Post #15

Thought for the day:

Noah was a brave man to sail in a wooden boat with two termites.

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Grandma and I are in a memoirs writing class that meets every Wednesday. To give you some perspective of the class make-up, this semester there are about 24 people signed up, of which there are 3 of us males. Grandma and I pretty much represent the upper age level in the class. There are two delightful women, however, whose ages help bring the class average age up—one is a 97-year-old Brit, who hardly ever writes but tells fascinating tales of her experiences during the blitzkriegs of London during the war. The other, a wonderful lady—as Irish as Paddy’s pig—just had her 99th birthday and continues to write beautifully about many things, primarily her family. The class itself is quite casual. Each week the teacher hands out assignment sheets and each week we pretty much write what we please—whether it meets the requirements of the homework or not. That’s perfectly okay with Ann, our teacher, because her main interest is to get us to write. The nice thing about all of this is that we get to hear some very interesting stories about places, people, and events we are not familiar with. Yesterday’s session was like that. Inge Rudman, a lovely German-Jewish lady, wrote of her family’s persecution by the Nazis, and how, in 1939, they eventually were able to flee Germany and come to the United States. It in itself is a fascinating story, but one of the things that caught my attention was the fact that the ship they sailed on to make the trip was the S.S. Washington. The Washington was later converted to a troop ship to transport American soldiers to and from the war in Europe. This is particularly interesting to me because my dad—an army chaplain who was among the early troops to hit the beaches on D-day—came back to the states on that same ship late in 1945. Another of the ladies, Lena Rajna, born and raised in Finland, wrote of reading the Finnish translation of the book, Ann of Green Gables, to her own children as they were growing up. Now, many years later, she has read it to their children—her grandchildren. The beauty of all of this is that with the telling of all of these memoirs come many little personal details that make the stories spring to life. I recommend to everyone: get involved in an adult education memoirs writing class. It will enrich your life! ……………………………………………………….
Winnie the Pooh has to be one of the most beloved characters in English literature. I know that he was one of my favorites as I was growing up and continues to be today. I mention this because I have just finished reading (for the 3rd time, I believe) the small book, “The Pooh Perplex,” by Frederick C. Crews. Many years ago, I hurriedly picked up this book without checking the contents, thinking it would be more of the thrilling adventures of Pooh and his friends. It wasn’t until I got it home and scanned the table of contents that I discovered that this is not a storybook. In this book, twelve experts write critiques on the “real” meaning of the Winnie the Pooh stories. It’s fascinating reading and “perplex” is a good term to describe it. I will not even begin to try to summarize the contents other than to say the critiques are interesting, but I believe that all of them seem to miss the point: People read Winnie the Pooh stories because they are fun! Even though they actually may have some deep psychological meaning, I don’t believe we need to know what it is in order to enjoy them.

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