Lary Bloom
Writer, Editor, Teacher
The Bloom Blog
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Sunday, December 11, 2005
Book Tour (Part 6)
Sometimes you have to get in your car, drive for an hour, get lost, make a panic call from your cell phone to ask "where the hell am I?" in order to find home.Yesterday, I went to the public library in South Windsor, Connecticut, which in the strange geographic tradition of Connecticut is just north of the town of Windsor. (And East Windsor is north of that, of course.) My intent was to be part of an unusual town program: sculpture unveiling/book signing.
The sculpture is by Karen Rossi, the queen of whimsy, whose Fanciful Flight mobiles (designed in Connecticut and manufactured in China) are a world-wide phenomenon. Karen herself is a phenomenon -- a whirlwind of ideas and energy who was being honored by her hometown, which had commissioned her to design a large scultpture in front of the library/town hall complex.
A politician made a speech about how the sculpture came to be. Karen, holding her chihuahua, Taco, thanked everyone, and then the party moved inside for a reception and the signing. She was the one who connected the two events -- thinking creatively, as usual -- because at the heart of Lary Bloom's Connecticut Notebook is a profile of her, and she thought, well, this makes sense.
I had expected, of course, an enjoyable reunion with the sculptor, and was not disappointed. But what I didn't expect came as I walked past the library's reference desk.
Mary Ann Terwilliger introduced herself and showed me a copy of the 1960 edition of the Charles F. Brush High School yearbook. Even in a library, this is a rather rare edition to find. It is a school, after all, that the exists several hundred miles west of South Windsor, in what was once Connecticut's Western Reserve.
Mary Ann and I are two immigrants from the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, a fact she well knew from columns I had written over the years in the Hartford Courant. And, on this day, she provided the printed evidence. She showed me a page of 11th graders. And there I am, the slug with the chubby cheeks, in the bottom center, labeled L.Bloom.
It is the only page in the yearbook where I make an appearance, which should indicate how active I was at dear old Brush High, where my main intention, as I recall, was to survive Mr. Weinman's unintelligible geometry lessons and finish in the top 50 per cent of my graduating class so that I could get into a college.
Mary Ann, like me, she has never been to an official reunion. So our little ten minute chat was as close as we've ever come. We wondered aloud about our gym teacher, a "nice guy," who a few years ago was discovered taping the goings-on in the girl's bathroom, and summarily fired. And we talked about other distinguished faculty members.
I pointed all of this out in a little speech I gave at the book signing. Someone asked in the Q and A period whether a book tour is exhausting. No, I said. It is a privilege. And, apparently, it is a road back to where I came from.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 4:07 AM
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