echoes

[kip_w]

.
I found a tape marked "Early 2004?" on one side and "Late 2004" on the other, one in a small series of audiocassettes documenting Sarah. I usually recorded these at bedtime, on a little recorder I bought for the purpose. The tricky part was finding a place to put it where Sarah didn't find it and try to play with it. (I can hear myself saying, "LEAVE THAT ALONE!" on this one.) I wish I'd started it earlier, or been more diligent about it, or something. She used to make the cutest little chatter, talking herself down to sleep after we left her, before she was using words. Now I'll never hear that again!

I've listened to both sides. I can hardly recognize that voice. She was pretty talkative already. I hope I have a couple more tapes to find somewhere around the house.

In other news, I paid a quarter for a copy of Seven-Day Magic at the library today. I'll replace a recent paperback printing with it, but I'm a little chagrined that they are discarding an Edward Eager book for any reason. No doubt they needed the room for more series fiction about ghosts and boogers. Edward Eager rules. As I told the librarian, Barnes & Noble has all his books, so people are buying them, even if they're not checking them out.

While I was there, I checked out two more Russian children's fantasy movies by Aleksandr Rou. I'd already watched Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors. Now I will be seeing Maria the Magic Weaver and another whose name isn't readily apparent to me... ah, here it is. It's Jack Frost. (Anybody interested in seeing some short clips from Maria, follow me over the fold.)

Watch on YouTube

There are three other little clips from the movie as well. Pretty mondo stuff. I may go to the trouble of routing it over to the computer to make a copy for repeated viewing. It's got bears (as one commenter says, "They've found a way to make bears even more terrifying -- giving them the voices of Russian children.") and vodka. Hey, what more do you want?
.

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

The thing that made me all sentimental a few years ago when I visited the Worthington Public Library, land of much of my youthful reading, for the first time in years was that I found the books I read in my youth on the shelves. I didn't look for all of them, of course, but I did look for the Eagers, and they were mostly there, reprinted because the books wear out. The librarian said that they're still very popular, as are the Borrower books. There were only a few books on the shelves that could have been the same copies I read in my youth, and those were mostly the oddball books, the ones that don't go out so often.

For that matter, it wasn't even my library. My old library was in the building next door, long since sold to a private school which has now moved on to yet another building. Presumably by now something else has happened to the beautiful old building; I'll find out on the next trip back to Ohio, maybe.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Our library building (a Carnegie library) still stands in my home town, but now it's a museum. They built a new library while I was still there, building it behind the little Pioneer Museum, a sort of sister building to the library. Then when it was all done, they tore down the museum, which used to be a wonderful old-fashioned museum full of stuff, which they fit in as best they could.

Now they have lots more room, and they use it for not much. I'm guessing they have about a tenth to a quarter of the stuff on display, surrounded by elegant empty space. I still like going there, just to be back in the old building. The downstairs, where the children's library used to be, is now a performance space, so I've been able to see that too. The metal staircase we used to clang musically up and down between libraries is still there, but it's no longer accessible.

I think I'm repeating myself. By cracky.

[meggins.livejournal.com]

Cute (sort of) talking animals, but definitely not Disney.