Happy 20th birthday, Hua Mei (recalling Panda Cam mania)

Infant Hua Mei, left, and Bai Yun appear in this panda cam screen shot from November 24, 1999.

Break out the frozen-juice cake!! Today is the 20th birthday of Hua Mei (华美), a female giant panda. The daughter of mother Bai Yun (1991-present) and father Shi Shi (c. 1970s-2008), Hua Mei was born at the San Diego Zoo on August 21, 1999, and became the first giant panda cub to survive to adulthood in the United States.

In 1999, during the early years of the world wide web, connections were slow and multimedia technology was primitive. But we did have Panda Cam, and it was one of the coolest things on Earth! The Panda Cam window was about 3 inches wide. It was a low-resolution, black-and-white video image. It was prone to lagging. But it was addictive! Here's a short sample clip:



Fellow copy editor Mike McCombs and I would watch the 24/7 Panda Cam endlessly on our PCs in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal sports department. It's a wonder we managed to finish the section on some nights, as we watched Bai Yun's daughter Hua Mei grow from a little peanut to a toddler. It was just like The Truman Show, but without Laura Linney pitching products.

Hua Mei has lived in China since 2004 and has given birth to at least 10 cubs over the years. Giant pandas can live to the age of 30 to 35 in captivity, so she should have many birthdays remaining.

This past spring, 27-year-old Bai Yun and her youngest cub, Xiao Liwu, left the San Diego Zoo to return to China, per the terms of the zoo's conservation loan agreement. To the best of my knowledge, only three American zoos still have giant pandas — Zoo Atlanta, the Memphis Zoo and the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. You can see the National Zoo's Panda Cam here. It's a lot snazzier than the one we were watching 20 years ago.

Happy 71st birthday, Mom

Mom would have turned 71 years old today. I've written a lot about her life in the past two years here under the Mom's Life label. Today, I just wanted to share some cool pictures of her. These exist as 8x10 photographs, probably circa 1967 or 1968. There's no date or further information on the back of the prints. Perhaps she was helping a fellow Lycoming College student by serving as a model for a photography class; the interplay of light and shadow seems to be some of the focus. Whatever the case, I think they're pretty neat.

Happy 132nd birthday, Ruth Manning-Sanders

Today is the 132nd anniversary of the birth of author and modern Renaissance woman Ruth Vernon Manning-Sanders (1886-1988). She gathered and retold folk and fairy tales from all over the world, publishing more than 90 books during her lifetime. And she was a friend to elephants.

She has her own label on Papergreat, so you can check out the 60+ posts in which she's mentioned. Here are the previous birthday posts:

• 125th birthday
• 130th birthday
• 131st birthday

Earler this year, I wrote about her early children's novel, Adventure May Be Anywhere. And this summer I took a trip to the northcentral Pennsylvania library where I first discovered her books in the early 1980s.

For her birthday, here's the lowdown on one of her novels, Mr. Portal's Little Lions, which is one of her toughest-to-find books and hasn't been documented elsewhere in cyberspace, to my knowledge.

• Title: Mr. Portal's Little Lions
• Author: Ruth Manning-Sanders
• Cover illustrator: The only clue is the name "Sax" on the dust jacket. There is no credit inside.
• Publisher: Robert Hale Limited, 63 Old Brompton Road, London
• Price: 10/6 (ten shillings, six pence; same as the price of the Mad Hatter's hat)
• Year: 1952
• Pages: 256
• Format: Hardcover
• Provenance: This copy once belonged to "C Bowman"
• Dust jacket copy: "This is a sensitive and beautifully written story of what happened to a timid, unobtrusive, little middle-aged bachelor when he unexpectedly inherited money and should have found freedom at last.
  
  "But Mr. Philip Portal's lifetime of devoted service as head clerk in a solicitor's office, lonely, hypersensitive and in a rut of accepted drudgery, has unfitted him for complete freedom. He both yearns for and shies away from the solace of love. He tells himself that he has escaped from the tyranny of his characterful old landlady on the sea front, when he has a home of his own with an attractive, domesticated widow as neighbour on one side and a poetically minded spinster, who is a painter, on the other side.
  
  "And then there is Cynthia — the young, pretty niece of his landlady — cropping up to play havoc with his wavering emotions, until he sees and hears 'little lions' on every path!
  
  "The solution is surprising, and to no one more so than to Mr. Portal himself."
• So there are no real lions? It would appear not.
• A thought: This should be a movie with Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Helen Mirren and others.
• Also, Hugh Grant: Yes.
• Kelly Macdonald, too? OK.
• First sentence: Two men sat facing one another across an office desk: James Harley, a middle-aged solicitor, good-humoured, good looking, a thoroughly good fellow, and Philip Portal, his head clerk.
• So, Grant as Harley and Firth as Portal? Indeed.
• Last paragraph: Did she understand? Perhaps. If she didn't, it seemed to Mr. Portal that nobody ever would.
• Who is she? Who did he pick? I'm not telling.
• Random sentence from middle: On a low stone hedge some young lambs were playing at king-of-the-castle, butting their woolly heads into one another's ribs and leaping sideways.
• Manning-Sanders biography: This is from the back flap of the dust jacket. There are a couple details here that were new to me:
  

  "The wife of George Manning-Sanders, the artist and writer, Mrs. Manning-Sanders was born in South Wales, of an old Unitarian family. She was a Shakespeare scholar at Manchester University but, before completing her English Honours course, left to get married. With her husband she toured England, Scotland and Wales in a horse-drawn caravan. Then they joined the artists' colony at Newlyn and finally settled in their present home at Sennen Cove, near Land's End. They have two children.
  
  "Ruth Manning-Sanders began writing verse, and never thought to write anything else till economic pressure acted as a spur. One day she met an elephant in Sennen, and became interested in circus life. She joined a family tenting circus, travelling and living with them to study the practising of the artistes and the training of the animals. She worked as an advance agent, rode an elephant on parade, and went into the lions' cage with the trainer.
  
  "This has provided material for two circus novels already published and a third in preparation; also for her forthcoming history of the English circus. Her hobbies are gardening, animals and birds, astronomy, poetry and painting, legendry lore and prehistoric research."
  

Happy 131st birthday, Ruth Manning-Sanders

Today is the 131st anniversary of the birthday of folk and fairy tale author Ruth Manning-Sanders. She was born on August 21, 1886. (Or, at least, that's the year I continue to go by. Some sources cite 1888 as her birth year.)

Here are the previous Papergreat birthday posts for Manning-Sanders:

• 125th birthday
• 130th birthday

And, if you're curious, there are now 50 posts, in total, related to Manning-Sanders' life and works on this blog (about 2% of all posts). Just click on the Ruth Manning-Sanders label here or at the bottom of this post to start reading all of them.

For a modest celebration of her birthday today, I'm featuring this old library circulation card and circulation card pocket from A Book of Mermaids, when a copy of that beloved Manning-Sanders book was part of the Contra Costa County Library system in California.

The card pocket features the "Book Selection Policy" at Contra Costa:

"It is the library's responsibility to provide material which will enable the citizen to form his own opinions. Therefore, the library provides books representing varying points of view."

It seems to me kind of a shame that the library had to explain itself in that way, but I guess they had to cover their bases.

A Book of Mermaids was published in 1967. It looks like the copy associated with this card entered the library system, at the Concord branch, in December 1968.

The card in this pocket might not have been the circulation card, per se. It looks like it might have been an administrative card used, perhaps, to record the status of the book. One thought I have is that SRV might stand for San Ramon Valley High School, which is within the Contra Costa County Library circulation area. Was the book loaned to a school library in the 1970s? If any longtime librarians can provide some insight, I'd be grateful.

The final notation, in red, on this card states: "Danville 9/23/88." Danville is one of the branches within the Contra Costa County Library system. Interestingly, that final date in red ink is less than three weeks before Manning-Sanders died, on October 12, 1988.

Here's another old-school Manning-Sanders library card, if you're interested.

This specific book, by the way, is still circulating. I put it into a Little Free Library earlier this summer, to keep spreading her stories to new generations.

Happy 130th birthday, Ruth Manning-Sanders

Ruth Manning-Sanders wrote novels and poetry, too.

On this date 130 years ago — August 21, 1886 — Ruth Vernon Manning was born to John Edmondson Manning and Emma Manning (nee Brock) in Swansea, Wales. That baby grew up to become Ruth Manning-Sanders, a collector and teller of timeless fairy tales whose work brought joy and creative inspiration to many young people during the second half of the 20th century.

(That's right. Papergreat has been around long enough to publish two Manning-Sanders birthday posts, five years apart. Here's the 2011 post.)

To mark the occasion, this time around the sun, here are some assorted tidbits from my ongoing (and stalled at times) research on her life and works. If I never get around to writing The Ultimate Piece of Scholarship on Ruth Manning-Sanders, perhaps these will prove useful to some future researcher who can finish the job.

1. It is my understanding that Manning-Sanders' daughter, Joan, submitted some of her mother's unpublished stories to an Australian publication called The School Magazine in the 1990s. I have no idea if any were published or specifically when that might have been.

2. I had some correspondence last fall and winter with John Floyd (Manning-Sanders' grandson) and his wonderful wife, Pat, who live in Cornwall. They generously sent me photocopies of some pages from a 2011 publication titled A Forgotten Prodigy: Joan Manning-Sanders (1913-2002) and her Circle. It was written by John Floyd and Owen Baker.

The book is, of course, primarily about Joan and her time as an artist. (You can learn more about her and the 2011 book from Helen Hoyle at Women Artists in Cornwall, Western Morning News and The Cornishman.)

But there is also a good deal of excellent (and new to me) information about Ruth and her husband, George. And photos! This makes the third photo of the photographically elusive Ruth Manning-Sanders published on Papergreat.

In A Forgotten Prodigy, we learn that, following their 1911 marriage and last-name hyphenation, Ruth and George Manning-Sanders "embarked on a nomadic adventure, travelling in a horse drawn caravan and taking a fashionable interest in gypsy and circus life. They lived in the caravan as a two year adventure until the arrival of their daughter Joan."

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the family was based in Sennen, in extreme western Cornwall. They were living the "artistic life," socializing regularly with other writers and painters. It was during this time that Manning-Sanders, in a prolific period of output, published Hucca's Moor. According to A Forgotten Prodigy, "this too was set in Cornwall and contains some of her best writing about the area."

Caravans and circuses continued to hold a great interest for Ruth Manning-Sanders, according to this passage from the book:

"Ever since her early caravanning days Ruth had been a lover of horses and of the romance of life on the road. During the inter-war years it had become fashionable for artists and writers to seek to record circus and gypsy life. ... Ruth's papers contain correspondence with friends in the circus world spanning the years 1932-1952 and thus inspired, she was to write several children's books Elephant: The Romance of Laura (1938), Luke's Circus (1939), Mr. Portal's Little Lions (1952), The Golden Ball: A Novel of the Circus (1954) and Circus Boy (1960)."

I will delve more into A Forgotten Prodigy in a future post.

3. Samantha Morrish of the University of Reading has published an excellent short biography of Ruth Manning-Sanders on the Modernist Archives Publishing Project. Morrish's work has a bibliography that cites some sources I have not come across before.

4. Manning-Sanders published numerous novels before entering the unofficial second act of her writing career and focusing primarily on folklore and fairy tales. But she always had the world of piskies and magic near and dear to her heart, as evidenced in her early writing. Here are just a few examples from her novels:

• From The Twelve Saints: "The bulge of the bed knob made her face more elf-like than usual, though there was always something elf-like about Elizabeth."
• From Adventure May Be Anywhere, a book she dedicated to her children, Joan and David: "They also told us that it was the identical castle where Jack killed the giant." (That's just one of many such references in this fairy-tale-infused novel for children.)
• The first paragraph of  1931's The Growing Trees contains this passage: "... Margaret; who, with her long strands of bleached hair, and her deep-set blue eyes, reminded James of the picture of Rapunzel in the colored woodcuts in his big old edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales."
• Two examples from Mystery at Penmarth, which shares characters with Adventure May Be Anywhere: "There was a kind of elfish look about him, if you know what I mean." and "[E]very hill had a giant living on it once, and they used to play a game called bob-buttons, with rocks for ammunition." This book also features horses named Cormoran, Merlyn, Skillywidden, Keri, Pennalunna and Tregeagle.

Hungry for more? Click on (or, using your magical internet device, touch your finger to) the Ruth Manning-Sanders label at the bottom of this post to see the 40+ Papergreat posts that mention her. There's lots of great stuff to dig into.

Birthday tweets for Manning-Sanders
(and her fairy-tale co-conspirators)

@Papergreat My favourite was A Book of Giants by RMS. The illustrations by Robin Jacques are the reason I'm an illustrator :) #RMS130.

— Alex Tomlinson (@alexillustrator) August 18, 2016

@Papergreat What a marvellous set of books those were/are.

— ★Primarch of Mars★ (@primarchofmars) August 18, 2016

Happy Birthday to Ruth Manning Sanders! Love these covers by @brianfroud & illustrations by #robinjacques #rms130 pic.twitter.com/KehL8Wo1E0

— Helen Clark Jones (@helenclarkjones) August 21, 2016

Ruth Manning Sanders gave me my first taste of magical stories :) @helenclarkjones @brianfroud

— EmmaFinlayson-Palmer (@FinlaysonPalmer) August 21, 2016

130 years since birth of Ruth Manning-Sanders,
Author whose fairy tales, to children's market, she panders.

— Richard Marshall (@designarhyme) August 21, 2016

From the readers: Weeds, bats, dolls, fictional mice, pennies and more

Here is the latest collection of reader comments and greatly appreciated assistance solving the Great Mysteries of Life presented here on Papergreat.

Book cover: "Safe Bind, Safe Find" by Garry Hogg: Mom writes: "'Weeded' is the perfect word. Pull out the dead stuff that doesn't circulate, make room for new 'green' books."

Of course, "weed" is just a subjective term we use to refer to, as Wikipedia states, "a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation."

For example, the particular situation of dandelions in the front yard. But I don't sweat the dandelions too much, and I'm not going to put chemicals on my lawn or pay someone else to do that.¹ Besides, the dandelions are good for the embattled bees, who need all the help they can get.

But I digress. The point is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While I agree 100 percent with the necessity of libraries "weeding" books, it seems unfortunate to slap a poor book with such a demeaning label. Why not just a modest-sized "REMOVED FROM COLLECTION" or "WITHDRAWN" stamp? Let the book retain some dignity! Either way, though, we do like the "weeds" here at Papergreat. They're some of the coolest books.

Celebrating Earth Day 2016 with 6 awe-inspiring vintage postcards: Nena Zachary Challenner, commenting on Facebook about the "Bat Flight from Cavern Entrance" postcard, writes: "I've been there and seen that! I was about 6 years old, and I reached up as [the bats] flew over. I almost gave my mother a heart attack."

Questions, answers & mysteries with Hookland's David Southwell (Part 2): Anonymous writes: "This is an excellent interview. My latest interest is the 'hauntological'/folk-horror dramas and books of the 1960s and '70s, and Hookland is one of the most marvellous things I have discovered in aeons. I concur with Ballard when he says that a sense of place is vital. I think I shall have to visit Hookland sometime."

Thanks for the note! It spurred me to look up the hauntology post on Wikipedia.

"Jim and Judy," a 1939 grade-school textbook with a York connection: Anonymous writes: "This is the book I read in PS 44, Rockaway, NY, in the 1950s. All these years of seeing Dick and Jane primers, I didn't know if it still existed. What struck me as a child were the beautiful illustrations."

"Oh You Little Darling!" and a 19th century Michigan variety store: Musical Instrument Analyst Joan writes: "So upon closer look, I'm pretty sure that's not a real instrument, because of where the mouthpiece connects relative to where the sound comes out. (Think about it — how would the air ever get to the right side of the picture?)"

Modern postcard: The great stairway in Odessa, Ukraine: Robert McKay writes: "Great stairway! Right to heaven! I was in Odessa 2 years ago in a journey provided by [Tourist Club]. Great place and I strongly recommend you to visit it. There are a lot of monuments and beautiful things."

(OK, that comment might have been spam/advertising, but I liked it and decided to include it here.)

Happy 100th birthday, Beverly Cleary! Tom from Garage Sale Finds writes: "Great tribute to a great author. My first experience with Beverly Cleary was with Runaway Ralph in 4th grade. I checked it out from the library simply because the cover had a mouse riding a motorcycle. How could you go wrong? I fell into Ralph's world and couldn't put it down. Then I discovered I was actually reading a sequel to The Mouse and the Motorcycle. Ramona books followed and, despite it being about a girl, I could relate. I read every Ramona book to my daughter when she was little. Happy 100th birthday, Beverly. May your books live on another 100 and more."

Partially deciphering a "Buttonwood Farm" postcard from 1913: Tom also provided some great assistance in deciphering the postmark on this one. I was thinking Duncannon or Duncansville. But I like his guess better: "Dunns Station." Nice work, Tom! He also adds: "The 'booby' might be 'babby' and be a misspelling of 'baby', especially since someone wrote the 'babbies' later on."

Another comment on this post came from Linda, who learned about Papergreat through a Postcrossing exchange: "It is lovely! Thank you so much for sharing. You have a fascinating and enjoyable blog. Warm greetings from Montreal, Canada."

Four pennies left in their refund envelope for decades*: Mom writes: "Great post! This one made me laugh out loud!"

And Tom adds: "I'm an unabashedly, unashamed penny picker upper. This reminds me of my first job when I worked at a local small-town bank. I worked at the original location that had been built in 1908. Occasionally, I had to go to the basement for supplies and I always extended my trip by snooping around in all the old files. Once I found a box full of the bank's business cards with a penny glued to each one. They were from some kind of 'Earn a penny, save a penny' campaign in the '70s. I took one from my birth year and still have it."

Oberammergau Passion Play (Postcard Blogathon 2013): Stuart Williams writes: "Hi. Your postcard relates to the 1950 Oberammergau Passionspeile."

Thanks! I had been unsure whether this card was from the 1950 production or 1960 production.

Norva Hotel: An in-progress mystery from York, Pennsylvania: JM writes: "I'm guessing that they were proud of innerspring mattresses as a big step up from ones using straw, feathers or horse hair as was common back then."

Footnote
1. And if the neighbors don't like it, that's just too bad.

Happy 100th birthday, Beverly Cleary!

Author Beverly Cleary, who was born Beverly Atlee Bunn on April 12, 1916, in McMinnville, Oregon, turns 100 years old today. Whoa.

Pictured above is the cover of the Scholastic edition of Henry Huggins that served as my introduction to Cleary's fictional worlds. When I was 8 or 9 years old, living in Clayton, New Jersey, one of the kids on the block had a small-scale yard sale. I bought Henry Huggins out of a box for a nickel or a dime. (I think I also bought a piece of Gator Gum; those yard sales weren't exactly regulated.)

Henry Huggins was Cleary's first book, published in 1950, and coincidentally served as my first meeting with Henry, his dog Ribsy and the other residents of Klickitat Street (which, in my mind, looked just like Maple Street in Clayton). The first book of Henry's and Ribsy's adventures includes an ice cream cone, a short-lived bus ride, guppies, night crawlers, a football and lots of hijinx.

I read a lot of Beverly Cleary books in the early 1980s, mostly from the Konkle Memorial Library in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, after we moved back there. I would guess that my most-read authors during those formative years were Cleary, Ruth Manning-Sanders (of course) and Robert Arthur Jr., who penned most of the early books in The Three Investigators series.

While I liked the adventures of Henry, Beezus and Ribsy, most of which were written during the 1950s, I also enjoyed the new books about Ramona Quimby (Beezus's little sister) that Cleary published in the 1970s and early 1980s. These included Ramona the Brave, Ramona and Her Father, Ramona and Her Mother and Ramona Quimby, Age 8.

Here's a little moment from 1977's Ramona and Her Father that has stuck with me over many decades:

Mr. Quimby set his cup down. "I have a great idea! Let's draw the longest picture in the world." He opened a drawer and pulled out a roll of shelf paper. When he tried to unroll it on the kitchen floor, the paper rolled itself up again. Ramona quickly solved that problem by Scotch-taping the end of the roll to the floor. Together she and her father unrolled the paper across the kitchen and knelt with a box of crayons between them.

"What shall we draw?" she asked.

"How about the state of Oregon?" he suggested. "That's big enough."

Ramona's imagination was excited. "I'll begin with the Interstate Bridge," she said.

"And I'll tackle Mount Hood," said her father.

Together they went to work, Ramona on the end of the shelf paper and her father halfway across the kitchen. With crayons Ramona drew a long black bridge with a girl standing astride a line in the center. She drew blue water under the bridge, even though the Columbia River always looked grey. She added grey clouds, grey dots for raindrops, and all the while she was drawing she was trying to find courage to tell her father something.

Ramona glanced at her father's picture, and sure enough he had drawn Mount Hood peaked with a hump on the south side exactly the way it looked in real life on the days when the clouds lifted.

"I think you draw better than anybody in the whole world," said Ramona.

Mr. Quimby smiled. "Not quite," he said.

That endless roll of shelf paper delights me still. A sprawling blank canvas for the imagination. Never-ending possibilities.

Cleary has spent a writer's lifetime pulling stories from her own imagination and setting them down on that roll of shelf paper, shared there for each new generation to discover and enjoy and be inspired by.

Great links: Beverly Cleary

• The Oregonian/OregonLive: "For Beverly Cleary's 100th birthday, love letters from Portland" by Amy Wang
• The Associated Press: "Author Beverly Cleary turns 100 with wit, candor" by Kristin J. Bender
• The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Thanks for everything, Beverly Cleary" by Samantha Johnson
• The Washington Post: "Beverly Cleary on turning 100: Kids today ‘don’t have the freedom’ I had" by Nora Krug
• The New York Times: "Happy Birthday, Beverly Cleary!" by Nicolas Kristof
• MetaFilter: "A Century of Beverly Cleary"

My Beverly Cleary book purse. Made by a librarian. Had to fight for it at a charity auction. I won. Worth it! pic.twitter.com/jVZRReNZ0v

— Judy Blume (@judyblume) April 12, 2016

Happy 16th birthday to Ashar!

Here in my little corner of the space-time continuum on Earth Zero, my groovy son Ashar turns 16 years old today.¹ These days, his favorite things include Batman & the Joker, Lionel Messi, penguins, James Bond, zombies, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. We like to brainstorm and write fantasy and apocalyptic fiction; he is pen-pals with a teenage friend in Taiwan (thanks to Postcrossing); and we're in the final stretch (four episodes to go) of watching Friends, which we've done several nights per week since around Labor Day.

You can read about his further adventures, which include goats, on the latest Unschool Rules blog post by Joan.

Recently, I was ruminating about how "our online history is disappearing at an astonishing rate" and had the first post in a segment titled Lost Corners of the Internet. It turns out that Ashar created his own Lost Corner 3¾ years ago, and it's a Corner that deserves to be preserved!²

Ashar's Lost Corner involves (drum roll) ephemera! Taking after his father, he wrote a single entry in a blog titled Papergreat Junior.³

Here's a snapshot of the page...

And here's a closer look...

And here's the full text of that single post, for the archival record...

Papergreat Junior's First Post
I found this cool kind of gum called Glee Gum at Harpers Ferry. "Glee Gum is all natural chewing gum made with sustainably harvested rainforest chicle. It comes in 8 great flavors: cinnamon, peppermint, tangerine, bubblegum, spearmint, triple berry, sugar-free lemon-lime and sugar-free refresh-mint. Glee Gum is the #1 healthy alternative to synthetic chewing gum and bubble gum! No artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, or sweeteners (no aspartame). Chew with Glee, naturally!". This is from the Glee Gum Website, where you can go to read more. I went to the store with my mom and dad today and got two more packs of Glee Gum and the flavors I got were Bubble Gum and Peppermint. The Glee Gum company was founded in 1988. I really like the taste of Glee Gum.

Foot notes: I am doing this new blog Papergreat Junior because my dad has a blog called Papergreat, If you like this post then go to Papergreat to read more awesome posts.

Papergreat Junior was one of two single-post blogs (SPBs) by Ashar. His other one is at Dragons Are Awesome. 

Happy birthday, Ashar! I can't wait to see what you create next!

Footnotes
1. Fun coincidence: Ashar turns 16 on the day that the Sweet 16 portion of the NCAA men's basketball tournament gets underway. I did not fill out a bracket this year. If pressed, I could possibly name 10 of the Sweet 16 teams.
2. Because I'm his father, and I say so.
3. Ashar's other works include writing a Papergreat guest post in March 2012 and being the co-author of A Joint Archaeological Survey Concerning Old Artifacts in the Borough of New Oxford, Pennsylvania, on June 16, 2010, with Photographs and Annotations.

Happy 100th birthday, Norman Lloyd (and other musings)

American actor Norman Nathan Lloyd is 100 years old today.

You might know him as Dr. Daniel Auschlander [at right] on the 1980s television series St. Elsewhere, which remains my favorite show ever.

He's also had roles in Chaplin films, Hitchcock films and Scorsese films, and if I have to mention the first names of those directors, then that list probably wouldn't impress you anyway. Lloyd was also an actor in a little company called the Mercury Theatre.

In 2000, at the spry age of 85, he co-starred in the live television play Fail Safe, alongside some guys named Clooney, Dreyfuss, Keitel and Dennehy.

If you want to learn more about Lloyd, you can read his own words in his autobiography, Stages of Life in Theatre, Film, and Television. Or check out this 2004 interview with Peter Tonguette at The Film Journal. Oh, and Matthew Sussman directed a documentary about him in 2007. Also, Jeffrey Wells put together a really nice post about Lloyd, full of video and links, on his Hollywood Elsewhere website.

As of today, it appears that Lloyd and Luise Rainer (The Good Earth) are the two most famous centenarian actors on the planet.¹

More actors are sneaking up on the 100 milestone, though. Olivia de Havilland is 98. Kirk Douglas (Issur Danielovitch) will turn 98 next month. Maureen O'Hara is 94. Abe Vigoda is 93. Christopher Lee and Betty White are 92.

There are a couple of other amazing men in their 90s, too. I was watching The Right Stuff² earlier this week and, afterward, I realized that space-age pioneers Chuck Yeager and John Glenn are still with us.

Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier, is 91. And John Herschel Glenn Jr., the first American to orbit the Earth and the only surviving member of the Mercury Seven, is 93.

We should make sure all of the younger generations know who they are and what they did for the country, while they are still around. Maybe that would help avoid embarrassing generation-gap errors like those that occurred when Neil Armstrong died.

Footnotes
1. Here is Wikipedia's list of living centenarians, focusing on individuals who are both 100+ years old and notable for other reasons in their long lives.
2. Besides the obvious things that are always correctly lauded with regard to The Right Stuff — the cinematography, the lead acting, the music, etc. — I would like to mention that Pamela Reed, Barbara Hershey, Veronica Cartwright and Mary Jo Deschanel are absolutely stellar. There are very few movies, then and especially now, that place that much care and focus on supporting roles for women.

Celebrating J. R. R. Tolkien's twelvety-second birthday

Today is the birthday of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who was born on January 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.

This is the third year in a row of marking the author's birthday here. Here are the previous posts, which are chock-full of groovy stuff:

• 2013: 121st birthday
• 2012: 120th birthday

Pictured at right are the spines from Houghton Mifflin Company's 1965 hardcover boxed set of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

For this year's celebration, here are links to some off-the-beaten-path Tolkien-related material:

• In 1966, Gene Deitch made a 12-minute "ashcan" film of The Hobbit so that producer William Snyder could extend his license on Tolkien material and then sell his lucrative option on The Lord of the Rings for a tidy profit. That's the short version, anyway. Read Deitch's memories of the bizarre experience and, if you dare, you can watch the "movie" on YouTube.
• Speaking of bizarre, here's a LOTR-related correction and then a correction to the correction, as detailed by Gawker. Excerpt: "Most importantly, Aragorn is not 'one-quarter elf.' It's entirely unclear where this description comes from; Aragorn's closest full-Elvish forebear, Idril Celebrindal, is some sixty-odd generations away."
• In 1938, a Berlin publishing house was interested in translating The Hobbit for the German market. It was also interested in knowing whether the author was entirely of Aryan descent and could prove it. To see how it turned out, see this post on Letters of Note. A few years later, by the way, Tolkien referred to Adolf Hitler as a "ruddy little ignoramus."

Old birthday greetings card from The (York) Gazette and Daily

Here's an old children's birthday card issued by The Gazette and Daily, the predecessor to the newspaper I have worked for since 2000 — the York Daily Record/Sunday News.

The card must have been printed prior to 1970, when, following an ownership change, the Gazette and Daily nameplate was retired and the York Daily Record came into existence.

My best guess is that this dates to the 1940s or 1950s. And it's in great condition, given that possible age.

The full text of the card states:

HEARTY GREETINGS ON YOUR SEVENTH BIRTHDAY
Here's to somebody
Who's seven to-day;
May you always be happy
At work or at play.

THE GAZETTE AND DAILY
BOYS' AND GIRLS' NEWSPAPER
YORK, PA.
I asked about the card on Facebook, and one person found them to be familiar: "Yes, I remember getting those and when my Mother passed away I came across the enrollment letter that my Aunt sent to the G&D to have me enrolled. She wrote it like it was from my older brother."

Apparently, the you also got your name printed in the newspaper if you were part of this Birthday Club. One thing that's neat is that there was obviously a separate card for each age, since the poem is geared toward somebody's seventh birthday.

If anyone else has memories of this program offered by the Gazette and Daily, please share them in the comments section!

Happy 1,145th birthday to the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra

Wikipedia-hosted image of the frontispiece of Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra.
Original source: The International Dunhuang Project

In 1907, Hungarian-British archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein purchased an old scroll from a monk at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in Dunhuang, China. The sprawling network of caves, also known as the Mogao Caves, includes what has been called The Library Cave. That "room" — which had manuscripts stacked 10 feet high in places — was rediscovered in 1900 after having been walled up in the early 11th century.

The scroll is about 16 feet long and was created through woodblock printing.

A translation of the scroll's colophon states: "Reverently made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 15th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong."¹

Scholars say the date referred to in the colophon is May 11, 868.

That's 1,145 years ago today.

The scroll, now restored and held in the British Library, is the oldest known surviving printed "book" with a publication date.

The scroll is a sūtra — a collection of aphorisms. Its Sanskrit title is Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, which, according to Wikipedia, translates loosely to "Vajra Cutter Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra."

In English, it is commonly and simply referred to as the Diamond Sūtra.

One of the translated aphorisms from the Diamond Sūtra, focusing on the concept of impermanence, states:²

"All composed things are like a dream,
a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.
That is how to meditate on them,
that is how to observe them."

There is some small irony, of course, in the idea that a scroll containing verses about impermanence has survived for more than 11 centuries. It is nearly 600 years older than the first Gutenberg Bible!

Footnote
1. Xiantong was the era name for Emperor Yizong of Tang.
2. This translation of the passage is from the Handful of Sand website.

Happy 13th birthday to Papergreat junior correspondent Ashar Otto

I am now the father of a teenager. Papergreat contributor and Papergreat Junior author Ashar Otto turns 13 years old today. So please indulge me as I post some father-son photos to celebrate the happy occasion!





The photo below is the one that I use in my Papergreat profile. I held the camera in front of us and took this picture on the day that he and I worked together and researched a book titled "A Joint Archaeological Survey Concerning Old Artifacts in the Borough of New Oxford, Pennsylvania, on June 16, 2010, with Photographs and Annotations." (Only one copy was ever produced.)



And Ashar at Pinchot Lake in northern York County. We were checking out the dragonflies.

Very old book containing a birthday card and neat inscriptions

The old book is about the size of a small banana.

There were some neat treasures inside this 19th century book.

According to the spine, it's part of "The Young Peoples Library." The book contains six short stories, hence the sprawling title: "Narratives of the Swedish Nurse-Maid, The Swiss Peasant, Mary Eliza, The Rescued Brand, The Bayman's Wife, and Muckle Kate."¹

It was published by the American Tract Society, which was located at 150 Nassau Street in New York City.²

An advertising page at the back of this slim volume indicates that The Young Peoples Library included thirty volumes, which came in a case.³

Tucked away inside the book was this 4¼-inch by 3⅛-inch "Happy Birthday" card, which is signed by someone named Paul. There is nothing on the reverse side of the card.

While the birthday card is a great find and well-preserved for its age, the best thing about this book, to me, are the numerous inscriptions on the inside front cover and the first page.

They give us some neat insight into history of those who used it:

• Canadochley Sunday School
• No. 103
• AD 1876
• Presented to Catharine Cosgrove Sept. 13, 1928 By Mrs. Nathaniel Keller
• grandpa Died on September 16, 1928
• Frances A. Keller
• AD 1876

The inside front cover really is a thing of beauty...

"Canadochley" is almost certainly a misspelling of Canadochly, which is a distinctly York County, Pennsylvania, name. We have Canadochly Elementary School and Canadochly Evangelical and Reformed Church, for example.

According to the Canadochly Elementary School website:

"The name Canadochly is considered to originate from the Indian name 'Conejohela', which was an Indian tribe thought to have settled in the Susquehanna Valley. Conejohela means 'At the Place Of The Boiling Kettle.' Early settlers then changed the name to Canadochly."

Footnotes
1. "The Swedish Nurse-Maid" sounds like a story that would contain some ribald and naughty bits. Except, of course, for the somber facts that it was written by Mrs. Rev. Dr. E. Henderson and was published by a religious society. The Swedish nurse-maid's name, by the way, is Louisa Söderberg. Also, and I don't know why you've read this far into a silly footnote, I wanted to say that Muckle Kate would be a good name for a band.
2. The American Tract Society was founded in 1825. In 1894, it built a 23-story headquarters near Broadway and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The building still stands.
3. Other sets for young people included The Youth's Library (70 volumes), Youth's Gems (32 volumes), Children's Library (72 volumes), Little Children's Library (24 volumes) and Hannah More's Stories for the Young (eight volumes).

Happy twelvety-first birthday, J. R. R. Tolkien!

Today is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's 121st birthday. (Also known as his twelvety-first!)

Above is an illustration of Bilbo Baggins with the Arkenstone from the 1976 French-language edition of "The Hobbit."¹ The illustration appears in "The Annotated Hobbit" by Tolkien and Douglas A. Anderson.

My wife, daughter and I saw "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" on New Year's Eve and greatly enjoyed it. Sarah's favorite character was Thorin Oakenshield, and her favorite moments were (1) when Thorin came out of the tree to attack Azog and (2) when Smaug opens his eye at the end.

For more on Tolkien, including additional international illustrations, check out last year's post on his 120th birthday.

Footnote
1. I hope that doesn't spoil anything for those of you who haven't read the book and are awaiting the second and third movies.

Happy 30th birthday, St. Elsewhere!

Dr. Bobby Caldwell (portrayed by Mark Harmon), left, and Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel) take part in a lighthearted moment in an episode of "St. Elsewhere." I was an avid "St. Elsewhere" fan when I was younger and now my daughter, Sarah, is a fan of these two former "St. Elsewhere" actors. Harmon is the star of the long-running hit "NCIS" and Mandel is one of the current judges on "America's Got Talent". (Image scanned from the July 1996 issue of Television Chronicles)

Thirty years ago today — on October 26, 1982 — the first episode of "St. Elsewhere," my favorite TV show of all time, aired on NBC.

I wrote my big post on "St. Elsewhere" last year on its 29th anniversary, because I didn't feel like waiting another year. So I don't have another lengthy post this time around.

But I wanted to share the above photo and some great links to commemorate the drama's 30th anniversary:

• A reunion photo from Entertainment Weekly of Mark Harmon, Ed Begley Jr., Howie Mandel and David Morse¹
• An awesome five-minute video reunion of 12 former cast members appearing on "Good Morning America"²
• If you don't want to watch the video, this ABC News story features some of the highlights of the conversation
• A blog called The St. Elsewhere Experience has been going strong since May and contains great information and links about the show
• Ken Levine's blog shares the story (from John Masius) of how "St. Elsewhere" and "Cheers" shared a universe for one episode
• Watch episodes of "St. Elsewhere" on Hulu

Footnotes
1. I like the Mark Harmon quote that's under the photograph: "The [St. Elsewhere] writers loved messing with the characters, and I was never anything but excited by how they messed with the characters. I gained a huge appreciation for the ­written word, and I've carried that forward [into everything] since."
2. Included in the reunion is actor Norman Lloyd, who turns 98 early next month. Lloyd says: "'St. Elsewhere' was a show that brought a sense of truth, if you will forgive that suspicious word, to television, that had not been seen before on television. The star of the show was the writing."

Happy 150th birthday, M. R. James

The great ghost-story author and educator Montague Rhodes James was born 150 years ago today in Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, England.

My personal favorite of James' many ghost tales is "The Mezzotint," which I will let you discover for yourselves.

To celebrate the anniversary of his birth, here are some great links to M.R. James content:

• A chronological list of his ghost stories
• M.R. James works available for free from Project Gutenberg ("Ghost Stories of an Antiquary" is a great starting point.)
• Ghosts & Scholars, a newsletter devoted to M.R. James
• A Thin Ghost includes this good rundown of television and movie adaptations of James' works
• A Podcast to the Curious is an in-depth site devote to M.R. James. A 150th birthday special is currently featured.
• The Spooky Isles (a horror website) post about James' birthday
• On YouTube: BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas with Christopher Lee ("A Warning to the Curious")
• On YouTube: BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas with Christopher Lee ("Number 13")
• James' gravestone at Eton Parish Cemetery in Berkshire, England

Happy 143rd birthday, Algernon Blackwood

(Preface: I'm certain that Algernon Blackwood would like for you to read this post -- and, more importantly, his stories -- alone, at night, with the lights out and preferably when there's a thunderstorm bearing down outside.)

Today is Algernon Blackwood's 143rd birthday. He's been dead for 60 years, but he's still giving readers the creeps. If you enjoy ghost and horror stories and don't know of Blackwood, let him be the one author you discover in 2012.

You won't be disappointed.

Blackwood, who was born and died in Kent County, England, spent time as a hotel manager, newspaper reporter, milk farmer, bartender and violin teacher, among other occupations. He was a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He loved the outdoors and he was interested in the paranormal, as he was a member of The Ghost Club and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a group devoted to magic and the occult.

And he wrote ghost stories. Truly great ghost stories.

"The Willows," "The Wendigo," and "Ancient Sorceries" are among his most well-known tales. He also wrote, among his dozens of short stories, a series of tales about physician/ghost-hunter John Silence.

Here is the opening passage of one of my favorite Blackwood tales, 1906's "The Empty House":

"Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in their immediate neighbourhood shrink from them as from a thing diseased.

"And, perhaps, with houses the same principle is operative, and it is the aroma of evil deeds committed under a particular roof, long after the actual doers have passed away, that makes the gooseflesh come and the hair rise. Something of the original passion of the evil-doer, and of the horror felt by his victim, enters the heart of the innocent watcher, and he becomes suddenly conscious of tingling nerves, creeping skin, and a chilling of the blood. He is terror-stricken without apparent cause."

It actually reminds me slightly of the classic opening of "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson, which was not published until a half-century later.

My other personal favorites by Blackwood include "The Other Wing" and "The Listener," a creepy epistolary tale.

Above: The three volumes of Blackwood tales I own.

Many of Blackwood's stories are in the public domain and can be downloaded at Project Gutenberg.

Or seek them out at your public library. Or your local used-book store. But definitely seek them out. You won't be sorry. Or perhaps, heh, you will be.

Happy 120th birthday, J. R. R. Tolkien

Above: The pastedown label on the slipcase of Houghton Mifflin Company's 1965 hardcover boxed set of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Today is the 120th anniversary of the birth of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, better known as J. R. R. Tolkien, who gave us the wonderful tales of Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Gollum, Smaug, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee and more. All of them set in the Middle-earth that he painstakingly created from his own imagination.

The Tolkien Society has an excellent website that you should check out if you're a fan of the author and his writings.

Its offerings include lists of Tolkien resources, an F.A.Q. section (including suggestions on the order in which to reader Tolkien's works), links to Tolkien news¹, and 21st century amenities such as Twitter, Facebook, podcasts and i-Phone apps that no doubt would have amazed everyone back in the Shire.

In addition to 2012 marking the 120th anniversary of Tolkien's birth, this year will also see the 75th anniversary of the publication of "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again." And, of course, we will be treated to Part 1 of Peter Jackson's film adaptation of "The Hobbit" in December.

Here are some more images from our family's copies of Tolkien's works. These are our scruffy paperback reading copies of "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King":

On the left is the November 1965 paperback edition by Ballantine Books. The illustration is by Barbara Remington. Tolkien Collector's Guide has a fascinating interview with her in which she discusses how her one illustration, which spans the covers of the three 1965 "The Lord of the Rings" paperbacks, came to be.

On the right is February 1978 paperback edition by Ballantine Books. The cover illustration of Barad-dûr is by Tolkien himself.²

Meanwhile, here are some international illustrations from "The Hobbit" that are featured in my copy of "The Annotated Hobbit" by Tolkien and Douglas A. Anderson:

Above: This is from a 1976 Russian edition of "The Hobbit" and it kind of makes Bilbo Baggins look like a cross between W.C. Fields and Mr. Magoo.

Above: This is from the 1962 Portuguese version of "The Hobbit."

Footnotes
1. My favorite headline: "Tolkien's fireplace for sale."
2. If you're interested in more on the myriad editions of Tolkien's works, one place to start might be this March 20, 2011, article by The Literary Omnivore.

Slightly risqué old birthday card

Here's an old birthday card that appears to have been given by "Rita" in 1951. The front, pictured above, states: "Now you'll get lotsa 'FAN-MAIL' but here's a wish from ME"

The card opens up to the message "That's guaranteed to COVER the WORKS from 'A' to 'Z'!"

The blond-haired woman has closed up her folding fan and is now holding a sign that reads "Happy Birthday!"

It's certainly nothing scandalous, but it does seem to be a little risqué for the early 1950s, right? I doubt that this would have been placed on the shelf alongside the other greeting cards for sale at the time, but who knows?