How I was inspired to do this.

2008-12-21T19:40:00.000-08:00

I believe the children are our future. I know it's cliche fom The Greatest Love Of All,
but like many cliches, it's true.The people who now are kids will be the scientists,politicians,farmers taxpayers, business owners,and hopefully capable adults of the future. and at this crucial time in our history more than ever, their intellect,resourcefulness, adaptivity, good will, good humor, compassion, integrity, ascertainment of pragmatic fact on a solely internal basis, that is, to say without outside information or slant, strategy, and discipline will be vital for their survival.
These kids, and indeed all of us,deserve all the help and goodwill there is, we're coming into a time in this world when things seem uncertain. They deserve the best information towards their best chances and our best chances, utopia, not oblivion.
Life goes by quick, and our ability to affect positive change seems limited,but we owe it to ourselves to try to improve our lot and the lot of future generations.
My best friend Jennifer Nolan Johnson worked with kids, and we both remarked at how quickly they picked up information, sometimes hilariously innappropriate or offhand things. I saw how they approached things without the prejudice that keeps innovation and compromise inches away for centuries.
Children understand that anything is possible, that you can still save the day if everyone is the hero, that all people are part of the family of mankind, that it's not nice to hurt someone else's feelings.
Children understand what it's like to want to be challenged,valued, validated , and often will see things we miss in our cynicism and expedience.
To develop their intellect suits the best case scenario, diligent and earnest minds who
build towards better answers to the questions we face as a people and as a species.
What I saw then continues to inspire me now in this endeavor,that we may get beyond the limits we presently face in the obstacles here and ahead.
Jennifer Nolan Johnson,Her brother Mark, and a great friend and female airplane mechanic Sarah Johnson(unrelated)passed away quite suddenly one day in May of 1999.
I think she was 23.
Does it matter?
They were so young, it was so horrible.
There was an avalanche at Sacred Falls, in Oahu, Hawaii while they were hiking.
Jenn's brother was graduating summa cum laude from college during this trip, so she and her parents and Sarah were in town to celebrate and watch his graduation.
At one time, I was supposed to have gone.

She, Mark, Sarah, and Sarah's boyfriend at the time, Mike Heckman had been hiking, and the drought caued an avalanche.
It was like someone threw some ugly arbitrary switch in the middle of a sentence.
We were all devastated.
It didn't seem real.
It was a bad movie we were living, but it kept not going away.
In a strange way, it never will. I miss her horribly,
but in another way I at least think I can feel her there.
It's maddening to never be sure even now.
I kept wanting to talk to her about it, normally we would have talked about it, she was my friend and my girlfriend oracle; she was always right about 'em.
I had a knack for being right about hers too, and more than one of her high school boyfriends wanted to express his glowing opinion for my unwittingly frank critique in a physically gregarious way, shall we say.

Jenn left a will behind, oddly enough for a young person (she had just gotten life insurance through her employer, WaMu.)In her will, she intimated I was to create a monument to her. I vowed to honor that.
At the time, we had been on break from a sculpting class we had been taking together at Pierce College, and I went back and choked horribly trying to design a monument for her in class.
Eventually,I gave up even going because I began to dread continually choking at the task.
Right after Jenn passed, we were going through her stuff trying to sort it out, and I found a collar formerly belonging to Delilah, completely seven-toed matriarch of a dynasty of unusually dextrous cats, with a rudimentary ability to grasp things.
I thought about my promise, and as a reminder, I put it around my left ankle.

I've been wearing it going on ten years.
No, really.<-----((((here is the cat collar/ankle promise-reminder about ten years in, suprisingly not much the worse for wear, testament to the durability of webbing-based accessories,great watchbands, a fairly inexpensive option for a good pet collar, though probably with a quick release for if they get caught, it can save them breaking their necks.They're not a durable as the webbing, go figure.---))))
Day in day out, through airport security ,xray technicians, workmates, occasional misunderstandings, and good-natured ridicule.
I got married wearing the thing.
I've had to explain it to more people than I remember, helping me to keep it in focus all these years, which has been an unwitting positive side effect.
I'd love to say I had the conscious genius to think of it that way until just now.
Really, though? It just occurred to me right now, sitting here typing with my wife (they would have been thick as thieves in minutes)
enjoying some amazing pecan studded gingerbread, listening to some fun crazy music. Jenn would feel/feels right at home. She loved the holidays, and made them fun for me, too with her infectious enthusiasm and great sense of humor. I don't want to take the collar off for any length of time until I feel I have honored my promise to her.It's just of those things, she was my be-fri and she deserved that kind of commitment, a monument that was a positive worthwhile thing she would have approved of. She had brought it up during a trip to Bergamot Station for school, and I told her I didn't want to tempt fate,but I promised to make a monument for her.
I remember us talking on the freeway in her Altima like it was yesterday.

It is really a trip, but hey, here I am.
I found some causes worthy of being a monument to my best friend for most of the 11 years I knew her, Jenn Johnson, and this is one of them, to validate people past and present whose contributions have been significant and are deserving of more exposure than they may have received,
The Novel Approach(Reader Nation) is also part of her monument, to interest kids and adults in reading and a love of learning , along with Grow Our Own,
another project to encourage many people networked to use their limited space collaboratively to supplement their diets with vegetables and herbs they grow, and making the growing more possible for people who have limited space or who need to stay mobile(apartment dwellers, the homeless, etc.)and increase their ability to acquire better access to nutrition independent of outside factors ,mitigate household waste through composting/ vermicomposting, and urban gardening.The next facet of Jenn's monument is a series of children' books about a group of diverse characters who work together to solve mysteries, understand situations, and form strategies, but more about that later.

Norton Juster

2008-08-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

For the first Hero, I chose one of my own first heroes: writer, professor, and architect
Norton Juster. His accomplishments are vast, but one of the works he's best known for is his 1961 classic kid's book,
"The Phantom Tollbooth".
Now past its 50th printing, this book has inspired multiple generations of kids to enjoy learning through the perspective it conveys with humor and beautiful wordplay.

I am a large fan of this work.
I also believe in its ability to promote an interest in learning and applying knowledge in kids.
I believe in the idea enough to found a project (The Novel Approach: Reader Nation) to distribute and facilitate it's distribution (and other books that promote the love of learning )free of charge to kids. At the moment this is a very small venture, but I believe in in it enough to fund it myself so far, though hopefully as I promote it and it gets bigger other people will give and suggest books.
I am preparing a letter of explanation and asking permission to honor him this way publically, and also to ask for better information from him about how he'd prefer to be portrayed, his perspective on his work and the world ,and what he feels his legacy is.
He seems a very warm, funny, and intelligent man,and I must admit, like some of my other
Heroes, it has given me comfort during my lifetime to know that he exists or at least has at some point in history.
Pending Mr. Juster's permission to use his name this way, here is more information about him:
wikipedia entry
Powell's.com interview Powells is one of the best bookstores in the world anywhere.
Eternally huge props to them and their many faceted operation, a virtual bibliographical octopus!
I'm jealous of anyone who lives within driving distance of any of their stores.
Especially this one.

Howdy Folks and Nice to know ya!

2008-08-28T17:58:00.000-07:00

Greetings and Salutations ! I am Cousin Leopold, no doubt you've heard of me, I've ranged here and there, far and wide, up and down and I've talked to at least a few of you.
This Blog is for you. and you, too! and all of you over there!
This Blog is to honor people who have done great things for us and the world,
a pantheon of undersung heroes.
You may have heard of them, but if you haven't you will, and hopefully if you have , you'll find out something new.
All my life, certain people have stood out.
People who have inspired me with the paths they've taken, and the way they used what they were given.
Some for the passion of their work, some for the depth of their understanding.
These are folks who deserve respect and admiration.
Each story is different, so keep reading, and you'll see how each has earned their place in history.

Cousin Leopold's Pantheon of Undersung Heroes

How I was inspired to do this.

Norton Juster

Howdy Folks and Nice to know ya!