Reading Rainbow (Michelle)

I got the gift of another unexpected artist date this week. I was baby-sitting, actually, for my niece and nephew, and we were watching Reading Rainbow together. It's no secret that I love this show and really have not grown out of it --- I truly buy all that stuff about being able to go anywhere and do anything when you read.

Anyway, this was a great episode, about travel. It was "based" on the premise of LeVar showing off his "travel room," which is full of maps and souvenirs from the places he's visited. The segments, though, basically amounted to a really neat collection of interesting people doing interesting things that emphasized the richness of life, the variety available even within the United States. There were segments on:

• a woman with a rooftop garden in New York City
• a Brooklyn man who raises pigeons on his roof (He was extremely cool; he had so much pure enthusiasm, took such joy in the beauty of the birds and the feeling of freedom he gets from watching them fly.)
• a potter in Hawaii inspired by volcanoes
• a family who lives on a schooner in the summer months

There are so many different lives in this world; there is so much richness in being human. It's amazing that we take refuge in fantasy at all. And I say this as a writer of fantastical fiction.

So, I am an advocate of exploring children's literature and television when imagination runs dry. Children have a sense of wonder that we for some strange reason expect ourselves to leave behind as we become adults. But there was as much for an adult to savor in the potter explaining how thinks about his art as there would be for a child.

If you're curious, you don't have to take my word for it. I've checked, and the DVD is available on Netflix --- the one called Let's Go. The book of the episode was called Someplace Else.