I was eight or nine when I met Harriet M. Welsch (who knows perfectly well she has no middle name), and her friends Sport and Janie, and her nanny Ole Golly, and I was instantly enraptured. Then there was the scene where she instructed the cook that she wanted a tomato sandwich, turning down offers of many other delicacies in favor of the tangy pulpy fruit.

She was a wise little girl.

Harriet lived in New York, of course, so it’s safe to assume that the tomatos on her famous sandwiches were from New Jersey, which is as it should be. I maintain that you have not truly tasted a proper tomato until you’ve had one nurtured in the rich soil of the Garden State. (If you should happen to pop a cherry-sized bit of tomato-y bliss into your mouth while standing barefoot in said soil, and while you, the earth and the tomato are pleasantly warm from the sun, so much the better.) No tomato compares. Truly.

Whenever there’s food in a novel, or story, I want to experience it. One of my fantasies, in fact, is to open a bookstore cafe where all the menu items are from literature. The mystery room would have gourmet dinners worthy of Nero Wolfe’s approval, but it would also offer proper afternoon teas, hosted by Miss Marple look-alikes (dead bodies optional). The science fiction room would have chocolate chai masquerading as klah, and stews would be cooked over bunsen burners a la the mother in A Wrinkle in Time, but I digress.

Harriet introduced me to tomato sandwiches and got me hooked on writing, as I was already hooked on reading. With Harriet’s inspiration, I started a neighborhood newspaper using my grandfather’s old gun-metal grey manual typewriter and a table-top mimeograph machine, I began keeping notebooks of thoughts and ideas, and I started flirting with journals, though, because I’ve got a strong fickle streak, the latter never lasted.

I’m sitting here now in Barnes and Noble, Cedar Hill, Texas, sipping chai and finishing a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, and toasting Harriet the Spy, and imaginative little girls everywhere.

Once upon a time
When your mother was with child
She developed an unusual appetite.
She told your father
That what she wanted
More than anything in the world
Was greens, greens, and nothing but greens
Parsley, peppers, cabbages and celeries
Asparagus and watercress and fiddleferns and lettuce
He said “All right” but it wasn’t quite…”
–from Into the Woods

I’ve always loved the dark history of fairy tales. Rapunzel and her hair, Cinderella and her stepsisters – the Disney-fied versions of these don’t remind you that the wicked queen often ends up dancing in iron-hot shoes while her soul languishes in hell. AS a kid, I found a collection of pre-Disney versions of these tales, in a red leather bound book, in my grandparents’ house. Probably it belonged to my mother or her sisters, but maybe my grandfather had bought it for me. I never knew, I didn’t ask.

A decade later that book would be my inspiration, along with Anne Sextons “Transformations” in claiming, in a literary thesis, that Snow White was really a vampire story.

I still want to write it as a novel.

powered by Audioblog.com

powered by Audioblog.com

powered by Audioblog.com

powered by Audioblog.com

powered by Audioblog.com

The Queen said
“Oh!”
And went to his Majesty:
“Talking of the butter for
The royal slice of bread,
Many people
Think that
Marmalade
Is nicer.
Would you like to try a little
Marmalade
Instead?”
— A. A. Milne

Many people think of A.A. Milne, if they know his name at all, as the creator of Winnie the Pooh, and, while I love that silly old bear, and will probably talk about him later today, it’s Milne’s poetry that hooked me on him when I was really young.

“Marmalade” (which is really called “The King’s Breakfast”) is my favorite, not just because it’s a great rhyming story, but also because some words are inherently fun to say, and “marmalade” is one of them. Don’t believe me? Say it, and tell me you don’t start to smile.

When I was in high school (yes, high school) I volunteered for a literacy group. Among other things we shared favorite children’s books, but we also read books to little kids, and this poem was a favorite of mine, and theirs, because there is a pattern in the dialogue, and kids pick up patterns really well.

Of course, there is an inherent problem in posting about toast, bread, and marmalade twice before having breakfast: I’m now very hungry.

An aside, especially to those reading via OD or LJ: I’m going to be shifting to MoBlog mode for the next few hours while I’m at my froufrou salon having my roots re-done. (The Color that Shall Not be Named is perilously close to making an appearance, and MUST BE STOPPED). I’m fairly certain AudioBlog (now HipCast) doesn’t parse correctly through RSS, so you’ll have to go to to MissMeliss.com to follow along.

And a note to Elegy, who is my monitor today: This post is a few minutes early because I need to throw clothes on and drive half an hour up the road. Next one will be (hopefully) from the salon, or just outside it.

Did you ever hear of Mickey,
how he heard a racket in the night and shouted, “Quiet down there!”
–Maurice Sendak

My grandfather was a man of many hobbies, including bread making. I remember playing with his copper and steel dough mixer, this deep tub with a crank and floured sides, the pre-cursor to any kind of bread machine. I remember his raisin bread with the perfect golden brown crusts, and the mix of black and yellow raisins, and I remember experimenting with sourdough, til we’d come up with the perfect starter, bubbling away on the shelf above the dishwasher.

I also remember him reading to me, and one of the books we shared was In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak. It’s this great picture book about a boy named Mickey who hears a racket in the kitchen of the building he lives in, and goes to investigate and demand silence.

In the process he falls into the dough for the morning baking, and is baked into a sort of bread plane, and proceeds to soar around the kitchen. This image is central to the book, the iconic image, just as the toothy monster is the key image from one of Sendak’s other popular works, Where the Wild Things Are.

I remember being afraid to go to sleep lest I, too, be turned into bread and I also remember thinking it would be kind of cool, but really? The coolest thing about this book, other than it’s imaginative plot and fabulous artwork, is that I would read it while sitting on my grandfather’s lap, and sharing a slice of homemade raisin toast.

I HAVE a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
— Robert Louis Stevenson

I grew up in a Seuss-free household, but that didn’t mean growing up without rhyme. Rhyme engages your brain, it’s sing-songy, and innocent, and makes words into a game. I love rhyme. But I’ve never been fond of Dr. Seuss, I think because by the time I was introduced to him, I was already beyond that level of reading.

Instead, I grew up with a collection of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. Better known for his novel Treasure Island, and more British than British can be in tone, his poems made me feel like I really was flying in a swing, or playing with toy soldiers on the bed, or, in this case, reciting an ode to my shadow.

In any case some of my fondest memories involve reciting Stevenson’s work with my grandmother, laughing if we made mistakes, and feeling smug and somehow accomplished if we did not.

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.