The Periodic Table

(Maybe I should write more prose in this blog. This is something that spilled from my fingers a couple of years ago. It is still true.  K.)

Ralph introduced me to The Periodic Table in June 2007. We were at a party—the annual party where he and I both bring paper and pencil so we can scrawl the titles of each other’s recommendations. It doesn’t matter if there are others at the party, we each only want to see the other. It’s just that way with us. Six months can pass, or a year, and when we see each other again, everyone else evaporates.
So, he slid The Periodic Table off of Beatrice’s bookshelf (the party was at her house) and said, “You. Must. Read. This.”

I did, and it was the kind of earth-shaking, tremendous experience that only comes around once or twice in a lifetime. After that earthquake I needed to share Levi’s book with someone else. It was Dad’s kind of book—all scientific but with humanity as well, a little like Loren Eiseley, but with a depth all its own. I HAD to share it with someone. But with whom? Of course there was Ralph, but he had suggested it to me, and I needed someone to read it right now, and talk about it with me.

I walked home from the library one day, pondering again about who would actually read the book if I shared it. I remember I was on the corner of Johnson and Lewis, when the thought of a salesman I’d talked to a few times came into my mind. I knew his name was Roger, but I couldn’t remember the company he worked for. He would call to sell me overpriced DVDs for the library collection, but instead of a sales spiel, we would just talk about books or music or life. Sometimes the sales pitch wouldn’t even appear. Once, after a particularly good conversation, I hung up and the telephone rang again. It was that Roger, just calling to say that the conversation had meant a lot to him.

I remembered that after a year or so, I found the quality of Roger’s company’s merchandise was dwindling rapidly, and the price was escalating, so I asked the technical services librarian to request that we be taken from the call list. I enjoyed our conversations, but I knew I wouldn’t buy anything else, and I didn’t want to waste Roger’s time. So the calls, infrequent to start with, stopped.

Why, then, did he come to mind as I was contemplating The Periodic Table? I thought about it some more, then decided to jump into the unknown and write. I finally recalled the name of the company he worked for, and on the last day of July 2007, wrote a short note. It said, “Dear Roger the Salesman, Have you ever read The Periodic Table by Primo Levi? What about (and here I put in the titles of two other books, only because I thought it was too short to mention only one). . . I just wondered. Sincerely, Kate Poulter”

I sent the note through the US Post because there was no email address associated with the company, and then I waited. I didn’t hold my breath, but I did expect an answer. Somehow it just seemed that one would come. About a week later I received a squarish envelope at the library. I hadn’t given Roger my actual address, only the library address up in the corner. Inside was a card with a beautiful, stylized, hand-drawn tree. The letter read, in part, “Dear Kate, What a surprise to receive your letter. I do actually have a last name: Veinus. It rhymes with Linus—Peanuts or Pauling, take your pick. . . . I have not read the other books you mentioned, but The Periodic Table happens to be one of my all-time favorites, and Primo Levi is a hero of mine! . . . Write again, Roger.”

Thus began an amazing, beautiful friendship and love. Over the next two years we wrote hundreds of letters. I wrote just over one hundred, he sent at least three hundred, each a thoughtful, loving, insightful letter. After a few months we began to talk on the telephone, and I found him to be a careful listener and brilliant conversationalist. Though he was a fine letter writer, he excelled in verbal exchanges, and he would often talk long into the night, a few times to a snoozing Kate on the other end of the line.

We never met in person. But our connection was such that we could communicate even without the phone or by mail. We each just KNEW what the other was thinking. We each carried the other within our private solitude. It was a companionship of the spirit, perhaps such as Maud Gonne and Yeats seemed to have shared.

Then in September 2009 I received a telephone call from a woman who lived near Roger in Seattle. She called to tell me that Roger had collapsed in front of his apartment that afternoon and had died, probably instantly, from a thrombo-embolism.

My world, which had been in a sort of slow but powerful motion ever since reading The Periodic Table, rocked again, this time with a lurch that almost capsized me. I wrote the obituary, contacted friends scattered all across the continent, communicated with new acquaintances in Seattle, and tried to keep on breathing.
For two years I trod a path of grief and quiet awareness. I am now almost at another anniversary of his death, and finally something is happening. For the first years, the grief was so fresh, so painful, so excruciating, that I couldn’t think very carefully. Oh, I finished graduate school, and wrote a lot, and kept on with my other responsibilities, but there was the rent inside that couldn’t be mended.

At first I could only read poetry—nothing else could hold my attention. Rumi and Merwin and Rilke were my only consolation. Then a year passed, and I could read again, but only just. And now? Rumi speaks of a man who dreamed of gold in Cairo so he left Baghdad to find it. When he arrived, a soldier scoffed at him and said he himself had dreamed of gold in Baghdad, at the man’s own address. So the man returned to Baghdad and found the gold under his own hearth. So it is with me.

I discovered that the solitude I carry is still a companionable solitude. I now have all our letters, and the memories, but more than that, I have myself. I still see things with an awareness that Roger would recognize. Just as we both found The Periodic Table independently, but were enriched by the other’s discovery, so does our connection continue. I have finally learned that I don’t need to search any longer.

As Rumi wrote,
It may be that the satisfaction I need
depends on my going away, so that when I’ve gone
and come back, I’ll find it at home.
I will search for the Friend with all my passion
and all my energy, until I learn
that I don’t need to search.

And that is why The Periodic Table is so important to me.

Jane Eyre Meets Rumi on the Moor

           Jane:                                                                                      Rumi:
Gone is my light,                                                       Gone is my light
and yet he lives on still.                                             to that greatest light
Yes, he lives yet,                                                       Half my soul at least
but not with me.                                                        is also gone.
Others seek my hand,                                               But I live on still.
but do not cherish                                                     The wind rushes through
its small form.                                                           this hollow husk
I, who know what                                                    I have become.
it is to be loved,                                                        But I am no wind’s slave.
prized, sought                                                          With what little self
for soul’s kin’s                                                          that here remains,
sake,                                                                        I will erect a flag,
Will not submit                                                         or wire,
to such slavery                                                          rising in this wind
for mere                                                                    to vibrate and thus
appearance.                                                              give voice.
I must be free.                                                           I must either sigh or sing.
If I cannot be with                                                     If I turn this way
him to whom my heart will                                         or that,
ever cling,                                                                 the wind winds
I will belong to                                                          into words,
no man.                                                                    and becomes
Perhaps my death                                                     an air, a song,
will bring me to                                                         a hymn.
his dear sight                                                       One day a breath will waft me
once again.                                                               to another land.
But until then,                                                           But until then,
I will be                                                                    I will
free.                                                                         sing.

                                                     Both:
                                                 Now he is
                                            a present absence,
                                                a hole filled
                                          with a quiet void.
                                                  Peace.
                                             What remains is
                                                 something.
                                            Hope, perhaps,
                                                   or faith.
                                                Freely, then,
                                             I wait and sing.

Homely

The lace curtains
and the click of the keys;
warmth rushing up from the heater vent
to fill my skirt.
I can see Tom's toes from where I sit.

And the quiet Sunday evening
ticks on, ticks on.
Peace together, serenity,
and the tiny ache
of Monday coming soon.

Beauty so close it can't be touched.

Eternity

For as long as I can remember,
there has been nothing but time.
This disturbing meteor
streaks across every sky.
But as the heavens rotate,
eternity looks on with disinterest.
Time affects only the changeable.
The things that do not alter are these:
vast space, curiosity, and gratitude.
Wherever there is deepening appreciation,
or comprehension,
there is God.

Trust in present beauty as a foretaste of forever.

Two Years Ago

Roger Walter Veinus died suddenly on 14 September 2009 after a long struggle with a multitude of health problems. Roger, born 3 July 1948, was the adopted son of Abraham and Julia Veinus. Although he lived for more than 40 years in Seattle, Roger always considered himself one of the “Boys from Syracuse.” He lived in Syracuse, New York, during his childhood and most of his adolescence, with a very significant year spent living abroad with his family in Italy. Roger moved to Seattle in the late 1960s to teach French at the University of Washington. During that time, which was also the era of the Vietnam War, Roger thought deeply about peace and compassion. He realized the only way he could live with self-integrity would be to become a conscientious objector to the war. Instead of joining the military, Roger provided  volunteer community service in a mental hospital in Seattle. The experiences he had there deepened his compassion and helped him to see all people as the unique, beautiful, and sometimes prickly characters we all are.

Certainly everyone who knew Roger was charmed first by his kindness, next by his humor, and then by his ability to appreciate all the music of life. Roger did love music. He sensed it in the swaying of trees in the wind, in the rhythm of a pen moving across paper, and especially in the beautiful and moving passages of his beloved Schubert and Beethoven works. He found deep solace in Beethoven’s Late Quartets, particularly the “Heiliger Dankgesang,” or Holy Song of Thanks, in opus 132. One reason that particular passage meant so much to Roger was that he himself personified gratitude, sometimes even to a fault.

Roger also loved poetry. He loved it, and he lived it. Though in recent years he hobbled more than he ran, he was always taking part in the dance of life. Many times he repeated the phrase from T. S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton”: “Except for the point, the still point,/ There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” The dance, being the interplay between people, holiness, gratitude, and exploration of the inner soul, was Roger’s life work. From another of his favorite poems is this stanza from Robert Frost’s “Two Tramps in Mud Time”:

“My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.”

Roger achieved that difficult object, and set a bright example of love, communication, and compassion for all who knew him.

Roger is survived by his brother, Peter, Peter’s family, and by the large corps of his friends who became his family as well. He was preceded in death by his mother, Julia, with whom he shared a particularly close relationship, and his father, Abraham. All of us will miss him tremendously.

Smokejumper

Sun and water,
Water and sun.
And through it all, a bright weariness,
A taste of something beyond,
Life lived strong, as if in a dream,
Hazy, and slick with sweat and smoke and grime.
But always the sense of water, and the red light.

Rising,
Rising up as if I could touch the sky.
So near that there is only a fine mesh separating me
     from distance and light and swirling black air.
But also bright.
And then like a tumbling leaf, I plunge down into the right spot.
And life starts again,
Too sharp to bear---except the living Now,
And the water,
And the sun,
And the bright, smoky air.

Come, It Is Time

Come, it is time.
It is time to tie your shoes, to stand down from the bus going nowhere.
Stride out: into the house if you will,
up to the dusty university,
down to the dock.
Anywhere will work.
Read out the obituary of your first wife in a loud, clear voice.
That part is over now. You have done all you could.

Where are the tiny footsteps?
Have you outpaced them entirely?
In your haste you left behind the one thing that mattered.
Throw away your broken toy. He who broke it is more important by far.

The old man sleeps in a borrowed bed.
Your grandson runs down the beach, searching.
Now is the time to stop reading the empty poems whose words you can't remember.
Find the little hand and grasp your rusty sword.
Together you can beat the alleyways and empty wooden corridors.
It won't matter if you can't find a single tiger.
The talk will be sweet, and the memories without regret.

Go! He is waiting!

Wordle

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The Secret

Stay very still.
What do you hear?
Don't listen with your ears.
Go deeper than that.

Once you push away all the sounds
      and the thoughts
      and the anxiety---
      even the grief---
You'll arrive at a quiet space.

Look around
(again, don't use your eyes,
this goes deeper than sight),
You won't see anything.
You won't hear anything.
But if you look and listen carefully,
you'll see something invisible,
hear something inaudible,
feel something intangible.

It is love.
It is reassurance
It is appreciation.
It is quiet companionship.
It is an interested listener.
It is the familiarity of music.
It is the awareness of beauty.
It is the one that you seek.

That is the secret.

Treasures at the Library

    I have been haunted most of my life by the memory of a book I read once when I was very young.  It was most likely a library book, because it certainly wasn’t part of my life for very long, but in spite of its short stay, it made a lasting impression on me. Of course I can’t remember the title or anything concrete about it. If I could recall even a word of the title I’m sure I would have tracked it down long ago. No, the impression I have of the book is much more vague. All I can recall is an image of lovebirds in a cage, of a pavilion in a garden with fountains and marble steps, and haunting, bittersweet strains of music I can’t quite hear. There also seems to have been something about olden times and rustling silk and patient love waiting in hope, even if that hope is in vain. The image of the birds is the most vivid of this watery memory. That, and the feeling of old times gone. Over the years I have tried again and again to recall more than this, but if I try too hard, the memory slips away and I don’t know if I am inventing details or if I am really remembering a snatch of phrase or fragment of a passage. Even as I think about it I seem to recall something about a window. I’ll leave it at that.
    Losing that book has colored my life somehow. In part it may have been the wispy memory of those lovebirds in a cage that led me to become a librarian in the first place. Or maybe not. Whatever the reason,  I seem to be always on the lookout for a treasure of one kind or another. Maybe it’s not really that particular book I’m seeking anymore but something less substantial, the purpose of my life, maybe. I do know that I always have the hope that a new book, a new person in my life, a new bend in the road may hold a clue or a key I can use to finally comprehend life’s elusive meaning.
    And then last week I found it. I really did! Just when I arrived at a spot where I felt maybe I didn’t need to ask the unanswerable question about the purpose of life anymore, I found it. Not the answer, no, the long-lost book! In December I was listening to the radio and heard Daniel Pinkwater talking about an old favorite book that had been reissued by the New York Review company. That book, The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber, is one I have loved for years and years. I grew up with its clever words and beautiful fairy tale, and I’ve read it more times than I can count—enough that the words resonate inside of me and I know when my favorite lines are coming. So I looked up the New York Review Children’s Collection and ordered one of almost all of the children’s books for the Marshall Public Library. Two were books we already had, but they were so dog-eared and well-used that I knew a brand new book with a clean cover and crisp pages would be much more tantalizing for children to choose. Then last week the stack of books arrived, and as usual I leafed through each of them and set aside a few to take home and read word by word.
    I remember it was early in the morning. I had a library conference to attend so I came extra early to make a head start on the day. I took the first book off the pile and opened it to a page a little past the middle. I looked, then looked again. The story I had turned to was short, only about three pages long, but it was MY STORY, the one about the lovebirds! As I read it, I didn’t find the marble steps or the fountains or the striped pavilions (those might be waiting in different stories), but as I reread the words the memories and enchantment came flooding back. I hadn’t really forgotten after all, the story had been in my heart all along. Only then did I look to see which book of the many on my desk I had picked up. It was Eleanor Farjeon’s The Little Bookroom, one of the books I had reordered because the library’s original copy had been loved almost to pieces.
    I’m still trying to figure out that experience. Was it just a coincidence? Or was there something deeper? All I know is that I thought the book was gone forever. But it was really not five steps from my desk these past years. Maybe many things are like that, waiting patiently until we stumble across them and realize they have been there all along. Is my life different now that I found the long-lost book? Probably not. But I hope I will have a little more faith that what I seek really does exist. If I look carefully enough I will find it, waiting patiently to be rediscovered. And maybe like the words of my story it will flow into me with the familiarity of an old friend’s voice or slip into my life like my feet into a comfortable pair of shoes. I do know I won’t stop looking, because after all, nothing is ever really lost.

The Empty Space

Oh the futility of reaching out
to take another's hand.
How vast the open sky!

The yawning gap between us isn't space,
or time,
or distance.
It's something else entirely.
Something huge,
and invisible,
impenetrable.

(Though sometimes a strain of music
or a remembered word
trickles through.
Or is that just an echo
bouncing off the bleakness?)

What is out beyond the edge?
The action is completed.
Those beyond need rest,
not perpetual prodding.
They've had their day, their say.

Bach's notes fit together like a complex puzzle.
Don't add pieces or take any away.
What is there is complete.

Write your own music,
speak your own unuttered words.
Then when you spring into the familiar,
forgotten ether,
You'll have something to talk about
in your own voice.
Grow into your words.
Even now there are those who strain to hear.

Part of the Answer

What is success?
Grasping at icicles,
Harvesting the drips,
Eating gold.

Aren’t beans more substantial?

You look at each others' store of
chocolate, with envy.
Who could possibly eat so much?
There aren’t enough days in the
year to wear all those clothes even once.

Don’t you have anything to love?
Nothing to treasure?
Nothing to hold in your hands, or your arms,
Or even stroke with your fingertips?
Nothing so comfortable to wear that it molds
to your body from long use?

Poverty!

Come sit down here on this box.
I’ll give you some thoughts,
and my attention.
I’ll stay up late and write a letter,
one you can hold in your hands
and feel the paper crinkle
against your fingers.
It’s the attention that really matters.

To how many people in your life did you really pay attention?
Did you really never see that golden light
streaming onto the concrete
through the turning leaves?
How do you think you’ll recognize it now?
When the shell is gone, you’ll be hollow inside.

So sit outside in the sun or the rain.
Then at least you’ll be filled with
light and water.
And something planted in your soil
can grow.

Meditation

Open a door into a quiet, changing room.

Sometimes it has no roof, no walls.

Sometimes it is dark and still, dusky light with a comfortable couch.

Still other times it is simply a window with a raindrop trailing down, following almost but not quite the tracks of countless other drops,

And the quiet of the room behind the window.

Who is there, sharing that vast, enclosing, freeing space?

There is a presence, benign.

Malignancy can’t find the door, doesn’t even know to look. But if he did, the way would be indistinguishable in his dark corridor.

But for you, the outline shines with a silver light.

Step inside. Everything is waiting for you.

Lining the walls are the placidly smiling Buddhas, their eyes twinkling with delight and welcome.

But don’t be shy. They’re in their own rooms, after all.

This is the in-between space where everyone and no one is.

One is waiting, ready to let you see through his eyes.

You can feel it, can’t you---

The acceptance, the peace, the air like breathable music?

Veiled though you are, and shrouded in blind mortality,

Here is the space between.

Come, wander and rest,

There's a door on this side, too.

Creativity

What is it?
Longing mixed with involuntary music,
Upwelling from the heart of things,
Unfinished, hidden, partially obscured.

Why is there no resolution?
It takes a kind of perseverance
Beyond just the regular flitting from thing to thing.

Stop.
Dig deep into the recesses.
Find the glittering prize and bring it out into the light.
It's worth showing to the world.
Things shouldn't remain hidden.
That smacks of ingratitude.

It doesn't matter if you can't do it all.
At least do some,
And do it well.
Don't leave one treasure covered in muck
Because you're so anxious to find the next.
These things take time.

And in the end there will be jewels enough,

Sparkling in starlight.
 

A Gift upon Awaking

 
Words of the Sculptor

We will now discuss Death,
That changing of one thing into another,
A reality beyond which we cannot see,
Stuck as we are in the undaunted hereness of now.
We work upon substance
As firm as marble, as fragile as porcelain.
Don't go into the next room.
There is nothing inside---
No floor.
Take this chisel. Make your scratches on the rock.
Let the people coming in later wonder what you meant
By your wild profusion of grapes.
In a little while you can go stand
At the door of the floorless room
And toss in a shard.
But don't expect to hear it clatter at the bottom.
The one I threw is falling yet.

True

TIME does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,	5
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim!	10
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Suite for Cello Number 2 in D Minor

Everywhere I see a solitary bird.
I see his ragged silhouette against the
bleak and empty winter sky.
Where is your lovely black-winged mate
who flies so often by your side, inside your cries
where has she flown, wherever has she fled,
oh, is she lost beyond your feathered ken?
Will she return? Will she return? She will return.              

Dear lonesome bird, you're not alone in seeking for elusive wings,
for my eyes too, they scan the skies, the hidden tops of mountain peaks,
the lonesome ways, the thronging crowds, the gentle slopes,                      
the rocky shores, the narrow alleyways between
the hostile brick and concrete walls. Sometimes I think I see a flash              
of color in a graying sky and trace it with my eyes to where it lands,
but when my hasty feet arrive I find no bird but just
a scrap of cloth tormented by the hungry wind in twilight, going, and now gone.      

But now I know I look in vain for what I seek.              
How can I ever hope to see the form that does not even
to my knowledge haunt my dreams?
The sun still shines and makes things grow.
The tawny grass flows up and over slopes               
and covers paths I followed innocently long ago.
The time goes on, the years go by, the seasons pass,
the bright sun sets and rises every day anew.               
But just on earth, just for us here, for us alone.
And still I walk the rocky trails and laughing banks of mountain streams,
the arid hills, and wooded groves. I tread the dark and thorny paths
I never knew in brighter days; I never realized were there.

But everywhere I set my feet, in all those winding, narrow ways and rocky tracks,
I see the subtle, simple signs of one who's passed along that way and placed       
with purposeful intention there some stones.
I read the messages intended for my eyes and placed where only I will see.      
And so I step in company with one I seek, but slightly slipping out of time.       
I walk alone but not alone, but not alone, not quite alone.

But everywhere I look I see a solitary bird,
alone against the
bleak and empty winter sky.
Where is your lovely black-winged mate
who flies so often by your side, inside, inside your cries, inside your cries?
Where has thy love flown, will she return? She will return.

I walk alone but not alone.
And everywhere I set my feet, in all the winding tracks,
I see the messages from one who's gone ahead
and placed the stones where only I will see.
I see a solitary bird, I see his ragged silhouette
against the sky.
I read the messages he left
in odd-shaped stones, along my path,
a subtle message just for me.
I see a solitary bird.
I walk alone but not alone.

Bear Dreams

For nearly sixty years, he walked around alone
and bearlike in his cumbersome fur coat.
Rain dripped off the brim of his hat
and trickled down his neck.
He was cold, sometimes,
and damp, and more
than a little
blue.
Then
the sun
shone in the trees
and the bear looked up,
and learned to play the piano
and began to sing in his gruff bear voice
and everyone laughed with delight. Then he slipped
out of his worn fur coat and danced away out of our ken.

Two Thousand One Hundred Ninety-One Days!

Six years ago today I began my wonderful job at the library. How can it have been that long? How can it have only been that long? So much has happened since that hot August day that I first met the staff by the secret door and was inducted into the hallowed halls of book dust and camaraderie. Here, using that fancy and wonderful widget that tells me what the number of the day is in SQL calculations and then doing some clever subtracting with the handy calculator, I will give you some other figures.

2191 days ago I had 467 more days of marriage left, 1079 more days until I wrote that first note to Roger (we had 776 days together), and I would have 246 more days to endure before things came to a head in the home situation.

Interestingly, I had spent 1949 days in the bakery in the years preceding the move to the hall of books, and exactly 1900 as an editor in the years before that. Well, I believe I will stay in this present profession approximately 9496 more days, and then live another 13100 days after that when I finally kick the bucket at age 100 (plus one day).

Now my head is tired from so much math. I think I’ll go read.

Tra-La-La!

Module 10
Pilkey, D. (2000). Captain Underpants and Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants. New York: Scholastic.

Poor, poor Professor Poopypants. He has been saddled with a terrible name. Even though he is very smart, no one takes him seriously. Will innocent children treat him with more kindness? You’ve got to be kidding! When he becomes a science teacher, the children’s taunts drive him to the brink of madness, then push him over the edge. This is a job for . . . Captain Underpants!

My View:
Say this three times fast: Pippy Peepee Poopypants, Pippy Peepee Poopypants, Pippy Peepee Poopypants. Now, wasn’t that fun? Hey, you can stop now!

I think that any parents who refuse to let their children’s innocent minds be exposed to Captain Underpants should be made to sit for an hour or so on a hot day in an unventilated room that has a poopy diaper in the garbage can. What’s not to like? There’s a refreshingly irreverent look at a stuffy principal, hilarious silliness, boys who might be incorrigible but are good at heart, and a Superhero! The Harry Potter books have similar mischief makers in Fred and George Weasley. Who else would come up with: “Forget You-Know-Who—get You-No-Poo, our exclusive constipation candy!” Such things bring needed comic relief to terrible ordeals, and for some kids, school itself is as hideous as a face-to-face encounter with Voldy. Why not let them fantasize about their own troubles disappearing with the snap of the fingers? It sure beats putting squishies on real toilet seats, or effectively blowing up property. Let the kids read!

“With its bathroom humor, madcap pranks, gross adventures, mini-comic strips, and flip-book pages, this rollicking laugh-out-loud cartoon story is certain to be a hit, especially with reluctant readers.”
McNeil, S. (2000). Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants (Book Review). School Library Journal 46(5), 151.

Ideas for the library: Howell Library had a Captain Underpants day. Why not do something similar. Judy sent me the clipping about it: there was a beanbag toss through a toilet seat, a diaper race, a mad lib with potty words. Ugh, but I know lots of boys who would really groove on the idea. I don’t know if I could do the mad lib unless I had a bowl of adjectives, a cup of nouns, etc. that the kids would draw from. What about treats? Ketchup packets? No! How about No-Bake Cookies—yeah— petrified throw-up, perfect!