Heps of Happiness

If you are craving laughter that doesn't involve meetings with Russians, you have got to read Paula Poundstone's new book, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness.

Paula and I are kindred spirits.  If you are honest, most of you are kindred spirits with Paula Poundstone.  She reaches into my heart and tickles it.

I was so happy when she began to appear as a contestant on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me.  If you could do scans of my brain while listening to Paula, you'd see the happiness part light up over and over and over.  When she says something hilarious, I laugh because it is a combination of surprise and recognition.

For example, if you ask her how she ended up with sixteen cats, she will tell you she had fifteen and then got one more.

She does have sixteen cats, and a couple of dogs so that people will think of her as a pet lover rather than a cat lady.  She has three adopted kids.  She has wrestled with her own demons, and she has wrestled with her kids and her pets.

I believe the idea for this book came out of her appearances on Wait, Wait.  She stops the show frequently when Peter Segal describes the results of a scientific experiment to demand to know things like:  who on earth would think of this?  and:  why would you even want to measure that? and:  I would like to know just how they got somebody to do that.

Putting two and two together, she came up with the brilliant idea of unscientifically searching for happiness.  She tries exercise, the internet, organizing, movie day, volunteering and more, and pseudo-scientifically describes in great details and tangents the results.

Last night I dreamed of my son, who is nearly twenty-six.  In the dream he was somewhere around four.  His image in my dream was so real I woke up smiling.  But in the dream he had come up to me and asked me if I would listen to him read, and I (lovingly) told him that I didn't have time right now.  That is the effect of being let in to Paula Poundstone's family.  It is the acknowledging of infinite love and innumerable shortcomings.

This is Paula:

Alley chose a college in Oregon.  I drove her the seventeen hours from here to there in time for her freshman orientation before I realized, I can't do this every day.  So I just left her.

My daughter would recognize me in that story.

Paula decided her family needed a movie day.  I have lots of movie stories, but two stand out.

One day, we went to a matinee (lower price) of a horror movie.  They were advertising a horror double feature later that day.  So we went out and grabbed a burger and came back for two more horror movies.

Another time, when my daughter was reading Macbeth in class, I suggested we watch some movie versions.  There were three at the library, so we spent a day watching all three and comparing them.  None of us to my knowledge is a big fan of movies of Shakespeare's plays, and honestly it isn't my idea of fun, but that day was fun.

A couple of years ago, I saw Paula perform at the Charleston Music Hall.  She began by telling the audience that she would love to talk to us after the show.  And then she performed for two full hours.  I hope she enjoyed it as much as we did, and that she didn't do it because she just couldn't think how to stop talking.  At one point, she lay down on the floor, I think to show us her socks.

She always finds a person in the audience to talk to, which is why I specifically ask for a seat farther back.  It is amazing when this happens, but I believe I would be the person who just sat there, unable to say a word.

Paula wrote one other memoir, in 2004, titled There's Nothing In This Book That I Meant To Say.  This means that I could be 79 years old when she writes her next one.  I can't wait.

Meanwhile she has a new podcast, Live from the Poundstone Institute, in which she continues her unscientific studies.  So that will help me get by while I wait for her next book.

Today is my birthday.  I am not with my family, but I have been so happy to spend the time with Paula and her family.  Thanks, Paula, for all the heps of happiness you have sent my way.

Harry Potter and the Aging Parents

Imagine my surprise to hear that Harry Potter turned twenty in June.  We all remember where we were when tragedy happens; I think discovering Harry Potter is one of those few and precious unforgettable joyful memories.

I remember the review I read that prompted me to pick up the book at our wonderful Emma S. Clark Library.  And I remember reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on our patio in Stony Brook, Long Island, to my ten-year-old daughter and six-year-old son.  The dates don't seem to add up; it may have been an article about the book before the review, or it may just be magic.

It was always a beautiful summer day in my memory, so I will leave it as such.  In that following school year, in her sixth grade class, my daughter's teacher read the book to the students.

When we moved to Charleston in the fall of 1999, I began to volunteer at my son's school library.  When Harry and the Prisoner of Azkaban came out in 1999, the librarian, who was a wonderful woman who loved children and children's books, told me she would not be ordering a copy.  There were parents in the district who thought that the series was thought to advocate witchcraft, wizardry and... satanism.  She did not want to risk the can of worms that a challenge by an irate parent would open.  I was horrified.

But only a couple of years later, as an employee of the Charleston County Public Library, I saw that the tables had turned, and Harry Potter could not be stopped.  Not only were new books bought as soon as possible, but as soon as the book was on the library website, hundreds of requests for holds were placed.  In what I think was a questionable move on the administration's part, library employees were not allowed to place holds, not even when the book became available for hold to the public, until after the book was actually out and available.  No matter, it was one of the few purchases that was a given in my home.

I recall the excitement when the boxes came in to the branches, were loaded onto carts, as requests were filled and people came in to grab their copy.  I have never seen anything like it.

We had a tradition then in my family, that we would read the book together.  It is a tradition that I believe my daughter resents to this day.  Because she wanted to be first to read it, with all her friends.  I understand that now, but still put my foot down.  It was a family tradition that was golden, and I hated to let it go.  We sped the reading up, though, each of us grabbing the book to read chapters silently and then getting together at night to read one together.  A compromise, one I hope Antoinette understands.

Then there were the movies.  The search for Harry Potter.  Yes, I know I'm his mom, but there is no mistaking the resemblance:

I believe this is Harry with the Golden Snitch

Not just me -- for years his friends and even strangers would comment on Nik's resemblance to Harry Potter.

In 2004, I decided to start over, on my own, with Sorcerer's Stone.  I don't usually reread books; as the adage goes, "So many books, etc."  But this was special, and well worth it.

I know the play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, got great fanfare last year.  I read the book, and it was fine.  The movies were not as bad as the critics might lead one to believe.  But those seven books are miraculous.  They made our kids laugh and the dramatic adventures didn't just keep them on the edge of their seats, they were battles of right and wrong.  Kids that were averse to reading learned the pleasures that come from the pages of books.  They fired the imagination, created writers as well as readers.  They inspired independent and creative thought.  And they won the battle over censorship here in the town where my kids were growing up.

The other thing about Rowling's masterpiece is what the series did for children's literature.  Writers were inspired to write children's books that challenged the imagination.  Publishers, learning the lesson from those who had rejected Sorcerer's Stone, were willing to take a risk on new voices.  Stories were more courageous.

So, twenty years later, they may be fond memories for me and millions of others (and I may just take the time to read the series yet again), but Harry Potter and his adventures could be the most influential books in the history of children's literature.

So, if you haven't been to Hogwarts lately, you might just want to grab a handful of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, and that well-worn copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and enjoy the journey.