WHAT TO SAY AFTER ALL HAS BEEN SAID

Read below or click and listen!

http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/rapt.mp3

What in the world would somebody like me have to say to a rapt audience had I the opportunity to say something useful?

I never know the answer to that question, but that does not prevent me from accepting invitations to speak before all kinds of groups large and small, young and old, literary and non-literary. People invite me to speak or teach, and I almost always accept. For instance, this coming Sunday at the Alabaster Library I’ll be speaking on the topic(s) “How To Become Your Own Book” and “What to Keep and What to Toss.”

The first is all about the joy of writing, how to find it, how to keep it, how to do it, how to stop doing it if it isn’t joyful (see my outline at http://www.jimreedbooks.com/become.html )…the second is in answer to the age-old question that we all ask eventually: Do I need to keep this or throw it away or donate it or stomp it or re-gift it or sell it? (I have the answer, though you might not like hearing it).

How does all this running about and making public appearances fit in with my otherwise hermit lifestyle, the lifestyle of a bookish bookie who writes books, sells books, reads books, edits books, purchases books, gifts books, donates books?

Well, here are a few answers to that question:

1.     Making speeches, conducting seminars, teaching…all serve to get me out of the shop, out of my shell, re-connect me with the general public I tend to hide from most of the time. I obviously-and reluctantly-need some social contact now and then.

2.     Doing all this public stuff allows me to spread the gospel of respecting old things, old memories. It’s important to recognize the past as part of our journey into the future. It comforts and sustains us, teaches us what works and what doesn’t work, what is right and what isn’t right. We don’t just wake up one morning wise…we have to travel forth and experience life in order to learn much of anything worth learning.

3.     Going forth introduces me and my hideaway (Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories/The Library of Thought) to folks who long to know such a place exists somewhere in the world. Believe it or not, after 30 years of  my owning the shop, most people still do not know it exists. Each day, new visitors arrive at the door saying, ”Why didn’t I know about this?  Awesome!”

I get a kick showing them around or leaving them alone to wander through the looking-glass all by themselves. They almost always find a treasure or two they don’t want to live without.

4.     Wandering around telling my tales gives me a chance to hear other peoples’ tales, too…and everybody has them! Some even become so excited that they begin to write them down,  after I’ve simply given permission for them to do so. It’s an amazing thing to behold.

And so on.

There are other reasons for getting Out There and sharing myself, but these will do for a start.

Every day is a new reason for leaving a legacy of respect for the past, appreciation for the present, and hope for each future day we can make better in some minuscule way.

Let’s get out there and do it alone together

© 2010 A.D. Jim Reed

http://jimreedbooks.com

WRITING THE TRUTHS OF YOUR LIFE.

First, think of the most unlikely, or the most annoying, or the most seemingly unimportant thing in your life and start writing about it. For instance: http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/tooth.mp3 

(c) 2010 A.D. Jim Reed

www.jimreedbooks.com

DONDER GETS HIS NAME BACK

Some time back, I wrote a Christmas piece in which I referred to the reindeer Donder and Blitzen. When the story was published, an unknown editor had changed Donder to Donner without my permission—and without Donder’s.

What! you say, It is spelled Donner.

Wrong, Reindeer Breath!

Clement Moore, reputed author of A Visit from Saint Nicholas (‘Twas the Night Before Christmas), clearly named all eight reindeer, and he wrote more than once that Donder’s name is, well, Donder—not Donner!

This means that Gene Autry (first recording artist to electronically transcribe the song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) got it wrong. He simply mis-read the lyrics.

So, for once in our lifetime, let’s get it right. Pay respect to Donder by calling him by his rightful name.

Anybody who calls this trusted Santa helper by his incorrect name will hereafter be known in reindeer circles as a Donderhead.

Merry Happy Christmas, Donder and Blitzen and all you other reindeer and reindeer fans

Jim Reed © 2009 A.D.

www.jimreedbooks.com

DID I EVER TELL YOU WHAT TO GET ME FOR CHRISTMAS?

http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/tell.mp3

Click above to listen…click below to read.

If you really want to please me, if you truly wish to give me something that will make me smile, if you want to feel you’ve done the right thing by me, then read on:

This Christmas, give me something personal, something of yourself–not something you picked up at the Mall or ran into the Pharmacy and grabbed at the last minute. Just this one Christmas, I would love to receive something truly personal, something that is part of you.

The gift you give as a part of yourself could be any number of things.

You could write a little poem for me, one you made up all by yourself.

You could sing me your favorite Christmas carols, the ones you’ve loved since childhood.

You could do a little performance for me–a funny jig or a joke or two about what it’s like to know somebody like me.

You could draw me a picture and sign your name at the bottom and date it, “Christmas, The 21st Century A.D.”

You could take me to dinner all by yourself and sit and chat with me over some nice food and drink, I listening to what you have to say and you listening to what I have to say.

You could make a little album of photos and memorabilia about me and you, and give it to me with a loving hug.

Get the idea?

You may come up with something better or something more interesting than any of these–that’s ok. As long as you give me something personal, something affectionate and caring, I will be happy.

Maybe you feel uncomfortable, trying to improvise a Christmas gift for me. Perhaps you’ve gotten used to going to the store and purchasing something, and maybe you feel this IS a personal way to gift me. If that’s so, then here’s something you can try, something that may please us both: Go to the store and find a delightful little toy, a toy that makes you smile, involuntarily. Then, bring me that smile–and the toy, too. We can enjoy the toy and our mutual smiles together at the same time!

If all of this is just too much trouble, you could even do this: take me to lunch and ask me what I’d like to give to you, if I could only afford it or if I could only do it just right, in a way that you would appreciate.

Anyhow, I thought you might get a kick out of learning the answer to that age-old question we all ask each other every year: “What do you want for Christmas?” This year, I thought I’d tell you the truth, as I feel the truth this year.

Give me part of you, and I will try to return the compliment next Christmas

–Jim Reed (c) 2009 A.D.

www.jimreedbooks.com

SAVING THE HARLEM REINDEER DREAM 

Harlem Reindeer

(Read below or click audio above.)

My first visit to Harlem to visit Oliver Hardy was just a few years back, but I can’t forget it.

Let me back-track.

I’m driving the long and barren interstate between Augusta and Atlanta in the dead of winter. The sky is gray, the asphalt is gray, the grass and trees are gray, and the mood is grayish. My wife, Liz, and my granddaughter, Jessica, are with me. Suddenly I see a roadside sign directing me to Harlem, Georgia.

Interesting. There is a Harlem Down South?

Then, the next sign tells me that Harlem is the birthplace of the late film comedian Oliver Hardy, of Laurel and Hardy fame.

This is my chance to break the gray day into something smileful. Without asking anybody’s permission, I swerve onto the road to Harlem.

“Where are we going?” Liz asks.

“Why are we turning?” Jessica asks. She’s in a hurry to get to Columbia, South Carolina, to visit family.

“Oh, I’m just going to check something out,” I say. “Maybe we’ll have fun!”

Both passengers grumble and try to go back to their naps.

Suddenly, I’m yelling, “Look look look!” rapid-fire, to make sure Liz and Jessica wake up and look ahead of us on the two-lane blue road.

There, half a block away, five deer are crossing the road, and Jessica claps her hands in delight,

“Are they reindeer?”

I make my usual retort, “Maybe this is where Santa keeps his reindeer off-season.” Jessica is still young and hopeful and a Believer, so she accepts this explanation without a hint of cynicism.

We drive on in to Harlem, the gray day broken by smiles and daydreams.

Harlem is a tiny town, but, sure enough, it’s the hometown of Oliver Hardy. Nothing is open today, since it’s Sunday, and this is long before the Laurel and Hardy museum is fully functioning.

We visit for a while, find that some locals don’t know who Hardy was, find that others are proud of who he was. Liz and I enjoy the visit, but Jessica doesn’t know who these comedians were, so she’s just along for the ride, still thinking about those five reindeer.

Years later, when Harlem has its act together, I take grandsons Ryan and Reed to Harlem, and they get to see a Laurel and Hardy movie, which makes them instant fans.

But today, driving out of Harlem and heading back to the interstate, Jessica starts to settle down in the back seat and Liz closes her eyes while I drive.

Once on the interstate, I’m driving along at my usual at-the-speed-limit rate when I see in the rearview mirror a truck bearing down on us and getting ready to pass. The large open bed of the truck has something gray piled onto it, so I glance again, as it starts to pass us, to determine what it is hauling.

Two hunting-capped men are in front and in the bed are five fresh deer carcasses, their antlers waving with the truck’s motion.

Since they’re passing on the left, I quickly yell, “Look over there! (pointing to the right-hand fields) What’s that? Do you see that?”

Liz and Jessica rise up and peer to the right, their attention focused intensely, just as the truckload of deer passes on by. I keep making up stuff to keep them searching the fields, until the truck is out of sight. Then, I have to fabricate something so they won’t think I’m completely crazy.

“I thought I saw a grizzly!”

They look at me funny and settle back down, never having seen the truck.

And I continue the drive toward Augusta, slightly proud of myself for having saved one little girl’s dream of Santa for at least another season

–Jim Reed © 2009 A.D.

GRASSHOPPER GROWS UP

Once when I was oh so young, a vizier came to me.

He first was coy, was but a boy, but said he’d set me free.

He stood by while I cried my fear, he let me show my ache;

And when I dared to act real brave, he’d give my hand a shake.

I grew up and went my way, but wondered who he was,

This vizier who cared for me and let me find my cause.

One day as I was feeling whole and pure and fine and proud,

I glanced into a mirror…exclaimed in awe aloud,

And waved at my now old vizier, who carried me through life;

And puzzled how he’d known that I could deal with all life’s strife.

This vizier boy, now vizier man, had known it all along,

Known that I would catch up, catch on, sing my own sweet song.

Now that I am oh so old, my vizier stays with me.

He lives within my mirror and waits there patiently,

Making faces when I’m sad, winking when I’m glad,

And seeing what I am and was—just a star-struck lad,

Wryly helping mark my time, slow to criticize,

And always looking straight at me through my own star-struck eyes

© 2009 A.D. Jim Reed

*

THANKSGIVING: THE HAPPIEST SAD DAY OF THE YEAR

The saddest thing I ever saw: a small, elderly woman dining alone at Morrison’s Cafeteria, on Thanksgiving Day.

*

Oh there are many other sadnesses you can find if you look hard enough, in this variegated world of ours, but a little old lady dining alone on Thanksgiving Day makes you feel really fortunate, guilty, smug, relieved, tearful, grateful…it brings you up short and makes you time-travel to the pockets of joy and cheer you experienced in earlier days.

*

Crepe paper. Lots of crepe paper. And construction paper. Bunches of different-colored construction paper. In my childhood home in Tuscaloosa, my Thanksgiving Mother always made sure we creative and restless kids had all the cardboard, scratch paper, partly-used tablets, corrugated surfaces, unused napkins, backs of cancelled checks, rough brown paper from disassembled grocery bags, backs of advertising letters and flyers…anything at all that

we could use to make things.

*

Yes, dear 21^st-Century young’uns, we kids back then made things

from scraps.

*

We could cut up all we wanted, and cut up we did.

*

We cut out rough rectangular sheets from stiff black wrapping paper and glued the edges together to make Pilgrim hats. Old belt buckles were tied to our shoelaces—we never could get it straight, whether the Pilgrims were Quakers, or vice versa, or neither. But it always seemed important to put buckles on our shoes and sandals, wear tubular hats and funny white paper collars, and craft weird-looking guns that flared out like trombones at one end. More fun than being a Pilgrim/Quaker was being an Indian—a true blue Native American, replete with bare chest, feathers shed by neighborhood doves, bows made of crooked twigs and kite string, arrows dulled at the tip by rubber stoppers and corks, and loads of Mother’s discarded rouge and powder and lipstick and mashed cranberries smeared here and there on face and body, to make us feel like the Indians we momentarily were.

*

Sister Barbara and Mother would find some long autumnal-hued dresses for the occasion, but they were seldom seen outside the kitchen for hours on end, while the eight-course dinner was under construction.

*

There was always an accordion-fold crepe paper turkey centerpiece on display, hastily bought on sale at S.H. Kress, just after last year’s Thanksgiving season. It looked nothing like my Aunt Mattie’s turkeys in her West Blocton front yard. And for some reason, we ate cranberry products on that day and that day only. Nobody ever thought about cranberries the other 364 days!

*

And those lucky turkeys were lucky because nobody every thought of eating them except on Thanksgiving and Christmas. They were home free the rest of the year!

*

Now, back into the time machine of just a few years ago.

*

It is Thanksgiving Day. My wife and son and granddaughter are all out of the country. Other family and relatives are either dead or gone, or just plain tied up with their own lives in other states, doing things other than having Thanksgiving Dinner with me.

*

My brother, Tim, my friends Tim Baer and Don Henderson and I decide that we will have to spend Thanksgiving Dinner together, since each of us is bereft of wife or playmate or relative, this particular holiday this particular year.

*

So, we wind up at Morrison’s Cafeteria, eating alone together, going through the line and picking out steamed-particle-board turkey, canned cranberries, thin gravy, boxed mashed potatoes and some bakery goods whose source cannot easily be determined.

*

But we laugh at our situation and each other, tell jokes, cut up a bit, and thank our lucky stars that this one Thanksgiving Dinner is surely just a fluke. We’ll be trying that much harder, next year, to not get blind-sided by the best holiday of the year, Thanksgiving being the only holiday you don’t have to give gifts or reciprocate gifts or strain to find the correct gifts.

*

On Thanksgiving holidays ever since, I make sure I’m with family and friends, and now and then I try to set a place at the table of my mind, for any little old lady or lone friend who might want to join us, for the second saddest thing I’ve ever seen is a happy family lustily enjoying a Thanksgiving feast together and forgetting for a moment about all those lone diners in all the cafeterias of the world who could use a glance and a smile

*

(c) 2009 A.D. Jim Reed