Turning the Page
January 11, 2009

Yesterday, January 10, was my father’s birthday. He turned 86 just two months after my mother did. It is only in the last year that he has grown frail. I never thought I’d use that word about him, but I do. He is bent and tired, but he is still interested in life. We talked about Obama and how the economic plans of his administration are similar to and how they differ from that of Franklin Roosevelt. My dad vividly recalls those days because his father, an engineer who lost his job and took to drink, was able to work again even though it was digging ditches for sewers in Los Angeles for the WPA. But he had lost his interest in living, and drink became ever more important. When he finally died of alcoholism my father, at a young age, became the sole support of the family.

When my parents married in 1949 he was newly returned from the war and had embarked upon his one career at AT&T. “Ma Bell” was as stable an employer as any government. He and my mother started their family, which would number five children. Though they would not have done anything different, my parents lived under great financial stress as a young family—his income as a lineman did not put our seven-member family in the poorhouse, but it did require sacrifices. For several years he worked a second job at a gas station while my mother stayed at home with the babies. Those early years were difficult, but even then he made time to read to me. On evenings when he wasn’t working, we would sometimes sit, me on his lap, with an open book in front of us. His patience in helping me with words seemed limitless.

Even when he wasn’t reading to me or my siblings, he read. Whether he came home early, not having to work his second job, or late, he’d read in bed before he turned his light out. On weekends, he might alternate between playing softball with us, watching a football game on television, and reading his own books—history, biographies, thrillers, novels and nonfiction that involved the law. And when finances finally became sufficiently robust to cover expenses and some small luxuries, he indulged himself in the beginnings of his own library.

He taught me so much, and he passed onto me the passion for books and reading that has defined much of my own life. And now it is coming to an end. His frailty is frightening, but even more than his frailty was his choice to stop reading or even listening to audio books about a year ago. And no amount of gentle encouragement has persuaded him to pick one up again.

My dad, George Campbell, the man who taught me the joy of books isn’t going to be around for much longer. If I am fortunate, it might be a couple—or a few—more years. But I cannot plan on that. So when I was down with him yesterday, I did something I wish I had done before: I picked up The River of Doubt, the vivid story of Theodore Roosevelt’s journey down the Amazon, settled myself next to him where we could feel each other, and read some of it to him. I had told him about it when I originally read it, and he was interested. So I opened the book to the chapter where the party, having struggled for weeks to reach their starting point on the river, launches the canoes and begins what will prove to be a terrible and devastating mission to chart the length of the then-unknown river. 

For a half-hour we sat together and shared the gift of reading using my voice. I closed the book when I noticed his eyes were closing in sleep. I wiped away the tears that filled mine and squeezed his hand.

The page has turned. I am now the reader rather than the listener.

Upcoming Book Festivals:
Unfortunately, there are none this week.

The Pub House:
Paris Press was founded to publish the “work of women writers that has been neglected or misrepresented by the literary world.” They focus on quality, publishing only one to three “daring and beautiful” books of all genres per year. Here you will find poetry, fiction, nonfiction and memoirs. Among their books are these particularly intriguing ones: The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs and Visa for Avalon.

Of Interest:
Abe Books, the used online book venue where book lovers from around the world gather to buy and sell has posted its list of their most expensive sales in 2008. Among the high-priced sales was, not surprisingly, a signed first edition of Barack Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, that went for $5,500. The most expensive ephemera was George Bernard Shaw’s typewriter at $7,979. T.S. Eliots’ Poems (1909-1925) in a signed first edition (one of eighty-five number copies) sold for $8,500.

This Week . . .
Now here’s a fun site. Wordle is a kind of electronic toy that allows you to create “word clouds” from text that you provide. “Clouds” will form that consist of words of varying sizes (depending on their prominence in your text). You can then take that cloud and tweak it with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. And the clouds are yours to use as you see fit, but if you leave them on the site then anyone else is free to use them too.  Warning: it can be addictive!

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren