10 Comments

Thanks for the recommendations. I love your choice of the perfect Jesse Wilcox Smith illustration for your praise of Claire Nader’s new book encouraging tween readers to follow their own curiosity. My branch library was my refuge in the Fifties & Sixties & a letter from my mother allowed me access to the adult side of the library. I became a reference librarian,because my curiosity never waned.

I forwarded your recommendations about China to a friend who used to head the late Confucius Institute at Wayne State University. I remember when you & your wife lived in China (& in Japan & Malaysia) & I read your columns & articles when they first posted. I appreciated the window into cultures I didn’t know. “More Like Us” still sits on my shelf. It is a delightful book.

Expand full comment
author
Aug 22, 2022·edited Aug 22, 2022Author

Thank you! We're touched by and grateful for your companionship (via these reports) over the years. And, yes, I love those JW Smith illustrations. More info than you wanted, but: my siblings and I all remember a photo of our mother as a little girl, looking very much like the child in white at the lower left of this illustration. (Which is why it has always stuck in my mind.)

Expand full comment

Thank you for sharing that info (that I very much appreciated!) about that photo of your mother & how it reminded you of the fair-haired child in the JWS. I love stories about your family, past & present. I have a JWS print of a little girl setting pots of tulips on her windowsill & it brings cheer to my days.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks, I love to hear these stories as well.

Expand full comment
Aug 19, 2022·edited Aug 19, 2022

Thanks a bunch, Jim, for more books that I will want to read. Oh, my tired old eyes...

Friendly sarcasm aside, consider me "teased"...

Expand full comment
author

I live to serve...

Expand full comment

I am late to this discussion because I have been hanging out at the beach with my grandkids but I want to thank you for the recommendations. My oldest grandkids are 12 and 10 so I will definitely get that book.

I grew up downriver from Moundsville on the Ohio side of the river closer to Huntington. My hometown has struggled with the same kinds of problems so I am very interested in programs designed to help those kinds of places. Just recently Ohio’s governor Mike DeWine announced a $500 million program to help the Appalachian counties of Ohio, something that is long overdue.

https://governor.ohio.gov/media/news-and-media/governor-dewine-signs-house-bill-377-that-invests-500-million-in-appalachia-06282022

I would love to hear more about Ralph Nader. I have some serious issues with him running against Gore but I will be eternally grateful for his book “Unsafe at Any Speed”. He deserves a lot of credit for pushing for auto safety standards — a lot of lives have been saved as a result.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you for all of this. I will indeed write more about Ralph Nader at some point. I also opposed the 2000 run, but have seen his effects in many other fields.

Expand full comment

Fallows, you are a storehouse of useful knowledge and information.Thanks,--BJagoda <Barry@barryjagoda.com>

Expand full comment
author

Barry, thanks! We colleagues from the olden days need to stick together. (And on that front, Claire Nader, born in the 1920s, is an example to us all.)

Expand full comment