I love
summer reading. In St Louis--it may be
Cardinal baseball fever for many people but for me summer is for reading! This
year St. Louis spring was glorious—mild weather, just enough breeze, warm
sunshine, and actual azure blue sky.
Now summer is here---like
the super-heated 95+ degree summers of my childhood. In those days, before air
conditioning, my mother would send me to the basement with a pile of magazines
and books to hide from the dual hell daemons, Heat & Humidity. Thank God
for the inspired idea AIR CONDITIONING. Those books would transport me from the
dim, utilitarian, somewhat musty smelling basement to glorious unknown worlds.
Every summer I reread Swiss Family Robinson—it was a hardback with a thick embossed paper
cover meant to look like leather binding. The page edges were tan with age. The
basement is where reading grabbed hold of me and never let me go.
Now, post inspired air
conditioning, I can recline comfortably in my cozy home office, look out the
window at the pin-oak trees and study their lacy, green leaf patterns. Or I can
read! Sometimes I lay the book on my breast, close my eyes and dream the book—I
hear it reading itself too me.
This summer I have really
great books. So far I have read Inside of Time My Journey From Alaska to
Israel. Ruth Gruber, author
and journalist, has become my hero. She was there in pre-WWII Alaska territory
writing about the truth of native Alaskans, the scandalous fur trading
business, the need for settlers from the lower 48 states, and the Japanese
incursions with their huge fish canary ships. I learned so much about the holocaust,
the plight of the Displaced Persons the Jewish survivors, rampant anti-Semitism
in Europe after WWII, and the US’s role in establishing the State of Israel.
This is a true picture of history—not the watered down paragraphs from my high
school texts.
Her writing style is clean
and journalistic but I always felt like I was there—maybe I was carrying her
extra camera bag. Check out her bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Gruber
