H.B.L.S.S.

photo by

Herb Allen

November 1948

Reading

CPS and MHS

summer 2008

Two Big Readers:

Christopher Stephens and

Mary Scioscia

Mothers' Day

My mother read. As a child, I didn’t appreciate it but now one of my favorite childhood memories is of Mom trying to read in the daytime. She sat at the edge of a chair in the living room ineffectively fending off 4 demanding children. We were wailing or scrapping or knocking things over or clinging to her ankles or climbing on her shoulders. She held one arm out, shielding her book. She gave us a teeny-weeny bit of her attention. “Look, just wait. See here, I’m reading, look, just 2 more pages.”

Of course Mom usually read at night when we were asleep. I found this out in a way that was quite a shock. This is how it happened.

There was always a lengthy nighttime ritual. My mother rocked and sang the baby to sleep. Then she read picture books to my brothers and tucked them in to sleep with a few goodnight songs. When the little kids were finally down, I got to snuggle up next to my mother while she read to me from a chapter book.

My father had recently brought home the whole set of wonderful chapter books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My mother and I loved them. The chapters often ended with a tantalizing bit of unfinished business. Each night, when I went to bed, I could hardly wait to hear more.
One night the unfinished business was a problem that made me anxious. To comfort me, my mother told me how it was resolved.
But how did she know?
It turned out that she’d read the whole book! In fact, she’d read most of the books. She was on the last one, These Happy Golden Years. She’d read on without me! I couldn’t believe it. I felt betrayed.
I’ve long since forgiven her. In fact, I’ve long since realized that it wasn’t betrayal at all and that I am a lucky person to have a mother who read.

My mother’s mother read too. Louisa Isabel Smith Hershey moved to the United States from Canada in 1929. She was a lively, outgoing person who made friends easily. She started a reading group. She chose a reading theme that would give her a kick-start in getting to know her adopted country. The theme was regional books. They read U. S. authors who brought a strong sense of place - local geography and local culture – into their stories. My grandmother and her new friends read about Louisa's new country.

Grandma's mother also read. Isabel Caldecott Smith had the same friendly and lively personality as Louisa. My great grandmother had a reputation for giving good advice. Or maybe the reputation was for a ready willingness to give it. In any case, an acquaintance asked my great-grandmother for advice on a gift for a friend.

“A book,” said Isabel promptly. “A book is a fine present indeed.”
“Nooo,” said the acquaintance. “My friend already has a book.”
This exchange is part of our family lore. The implication that ownership of a solitary book is fully sufficient has been oft repeated down the generations and always gives both teller and listener a chuckle.

Isabel’s mother read in four languages. English, French, German and Italian. She sang in those languages too. Emma Mary Arnold Caldecott was trained in classical academics and music by the finest tutors her father could procure. He had access too. Hezekiah Arnold ran a prestigious boys’ school in Montreal.

Emma Mary’s mother and Hezekiah’s wife, Mary Arnold, is said to be descended from William Pitt the Elder. Surely this alleged fact is ample evidence that Mary was also a reader. 

That’s what I think anyway. 

And her mother too. And her mother too.  I maintain that the whole maternal line going way back to women I know nothing of - all readers, even back when it was unusual for women to know how to read, even when it was unusual for anyone to know how to read.

It wasn’t just my maternal ancestors that were enthusiastic readers. My female progeny, the future mothers, are too. My daughters, Mary and Isabel, and my granddaughters, Andrea and Lia, all love reading books.  So does my niece Brajarani and her daughter, Holly, and my other granddaughter, Anaiis, and my young niece, Luisa.

Today’s not really their day, but the men and boys in the family also read. So do the in-laws. It is a great reading tribe.
From out of this tribe, of which I am so very fond, I select one person for a special message of the day. 

To my mother, Mary Louise Hershey Scioscia:

Thank you for reading to me. Thank you for reading to yourself. I’ll see you this afternoon, but I send you my love this morning along with the hope that your day is already quite splendid.

And to reading mothers everywhere - the ones who already have a book, yet somehow continue to acquire more – riverrun sends you very warm wishes for a Happy Mothers’ Day.

J.K. Gill's Bookstores

summer 1945

Mary Lou Hershey and a friend are pictured here on the rooftop of J.K. Gill's Bookstore in Portland, Oregon. I doubt they were supposed to be there. The store was 10 floors high and there aren't any guardrails. And look at their expressions. Mary Lou in particular (on the left) looks as if she knows full well that the roof is off limits to employees.

J.K. Gill's closed the last of its stores in the 1990s. They'd been selling books and stationary and art supplies for more than 100 years.

In the 1950s J.K. Gill's was a fine old bookstore in downtown Portland. The first 2 or 3 floors were retail floors where they carried a comprehensive stock across all publishing companies. The upper floors were dedicated to the J.K. Gill's publishing and wholesale division. On one of the highest floors books were packed and then sent down a twisting shoot, very much like a sliding board, to several floors below where they were shipped out. I imagined myself on that terrifying ride down the book slide - out of the lit packing area through several unlit lower floors, gathering speed in the dark as I went. I imagined it so much that I almost think I really did go down - or worse, my little brothers did.

Edith Bristol ran the Children's Book department at J.K. Gill's. She had good posture and wore suits. She pulled her hair back. If she wasn't twinkling, she could look a little austere.

There was a wonderful Golden Books display unit in the Children's department. It was a sturdy wooden box about 4' x 4' x 5', painted to look like a house for elves. Elves were painted looking out the painted windows and working in the garden. The yellow roof was on a slant with little cubbies for book display. Back-up inventory could be stored on shelves inside the box. I know this display unit so well because Edith Bristol gave it to my brothers and sister and me when Gill's was through with it.

Edith lived out of the city some distance with a woman who didn't dress as well as Edith did.

Mary Lou Hershey was 18 when she got a job at J.K. Gill's. This was about the time she she met and fell in love with Frank Scioscia. No wonder he fell in love with her too. She was lovely, sweet, smart, cheerful AND she was a reader. She was a reader who worked in a bookstore!

Later, after he was discharged from the army and they were married, Frank Scioscia took a fun job amongst all those books at J.K. Gill's too.

Ed Young reading to children

      Ed Young - autumn 2008 - showing a class of students at Hillside School two versions of a single page of Wabi Sabi.  The illustrations are collages.  The first complete manuscript was lost.  Ed started over.  He assembled new collage materials and reworked each illustration.  When the second complete manuscript was in production at Little Brown, the first manuscript was returned to Ed.

     Wabi Sabi was selected as one of the 10 best illustrated books of 2008 by The New York Times.  It is a joy to look at.   The students always enjoy having Ed Young come to school to read his books to them.  This time they looked closely.  Each wanted to be the first to name the differences and the similarities in the page by page comparisons.

     Ed Young has a long association with riverrun.  Ed became friends with Frank and Mary Scioscia in 1966 when they moved to Hastings on Hudson right next to the Burke Estate where Ed Young taught tai chi beneath a palatial copper beech tree.  Ed and his girls have been friends with the Scioscia Family and friends with the bookstore ever since.   The family and the bookstore have been fans of Ed's ever since.

a truly marvelous interview & art show of Ed Young in a quite remarkable readers' blog

Mary Stephens Hayes at riverrun

photo by Christopher P. Stephens

June 1994 - Metropolitan Book Fair

Mary Stephens, now Mary Hayes, worked at riverrun. She and Chris Stephens made a good team. Mary's grandmother, Mary Scioscia, came down to riverrun on Tuesdays. She sat at the desk across the street, at the original riverrun, and entertained friends and fans. On Tuesdays the two Marys ate lunch together in that bookstore. They laughed and chatted and talked books.

After lunch Mary Stephens returned to 12 Washington. She filled orders, wrapped packages, and went book buying with Chris. Mary was interested in the business and she had good ideas. She became especially interested in bindings. riverrun had plenty of handsome old bindings. They whet Mary's fascination with the craft. She wentto the Memphis College of Art because it had a masters program in book binding. She left riverrun and went south. Mary's plan was to become the riverrun book binder. In the end, she followed other talents, but she did come back to New York and worked in the bookstore again. She liked working with the books and the customers. Books and customers liked her too.

Mary didn't stay at riverrun. She tried different jobs at different companies.

Now Mary is in England. She works for Phaidon Publishers. Still books.

A Conversation With Helen Barolini - Author

Helen Barolini moved from Italy to Dobbs Ferry NY in 1973, shortly after her husband died. "Here I was," says Helen, "a recent widow with three children. I got a job as a librarian at Masters School. I was able to live on campus and my daughter could go to school there. Had I done the right thing though? I didn't know.

"Then one day I was walking down the street in the village. A bookstore caught my eye. It was riverrun - or the pre-riverrun called Dobbs Ferry Bookstore. There, right there in the window, were my husband's books! It was as if he were saying, 'here I am with you.' And I knew then that I'd done the right thing in moving here. I'd come to the right place."

Helen went in and introduced herself to Frank Scioscia. They exclaimed together over the coincidence of her husband's books beckoning from the bookstore.

I have my own coincidence having to do with Helen Barolini. She and I are in the same literature club. One day last June I left the meeting early, left Helen and the others, to help a friend. I had a bag full of New York State regents exams and I took them out and started grading. There, right in the English regents exam was a charming excerpt from Helen Barolini's How I Learned Italian. I'd just left her and here I was reading her. She hadn't mentioned that her writing was in the NYS English regents for high school students all over the state to read and write about. I called the literature club meeting and told them.

Today Helen and I chatted about that regents last June. She hadn't known her work was going to be featured in the exam. She didn't find out until her brother called from Syracuse. Helen told me, "I called the NYS Department of Education and asked them why they hadn't let me know. But what was I thinking? Of course they couldn't let me know. No one could know. The students mustn't be allowed to prepare for the exam ahead of time."

We also chatted about reading at riverrun. After seeing her husband's books in the window, Helen Barolini became friends with Frank and Mary Scioscia. She became friends with the bookstore. Helen was there in the mid 1970s when Natalie Safir (then Natalie Polly) started a reading series called Pomegranate. riverrun hosted it. Poets and other writers read to an appreciative public over wine and crackers.

"That was quite a literary community we had there."

Helen Barolini's books: Their Other Side: Six American Women and the Lure of Italy, A Circular Journey, Rome Burning: Poems, Passaggio in Italia, Umbertina, Chiaroscuro: Essays, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings By Italian American Women, Festa: Recipes and Recollections of Italian Holidays, Aldus and His Dream Book, Love in the Middle Ages, More Italian Hours, & Other Stories

Antonio Barolini's books: Croton Elegies, The Mother Poems, The Long Madness, Nights of Fear, The Last Family Countess, The Memory of Stephen

Helen Barolini's website: helenbarolini.com

Mancini wedding

Frank and Mary Scioscia at Pat McNiece and Tony Mancini's wedding. 1967

Pat was in publishing. Tony was a journalist. They were bright and confident and young. The reception was filled with literary enthusiasts.