Hungry caterpillars, pigeons and pumpkin pie
New Hampshire has its seasons of natural beauty. Autumn’s glorious reds and golds. Winter’s white landscape. The various shades of green in the spring and summer. New York can’t compare with this natural beauty. Yet, there is the magical fall cultural season.
In September, the City comes alive. One evening it was the Carle Honors benefit that gathers together the illustrators, librarians, writers and publishers of children’s books. The Museum, located in Amherst, Massachusetts, was founded by Eric Carle the author and illustrator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The book has reportedly sold 30 million copies across the globe, the equivalent of a copy per minute since it was first published in 1969. Leonard Marcus, the leading historian, author and critic of children’s literature and on the Board of the Carle Museum, invited me to join him and it was as enchanting, as you can imagine, having the opportunity to meet Eric and spend an evening with people who love children’s literature as much as I do. (carlemuseum.org)
“Now Those Days are Gone,” an exhibition of work by Duke Riley, a Brooklyn artist who spent August in New Hampshire, opened on Thursday evening in Chelsea. Duke has been fascinated by pigeons and the New York waterfront and some of the images in the exhibition show the flight patterns of thousands of pigeons carrying tiny LED lights that were released at dusk from a historic boat docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The exhibition also includes 1,000 individual, hand-painted and embroidered portraits of pigeons from the Fly by Night fleet. (magnanmetz.com)
I recently spent a Saturday uptown at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library of the New York Public Library for a program entitled: “But Then You Read Baldwin.” The Schomburg recently acquired the personal archives of James Baldwin, including handwritten letters and manuscripts, handwritten and typed drafts of essays, novels, and short stories. Reading Baldwin now is a way through in attempting to understand the racial intolerance so prevalent in the United States. that is prevalent in the United States.
Two weeks ago, I had an opportunity to hear Jesmyn Ward in conversation with Lisa Lucas, Director, National Book Foundation, on the day after her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing was published. My article about the event was published in the Harlem Bee’s WAX on-line magazine (harlembee.com). Ms. Ward is a young Southern writer, being compared to Faulkner. I recommend all of her books.
A magical time in New York.
Notwithstanding, each morning as I read the Laconia Daily Sun I think about the Pumpkin Festival. Saturday morning, unable to resist any longer, I decided to bake a pumpkin pie. I read through recipes online and looked through my library of cookbooks, thinking I might be creative in my baking. I could add ginger and chopped nuts to the crust or Bourbon as a flavor. One recipe suggested layering pumpkin on top of cheesecake, another suggested a topping of nuts and brown sugar. In the end, I realized it is just traditional pumpkin pie that is my true favorite.
As I began enjoying the pie, with a cup of tea, I let my mind wander back to New Hampshire, remembering a drive across Cube Mountain when the autumn leaves were at their peak and finding a brick farmhouse with a pumpkin stand and all sizes and shapes of pumpkins spreading out onto the lawn. Enchanting days in New Hampshire.