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intertribalWe're doing spring cleaning at my house (oh, spring cleaning... you always make me think of The Wind in the Willows), and my mom is culling books from the basement and garage. She's also discovered things like her old high school yearbook, some essay she wrote about going to an underground American Legion party (she got a B!), every single note of correspondence she wrote to my father when they were in a long-distance relationship in 1983 and 1984 (including chili pepper cards that say "thinking about you makes me hot" - yeah), old TOEFL pamphlets, various essays they wrote in graduate school. I get to go through the books and see if I want any. Of course my dad was in political economy and my mom was in anthropology, so this is not exactly a ~riveting~ selection. I say this as a political science major. What I've been able to determine based on the titles is that my mom was into symbolic anthropology and my dad was into, uh, the political-economic empowerment of villages. My mom's a bit iffy, though, because she apparently b.s.-ed her way into a fellowship so she could spend the summer in Indonesia with my dad, and she's also told me that she only used anthropology as an excuse to study Javanese dance.
But, I did pick some books, a lot of it political science/history/anthro stuff. But some special ones:
We also found my really, really old Mother Goose book - a big yellow hard-cover with huge gorgeous olden-style illustrations that are, often, very creepy and disturbing. I pointed out the ones that I found creepy and the common theme was: people falling down, and old people. I tore a few pages out of this book as a kid, and I remember my mother berating me for it. Some of the rhymes are familiar, but it's a big book, and there's a lot of obscure stuff that fell through the cracks:
Four-and-twenty tailors/ Went to kill a snail;
The best man among them/ Durst not touch her tail;
She put out her horns/ Like a little Kyloe cow.
Run, tailors, run, or/ She'll kill you all just now.
Three wise men of Gotham
Went to see in a bowl,
And if the bowl had been stronger
My song had been longer.
Robin and Richard/ Were two pretty men;
They stayed in bed/ Till the clock struck ten.
Then up starts Robin/ And looks at the sky:
"Oh, brother Richard,/ The sun's very high.
You go before/ With the bottle and bag,
And I will come after/ On little Jack nag."
My little old man and I fell out;
I'll tell you what 'twas all about:
I had money and he had none,
And that's the way the noise begun.
Bat, bat. / Come under my hat,
And I'll give you a slice of bacon:
And when I bake/ I'll give you a cake,
If I am not mistaken.
There was a man in our town,/ And he was wondrous wise,
He jumped into a bramble-bush,/ And scratched out both his eyes;
And when he saw his eyes were out,/ With all his might and main
He jumped into another bush/ And scratched them in again.
Plus some oldies but goodies that I'd forgotten:
"To bed, to bed," says Sleepy-Head;
"Let's stay awhile," says Slow;
"Put on the pot," says Greedy-Sot,
"We'll sup before we go."
There was a crooked man,/ And he went a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence/ Against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat/ Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together/ In a little crooked house.
The man in the wilderness/ Asked me
How many strawberries/ Grew in the sea.
I answered him/ As I thought good,
As many red herrings/ As grew in the wood.
Here am I, little jumping Joan,
when nobody's with me
I'm always alone.
But, I did pick some books, a lot of it political science/history/anthro stuff. But some special ones:
- A Family Business: Kinship and Social Control in Organized Crime, Francis A. J. Ianni. Complete with single bullet and red rose on the cover!
- Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White. Published 1957!!!
- Japanese for Busy People, Association for Japanese-Language Teaching. Hey, you never know.
- Three Case Histories: The "Wolf Man," The "Rat Man," and The Psychotic Doctor Schreber, Freud. I actually don't like Freud, but the names of those patients, goddamn!
- Gong Hee Fot Choy: A Fortune-Telling Game, Margarete Ward. Copyright 1948!!! It says "Do not use GONG HEE FOT CHOY in a light or a haphazard way and expect satisfying results. This cannot be done." So I'm kind of afraid to try it.
We also found my really, really old Mother Goose book - a big yellow hard-cover with huge gorgeous olden-style illustrations that are, often, very creepy and disturbing. I pointed out the ones that I found creepy and the common theme was: people falling down, and old people. I tore a few pages out of this book as a kid, and I remember my mother berating me for it. Some of the rhymes are familiar, but it's a big book, and there's a lot of obscure stuff that fell through the cracks:
Four-and-twenty tailors/ Went to kill a snail;
The best man among them/ Durst not touch her tail;
She put out her horns/ Like a little Kyloe cow.
Run, tailors, run, or/ She'll kill you all just now.
Three wise men of Gotham
Went to see in a bowl,
And if the bowl had been stronger
My song had been longer.
Robin and Richard/ Were two pretty men;
They stayed in bed/ Till the clock struck ten.
Then up starts Robin/ And looks at the sky:
"Oh, brother Richard,/ The sun's very high.
You go before/ With the bottle and bag,
And I will come after/ On little Jack nag."
My little old man and I fell out;
I'll tell you what 'twas all about:
I had money and he had none,
And that's the way the noise begun.
Bat, bat. / Come under my hat,
And I'll give you a slice of bacon:
And when I bake/ I'll give you a cake,
If I am not mistaken.
There was a man in our town,/ And he was wondrous wise,
He jumped into a bramble-bush,/ And scratched out both his eyes;
And when he saw his eyes were out,/ With all his might and main
He jumped into another bush/ And scratched them in again.
Plus some oldies but goodies that I'd forgotten:
"To bed, to bed," says Sleepy-Head;
"Let's stay awhile," says Slow;
"Put on the pot," says Greedy-Sot,
"We'll sup before we go."
There was a crooked man,/ And he went a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence/ Against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat/ Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together/ In a little crooked house.
The man in the wilderness/ Asked me
How many strawberries/ Grew in the sea.
I answered him/ As I thought good,
As many red herrings/ As grew in the wood.
Here am I, little jumping Joan,
when nobody's with me
I'm always alone.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-29 12:37 am (UTC)I just looked!
And wouldn't you know, the page I opened up to was the one with the strawberries that grow in the sea.
(The picture I wrote my name above was the one that went with As I was going up Primrose Hill. I liked the girl's dress, and wanted to look like her.)
The book belonged to my dad--he would have had it in his childhood in the 1930s and 1940s.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-29 12:45 am (UTC)Wow, that's crazy old! I think mine was an 80s edition - my mom bought it for me.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-29 01:03 am (UTC)