Holocaust Memorial Day

The word Nazism is being bandied about a lot at the moment. Today it is important to remember what it really means and where it leads. We must remember the millions of Jews who were murdered. The world must stand fast against ideas that dehumanise any group of people. The richest man on the planet stood up and made a nazi salute a few days ago ... and the world's press tried to pretend it didn't mean anything. Even the Guardian. I was so angry I wrote a letter, which they chopped right down before they published it. 

"It was a nazi salute. It did not ‘appear’ to be. It was not ‘fascist-style’. He knew exactly what he was doing. Even the Guardian, somehow, could not bring themselves to call it like it is. We must not normalise or excuse this behaviour. We must challenge it at every turn."

Stay safe. Be kind. Never forget.

Meet Dave

From the book 'The Sneetches and other stories' Too Many Daves is one of the best Dr Seuss stories, that I can practically recite from memory. We have just the right number of Daves in our house, though I am not sure how many.

Here is Dave's house in the yard:

Meet Dave:

and his friends, Dave, Dave, Dave and Dave:

In the kitchen we collect food for Dave, veggies, bread, tealeaves, eggshells and stuff like that:

and they turn it into soil, that in a few months I can use to plant things in the garden:

I have been wanting to start a wormery for years. I bought 'Worms Eat my Garbage' by Mary Appelhof a couple of decades ago, and am delighted to find that there is a website promoting her ideas. If you don't want to go for a manufactured one the book tells you all you need to know about making your own.

I bought my wormery from Worm City. It is made in the UK from recycled plastic, and they have plenty of advice on how to care for your worms and what to feed them. In spite of having mouldy food in I have not found that it smells bad. There were a lot of flies in it at one point but covering the food with shredded newspaper and fitting a piece of cardboard over the top helps keep them out. Watch out for slugs because some kinds eat worms, but most other creepy crawlies that invade only add to the process of breaking down the organic matter. 

D for Dr Seuss (who else)

It's funny how books can feel familiar without any specific memory of having read them before. The Cat in the Hat was like that for me when my children were little; I already knew it but was not sure how. I did debate the idea of doing my entire A to Z challenge on Dr Seuss, he certainly has enough books and enough crazy titles to cover all the letters of the alphabet.

My favourite thing about Dr Seuss is his sheer exuberance and imagination. He understands something about the way children think and at the same time manages to take on their way of seeing the world, a rare quality in adults. He invents animals by the score and then invents wonderful names for them. He invents new nonsense words any time he needs a rhyme and there isn't one. Most of his books have a story line but others for very young children are much more a matter of playing with words.

A book like Hop on Pop is meant partly as an early reader, with large simple words at the top of the page, then the same words put into a rhyme:

and others like One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish:

We moved on to books like I Can Lick 30 Tigers, in which an unfortunate cat has to back down in the face of real tigers, though the favourite tale in this book is King Looie Katz which is about egalitarianism and everyone being responsible for their own tails:

The Lorax was one of the first Seuss books we owned. Many of his stories have a message or even a political point, but this is probably the most vociferous; I always used to linger over the moment when there is a sickening thwack and the last truffula tree is chopped down. I have not seen the film and have no desire to after the hatchet job that was done on The Grinch; the stories are wonderful and complete in themselves they do not need the embellishment necessary to turn them into a full length film:

However hard it might be to have a favourite Dr Seuss book mine will always be The Sneetches:

Here are the poor starless Sneetches, sitting on the beaches and watching the star-bellied Sneetches having frankfurter parties and marshmallow toasts. It's a fairly no-nonsense message about prejudice and how meaningless it is, and also partly I always felt about how there's always someone out there able to make money out of stupid people. For the grown up reading it makes it more enjoyable if the story has  bit of something going on alongside the silliness:

My favourite story in the book however is 'What was I scared of?' about a little person who meets this strange and slightly ghostly empty pair of trousers and, 'in a dark and dreary snide field' is forced to confront his fears. 

Dr Seuss is utterly unique as a children's writer and unmatched in my opinion. I have not encountered all his books but have never read one that I have not loved.

(Click here for other mentions of Dr Seuss on this blog)

(Go to the list here and visit other A to Z Bloggers.)

Oh, the places you'll go

"Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or waiting around for a Yes or a No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite

or waiting for wind to fly a kite

or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting."

(Oh, the places you'll go! by Dr Seuss)

Who better than Dr Seuss to sum up so succinctly the problems of modern life. M chose this little book this afternoon having been given a World Book Day token at the adventure playground meeting, and we have sat around and read it aloud and enjoyed reminiscing about the books of his that we have loved.

And she has decided to decorate her room on a Dr Seuss theme, with characters from his books and random quotes, so now we have an excuse to go out and rebuild the book collection, since many of them have been lost in the damp depths of her dad's garage.

Dr Seuss Hobo Bag

I have been working on this bag project for quite a while now, making slow progress firstly because I needed the circular needles and then because it was just not very interesting to knit. The whole thing perked up when I decided to add a quote around the bag, and after spending quite some time browsing poetry books I decided instead to go for some Dr Seuss, and then spent even longer drawing out this knitting chart on graph paper to create the letters in stitches:

Then as I started to do the decreases for the handles I decided it needed some further embellishment and added some random bits of design to make it more personalised. It is knitted in Rowan Luxury Cotton DK, bought from Kemps Wool Shop (a great source of bargain wools so it is not as extravagant as it sounds). Once the knitting was done I have lined it with some recycled black faux suede fabric: I just cut around the bag to get the shape and machine sewed the two halves together and hand sewed the whole thing around the opening edges

old favourites

Now I have a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas sitting round the living room for a reason. It was one of those divorce things ... he ended up with a big chunk of the children's book collection ... so I have been intermittently rebuilding it. There are certain books that I think children should not grow up without, and a substantial collection of Dr Seuss comes high on the list. I found a copy of Grinch in a charity shop, a lovely hardback in immaculate condition for 75p, but then it got pushed onto the small bookcase behind the living room door and forgotten.

M and I were just sitting yesterday morning, I was on the computer and she picked the book up and started reading it aloud to me for fun. Half way through I picked up the rhythm of the story and started reciting it from memory along with her. It was a lovely nostalgia moment for me because I must have read the book hundreds of times when the children were younger, and not just around Christmas. Now I am not sentimental about Christmas, in fact with the lack of little people around now I resist joining in with the enforced jollity, but this is a nice little story essentially about the importance of belonging.

The Grinch looks down on the Whos , all happily preparing for Christmas, and decides to steal it from them. So he sneaks into all their houses and steals all their present and decorations and food. Then of course, when he pauses to look back and enjoy their misery he finds that Christmas still arrives, without all the trimmings. The Whos still celebrate, and of course forgive him and welcome him back when he has a miraculous change of heart and returns all the stolen goodies.

The one that was really part of the Christmas preparations when the children were growing up was 'Mole and Troll Trim the Tree'. We did read this only at Christmas. Two friends decide to share a tree one Christmas but end have a huge row about how to decorate their tree. They throw things, and then one of them storms out, Troll I think, taking all his decorations with him. But they make up, and in the end decide to put everything in the world on their tree, so much so that there was hardly any tree showing by the time they finish. This appealed to us because we were an 'everything in the world on your tree' kind of family.

It is funny how traditions come about, and I suppose that when your life experiences such upheaval as ours did you find you need to make new ones. I look back fondly on things I did with my kids when they were growing up ... and I look forward now to new things we will do, the potential for new traditions in the future. So I buy children's books that I have loved, hopefully to share with my grandchildren one day.