his word­less tor­ment of the sim­pli­fied car­toon Inspec­tor proved to be mon­ey in the bank on Sat­ur­day morn­ings.

The Pink Pan­ther Show ran from 1969 to 1980, weath­er­ing var­i­ous title tweaks and a jump from NBC to ABC.

Syn­di­ca­tion and cable TV ensured a vibrant after­life, here and in oth­er coun­tries, where the character’s sophis­ti­ca­tion and reliance on body lan­guage con­tin­ues to be a plus.

The plots unfold­ed along pre­dictable lines — the groovy pan­ther spends 6 min­utes thwart­ing and bedev­il­ing a less cool, less pink-ori­ent­ed char­ac­ter, usu­al­ly the Inspec­tor.

Every episode’s title includes a ref­er­ence to the star’s sig­na­ture col­or, often to groan­ing degree — Pink of the Lit­ter, Pink-A-Boo, The Hand Is Pinker Than the Eye, Pinkcome Tax, The Scar­let Pinker­nel.…

We won’t ask you to guess the col­or of Pink Pan­ther Flakes, man­u­fac­tured under the aus­pices of Post, a Pink Pan­ther Show co-spon­sor.

“I thought it was just fine for the film,” Edwards says of the ani­mat­ed Pink Pan­ther in Cork’s 2003 doc­u­men­tary, “But I had no idea that it would take off like that, that it would have that kind of a life of its own… that kind of a mer­chan­dis­ing life of its own. Thank god it did!”

Stay cool this sum­mer with an 11-hour Pink Pan­ther marathon, com­prised of the fol­low­ing free com­pi­la­tions of Sea­sons 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Sea­son 1

Sea­son 2

Sea­son 3

Sea­son 4

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Looney Tunes & Oth­er Clas­sic Car­toons Helped Amer­i­cans Become Musi­cal­ly Lit­er­ate

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Voice

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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