"Out of The Night There Came A Lady "

Ms. Rizzo requested some digital resources on Harriet Tubman so it looks like the Holly Near version of Walter Robinson's song will be dusted off again. Likewise "out of the night" appeared Gail Carson Levine. Well, not really. I sought out Ms. Levine. I wanted to share the work the kids were doing with her book. I thought she would appreciate the attempt to match the story with its real world locations. I also wanted to share the similar experiences of my father and hers, the Sephardic Jewry link, and Uncle Hy's connection to PS 42. Remarkably, after reading my blog, she thought I was cogent enough to return my call and we had a nice conversation. Coincidentally, her residence upstate is not too far away from where I destroyed my brakes last week. Synchronicity, zeitgeist, who knows? If the classes of the two schools manage to get together to celebrate "Dave At Night" Gail said she would join us and that would be great. I wonder how many Tweed and other DOE bureaucrats it would take to coordinate such an effort. Probably 3 or 4 meetings, a few retreats and a 200 page manual would be involved. Here's part of an interesting interview with Gail by Cynthia Leitich Smith: Gail Carson Levine on Gail Carson Levine: "I was born and grew up in New York City. I was a child in the 1950s, not very long after World War II. My neighborhood in northern Manhattan, Washington Heights, was a haven for refugees from Hitler, and German was spoken on the streets as often as English."The city was a wonderful place to be a kid. Every July 4th, my friends and I would walk to middle of the George Washington Bridge and watch the Macy's fireworks over the Hudson River. On weekends we might walk a mile uptown to the Cloisters, a medieval museum. Other times we'd walk a mile south to two other museums. When I was eleven, I was allowed to travel on the subways on my own, and then New York City was my oyster! In the winter, friends and I would ice skate in Central Park. In the summer, we'd picnic and swim at the beach two hours away by subway--for thirty cents each way!" You can find the rest of it here