bee season

For the past year or so, I've been listening only to NPR at work; resulting in lots of scraps of paper with titles of books or names of authors to check out. My bookshelf is completely full and my reading list is unrealistically long, but this summer I took some time out for fiction. I never trust my friends to recommend books to me, but I always trust NPR. As I picked my way through past NPR Summer Reading Lists, I came to Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. I felt good about it after having a nice chat with the Prairie Lights clerk. He let me know about her upcoming reading, and recommended that I come to the reading of her new book and have her sign my copy of Bee Season (which I did, reluctantly). I read, and loved, the book, but then again I will always love books about Jewish mysticism...and kaleidoscopes.

Another goal for the summer was to spend more time with the Decemberists. I bought Her Majesty and after Brian Ecklund opened it in a most impressive manner, I enjoyed it immensely.

In Omaha I was thrilled when Rachel and Bryan agreed to go see the movie version of Bee Season. It was done quite well, and did justice (for the most part) of the very visual book. A movie could never live up to what I saw in my head, but the kaleidoscope imagery was wonderful.

Not until a week ago did I make the staggering discovery that Track 6 on Her Majesty is "Song For Myla Goldberg"!! How did I not notice?! I even remember loving the lyric "Sew wings to your pigeon toes/ Put paper to pen/ To spell out "Eliza." I'm a fool!

During my internet research, this is what I found from the Village Voice:

Myla Goldberg on Colin Meloy:

"Two years ago the Decemberists' Colin Meloy wrote a song about Myla Goldberg's pretty hands and dangly limbs, but she "must have had a brain lesion or something," because she didn't remember ever meeting him. "I'm bad," she says. "It turns out we talked at a reading. But it's not like he said, 'Hello, I'm Colin Meloy, the lead singer of the Decemberists."

A friend e-mailed her about the song, which describes her as "unique New York," but she assumed it was a joke. When she finally listened to the CD, she "started blushing and smiling simultaneously."

I never really know how to handle it when things come full circle. I do know that I'd pay the 5 bucks just to see the kaleidoscope on the big screen again.