This past week...

Has been one of the worst I've ever gone through as a parent.

An intriguing question about public art crossed with books

I regularly read a blog by Gretchen Rubins entitled The Happiness Project. Here's an excerpt from a post today:

I have a friend who is a working artist. She told me, “When I was starting out, I made money by working as a receptionist at a gallery. When my art career advanced enough so that I could quit that job, another artist friend told me, ‘Now you’ll be working all the time.’”

“What exactly does that mean?” I asked.

“He meant – I have to be looking, thinking, all the time. I have to notice and consider my reactions to everything. Why do I love this display of Christmas lights? What makes this restaurant so ugly?”

I’ve noticed a similar thing happen to me, with happiness. Now, whenever I feel a surge or drop in my happiness, I think: What’s happening, what triggered that? If I’m feeling happier, how can I ramp it up? Why do I suddenly feel blue? I’m trying to be more mindful about my fleeting reactions to thoughts and experiences, and I’m often surprised by what I notice.

For example, I found myself thinking about a famous piece of public art -- a luggage trolley apparently halfway through a brick wall at London's King's Cross station.



If you’re not a Harry Potter fan, the trolley is a reference to the fact that when magical children leave London to go to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, they take a special train, the Hogwarts Express, which boards from Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross. One of the first things Harry Potter does as part of the magical world is to run through a brick wall to get to the platform hidden between 9 and 10.

This public sculpture doesn’t just make me mildly happy. I love it; I get choked up thinking about it. It gives me a feeling of elevation – one of the most delicate pleasures the world offers. So, I ask: why does it make me feel this way?

First, it’s a celebration of something I particularly love, children’s literature. Second, it’s an acknowledgment that the love for Harry Potter is so ubiquitous that this artifact makes sense. We all love Harry Potter! And I love the collision of literature and real life. And this trolley sculpture is so funny, so playful.

How could I dwell on this happiness? One of my resolutions is to Find an area of refuge, and I’ve spent quite a lot of mental energy, in the last few days, fantasizing about what delightful surprises I would plant around New York City, in the manner of the Kings Cross trolley.

All my examples comes from beloved classics of children’s literature; it would be just as fun to have examples from adult fiction, but I couldn’t think of any.

This is what I would install:

From Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach, in Central Park: a giant peach pit, with a door and a nameplate reading “James Henry Trotter.” I’m actually surprised this doesn’t already exist.

From E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: a book bag tucked behind a drape behind a statue from the Middle Ages. And also in the Met…

From Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman’s You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum: a yellow helium balloon tied to the outside stair railing. This would be so inexpensive and fun!

From Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family in the Children’s Room at a branch of the New York Public Library in the Lower East Side: a copy of Peter and Polly in Winter, placed in the “Returns” section.

In a similar project, a few years ago, I made a long list of children’s books and where they take place in New York City. In many cases, a reader can locate the character exactly, like Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy who spies on 84th and East End, and Peter Hatcher, from Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, who lives at 25 W. 68th Street.

...

New York City did rise to occasion of the release of the movie of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, with a sign at Union Station.





I love New York City, and I love Harry Potter. It makes me so very, very happy to see something like this.

And now I’m off to try to think of more additions to my list. Any suggestions?

This is an intriguing idea. Here in Minneapolis, of course, I always think of War for the Oaks at a lot of locations. Can you think of any public art you would install, in honor of one of your favorite books?

Video of Wisconsin protests

I liked this one a lot.

Stay tough, Wisconsin. We're pulling for you.

I've been meditating on this passage a LOT this week

From Lois McMaster Bujold's The Vor Game:

[after Miles Vorkosigan made a difficult, strategic decision to disobey a possible criminal order from his superior officer and ended up getting cashiered out of his military command, he has to go home and face his father, Aral Vorkosigan, the regent of Barrayar] Miles looked up at his father. "Did ... I do the right thing, sir? Last night?"

"Yes," said the count simply. "A right thing. Perhaps not the best of all possible right things. Three days from now you may think of a cleverer tactic, but you were the man on the ground at the time. I try not to second-guess my field commanders."

That is what parenting has been like lately. You think when you bring this darling angelic baby home from the hospital, that if you can just figure out how to keep this darling angelic baby from squalling her lungs out and sleep all the way through the night, your troubles will be over. But it's not like that. Your challenges become greater as the child grows older, and wouldn't you know it, there is no owner's manual. There is no one to tell you, when you have to make difficult decisions for your child, that you are doing the right thing. That has sometimes been extremely hard for me, even perhaps the hardest thing of all about being a parent. But it's comforting to reflect, when I'm deep in the trenches of parenthood, making the tough decisions that get me reviled by this child that I love, that I can do a right thing. Not the definitive right thing, because perhaps there just isn't one.

This week, I'm hanging onto that all that I can.

Edited to add: Dagnabbit, why aren't any of the Vorkosigan books available for the Nook?

Ryan Seiler's "Don't Leave"

Ryan Seiler of Ministry of Magic has just released his first solo album, Into the Wind. Man, he's a wonderful songwriter with a wonderful voice. Here's an acoustic version of his song "Don't Leave," based on the part in Deathly Hallows when Ron abandons Harry and Hermione during the hunt for the horcruxes, (the original electronic version of this song was also released on Ministry of Magic's latest album Magic is Might). You can buy the song for $0.99 here.

Good luck, Ryan. I foresee a long and successful career for you. You're a talented guy. Subscribe to his YouTube channel here and follow him on Twitter at @ryanseiler.

Please, for my own information, comment if you listen and like.