Literature Festival and open house at the Apollo

My friend Julia and I had a great day last Sunday. (I'm writing this on Saturday night, so it's not technically a week old and is therefore totally kosher.) We met at 10:00 in the morning and headed over to the main campus where the New York Times, among other businesses, was sponsoring a children's literature festival. After getting over the awkardness of being the only ones there with no children in tow, we had a fantastic time. There were tents with sign-ups for all kinds of giveaways - I'm still waiting for Lufthansa to contact me about those free tickets to Europe - tents were you could have authors sign your books if you had either the money to purchase them there or the foresight to bring your copy along (we had neither); a tent where you could buy children/adolescent literature which did NOT stock any of the crap that's so dishearteningly popular lately (no novel versions of Gossip Girl in sight!); the kind of live performances of music aimed at children that makes me pretty sure I'll never reproduce; and a story-reading stage. The latter was our favorite. I love knowing about what's newly published, and Julia is a big Broadway fan and was excited to see lot of the stars of hit shows reading to the kids. Most notable was a young black woman who's starring in a show whose name I can't remember. She read a book called _Jazz Baby_, which I didn't really like, but the whole book is a series of illustrated song lyrics and she sang it. It was absolutely phenomenal. Julia swore that she'd hire Broadway stars to read to her kids someday after that. I also liked a chapter book called _Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things_. The narrator, an undersized elementary school student, is hysterical.

After a quick stop at the farmer's market, where Julia recommended a type of apple called Honeycrisp that is good enough to lend credibility to anything else she ever tells me, we headed uptown.

The Apollo Theater is in Harlem. They had a free open house for their 75th anniversary. I had no idea what to expect, but we had a blast. When we arrived, they were showing a film about the history of the theater which included a segment featuring some of the many, many famous people who have performed there, everyone from Nat King Cole to Korn. We got to go up onto the stage and "rub the stump", a remanent of a tree that used to stand in front of the theater when it was first built; every performer who's been onstage has rubbed it for luck before their performances. Then there was a series of live performances, some singing, some dancing, some of both, and a few hip-hop artists. It was fun to get to know a bit more about a place that's such a landmark, but which I really didn't know a thing about before that day.

I wrapped up the day with a trip to the upper east side to have mediocre Indian food with Dave, then walked about three miles back to campus while on the phone with my parents. My route took me along 5th Avenue which borders Central Park. It was dark and not too many people were around, so I got the shadowy trees, dim facades of buildings, and two or three stars bright enough to penetrate the light pollution mostly to myself. Gotta love this city.