What did you do over the summer?

Between June and today I did over 60 gigs which took me through most of New Hampshire, and into Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, and New York. It's been busy, exhausting, and great fun. I met some wonderful people, adults as well as kids, reacquainted with some of my die-hard fans and hopefully made a few new ones! There were some folks I did not see this summer and I hope to see them later in the year.
Some of my work this year, as with most years, was for CLiF - the Children's Literacy Foundation. An amazing organization built on heart and the very strong desire to improve literacy in New Hampshire and Vermont. The team they have is strong, and the people up in Waterbury, Vermont (their world headquarters) all have a love of what they are doing, and for the kids and communities they serve. I am merely the delivery boy of books. Lots and lots of lovely, new books.
I wanted to share what I and a number of other presenters do in a day for CLiF.
The process is not easy for CLiF as the programs over the summer are many, and trying to have the presenters schedule and location schedule work together can be tough. All of the presenters do their own work, and for some, like me, summer is one of the busier times. But the kids need their books, so we make it work. After the emails and phone calls trying to get the scheduling sorted out, I get a list of where I am going and when, and closer to the day I get the notification of who the contact people are, names, numbers, address, number of kids, ages etc.
Sometimes the boxes are shipped straight to the venue, other times they are shipped, or delivered by CLiF folks directly to me. These boxes are labeled as to where they will end up: this school or that community program, or this summer camp.

The evening before or the morning of (depending on whether the leaving time is 6 am or 10 am) I load the car with the boxes of books. In this particular load (two large venues), in the trunk I have 8 boxes of books, my backdrop stand, speaker stand, and cables.

In the back of the car, I have another  three boxes, plus my box with my water, drum throne, and odds and ends, the speaker is in the foot well, my backdrop, my CLiF banner, my microphone, drum, and spare clothes in case I need to put on a fresh outfit when hotter than hot! Some of these things are put in the car right before I leave so they do not get damaged due to security and the temperature of the car overnight. My drum does not do well overnight in a car, and lunch is better when freshly made and packed! I have to say I do love the mileage I get with my 2014 Toyota Corolla, even when fully loaded up. It's not a hybrid, just a regular old basic Corolla!

I try to get to the venue about an hour in advance n case there are issues with the venue, to set up the books, and my sound system (some of the multi-purpose rooms I work in have awful acoustics). Once at the venue, which can take anywhere from 40 minutes to 2 1/2 hours to get there, the car is unloaded, the boxes are emptied onto tables, and a visual presentation is created where we create a candy store of books! The books are in no real order other than reading level, to some degree, and not by author, so not like a book shop!

CLiF banners are put up, a final check and then the young people come in. I tell stories for about 30-40 minutes, depending on the kids or what else is going on, and then they get to pick (for the summer reading program CLiF does) two brand new books each. This sometimes takes quite a while, and again depends on the kids. Usually I can pick up whether the children will need a longer or shorter time to pick out books, which is what I judge when it comes to stories, and length of storytelling. When I head to a CLiF presentation I have a very rough idea of what I might tell, but sometimes the age group, the restlessness of the kids, or at the end of a hot day, the attention of the kids will have me change from the rough plan to something different. After the stories the kids get to look at the books and pick out two they want. Some kids have not picked out books for themselves before, so either myself or staff members at the venue who know the children, help them find something they want and will read. After this is done, all the left over books are packed up and I take them home with me to get back to CLiF at a later date.
The thing about these book deliveries over the summer is that they go to many places where poverty is high, where the majority of the school population is on free lunch and that lunch may be the ONLY meal the students get that day. At many, not all, but many of the places I go to there are teachers and others volunteering to make sure the kids get fed over the longest vacation of the year, and with the help of CLiF, the kids get food for their brains too!
68% of fourth graders in the USA read below a proficient level. 43% of adults with the lowest level of literacy live in poverty which means CLiF is helping break that cycle in NH and VT by bringing kids new books which they Pick Out Themselves (sometimes with a nudge and helping hand in the right direction when needed). There are communities I go to year in and year out, and still I hear the words: "This is my first book I get to keep." Heart breaking and heart warming all at the same time.

The books are chosen on recommendation and vetted by Jana Brown at CLiF. And of course the kids review the books themselves in what they pick and what comes back with me. The range of literature is wide. The choice wildly varied. From The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, to Captain Underpants. There are National Geographic books for early readers, and Curious George, to Judy B Jones and Emilia Bedilia, Eoin Colfer's Artimus Fowl books, Paul Fleisman books, a handful of graphic novels, Rahl Dahl and Rick Riodan books and piles of great picture books, some classics, and many modern classics including Vampirina Ballerina by Anne Marie Pace!

There are over 58 presenters who work with CLiF including my friends and colleagues illustrator and writer Marty Kelley, writers Erin E Moulton, Eric Pinder and Dean Whitlock, and cartoon artist Marek Bennett. CLiF also has such luminaries as Michael Caduto, Jim Arnosky, Natalie Kinsey-Warnick, Katherine Patterson, poet Leland Kinsey, and Doug Wilhelm to name a small handful. This year CLiF has given over 6,250 kids the chance to pick out two brand new books of their own choice. This is close to $135,000 worth of books! I am just a small cog in a wonder wheel called CLiF which takes me through New Hampshire and Vermont meeting some of the best kids, volunteers, counselors, and teachers in those states.
If you want to donate money or new books to CLiF, volunteer, or help on the board, their website is: http://clifonline.org. They would be happy to hear from you.
Here's to books and reading and being able to be whoever and whatever you want to be!
Peace,
Simon

Watching people on devices

This is somewhat about story. It's part of my story. From a long time ago!

I have never really been into video games. Ever. To me Pong was interesting to play once or twice; by the time the Sinclair was set up with the tape machine, I was bored and ready for something else other than staring at a screen. I was never still for long growing up. Now I look around and it seems everyone has their heads facing down at a device.

I was talking to someone who seemed to me, spending a lot of time just racing and crashing a car on their phone. I told them that we did not have that sort of distraction when I was a kid - in the UK we had three channels, or stations to watch on the telly, and at 11pm (well, maybe a little later than that when I was a young whipper-snapper) they would shut down and a picture of the Queen appeared and the National Anthem played. And my Grandad always stood up when he heard it. Then t.v. ran later at night, then all through the night and we got Channel 4! The fourth t.v. station! Two (BBC1 and BBC2) were commercial free. So we had that, the movies, and playing for what we would do. I remember making a tube radio set. It wasn't very good, but I made it and at the time it was a sort of magic. We made forts. We made a go-cart and raced it with the one my step-dad had. I think that spurned a couple more on the street. My step-dad had a rel-to-reel Grundig tape machine which my brother Colin and I would play with for hours pretending to be police, or radio d.j.'s. When someone got a new bike on our street, we all rode it. That's how I got the chip on my two top front teeth (another story for another day). We walked everywhere, or I ran everywhere, and when it was too far to run, I would ride my bike or take the bus.

Forts and go-karts

I got to thinking about what I did on my own. I wrote stories. None from those early years are still around. Same with the first poetry I wrote. I would go on these clean-ups and thrown anything out I thought was rubbish. Apparently I thought most of it was rubbish, and probably was! But I would also draw and paint, and make things. I played the drums and fantasized about being in a famous rock band. I wanted the band to be mine. I came up with titles for songs and write sleeve notes about the songs. Then I would SOMETIMES write the lyrics to these imaginary songs. Then I worked with some musicians and we put music to some of the lyrics. I would also make fake album covers. I still have a few of them, and some other pieces of art which were concepts for these fake albums.

I was talking to my son about time being lost playing video games. They are fun, and they are stimulating, but there is nothing to show for it, apart, maybe, a score on the web which shows your best game, and rarely people know, or care, who you are. I pulled out one of my double album gate-fold covers  I had made - one of my fake album covers. (Yep, I did a daddy thing!) It was for a real band with real people - my friends and my brother. The band was short lived, but quite good and was called Grover Bass (as in base, or bass guitar). We never made it into a studio, and I think we played, in that incarnation about twice! But that's not my point.

With a 35mm Yashica camera (or maybe by then it was the Pentax Spotmatic), some Letraset (letter transfers - each letter painstakingly placed and transferred from the film to its its proper place, or rubbed out and done again), a photostat camera, an old typewriter, and scissors and glue, after a few prototypes I created this:

 

 

The front cover and...

The back cover

Yes, the chap in the white shirt at the front of the very top photograph is the same young man on the front cover - my brother, the latter photo taken around 1983. This work, to me, was something I loved to do - create. I loved my camera and taking photos and processing the films and printing in our cold cellar. It wasn't until I went to college when the art of printing came easy to me - it clicked one day, and I could print! And there was something I had created, something I had made. It was not just me, but other people around me were doing the same thing. Painting, pottery, writing plays, songs, poetry and stories. Creating.

Playing games on devices is fun, but you don't get time back. There is nothing added to your existence, or to the existence around you. You learn nothing but reflexes and hand-eye coordination. I have some mediocre artwork which I quite like (the inner photos of the gate-fold were not all that great!) which I made with friends and family. I can still hold it in my hand and show my kids. My son went and dove into his sketch book. I smiled.


There are still some songs/poems I have not written yet from the titles on this album cover. One day I might have them done!