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The Tomie dePaola eNewsletter By Bob Hechtel, with Tomie dePaola As I’m sending this to you, Tomie is flying (in an airplane) to San Francisco. He’ll present the 10th Annual Effie Lee Morris Lecture at the San Francisco Public Main Library on Wednesday. He was delighted to accept the invitation from the Library because he knew Effie Lee Morris, “one of the pioneer children’s services leaders in the country.” The title of Tomie’s talk is “What Haven’t I Done Yet?” An exercise video, for one thing. Last Sunday, we went to see “The Pajama Game.” No, not the one on 42nd Street in New York City at the American Airlines Theatre starring Harry Connick, Jr. This production was on Main Street in Newport, New Hampshire at the Newport Opera House and it starred Ken Baron. Our friend, Charles Massey, is the executive director of the Opera House. His “Pajama Game,” featuring community actors, was terrific. I wasn’t familiar with the music. So, it was a chance to put The Muppets Factor to the test. When Charles’s brother, Bill, leaves a Broadway theater after seeing a musical, he judges each song by wondering, “Could the Muppets sing it?” If the answer is “yes,” the song is good. Most of “The Pajama Game” songs could have been sung by the Muppets. Diane Deckard came to the studio on Tuesday to line paper for WHY?, the next “26 Fairmount Avenue” chapter book, scheduled for publication in 2007. Marikka, a book designer at Tomie’s publisher, and one-half of our website design team, had prepared layouts for WHY? The layouts have the text in place and suggested areas for illustrations. But, the layouts are on regular sheets of paper. Before Diane came to the studio, Tomie took large sheets of illustration paper and cut them in half. Diane’s job was to take all of the critical dimensions for the pages of the book, as indicated on the layouts, and mark them with pencil on the illustration paper. It took her about seven hours. Tomie realized many years ago that Diane could line his paper more accurately than he could. Diane was once an actress in New York City. I think her most famous bit of acting was as the woman in bed in the first “I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing” Alka-Seltzer commercial. (Doris Roberts is now playing Diane’s part in a new version of the commercial.) Diane only acts now when she is stopped for speeding and needs to convince the officer not to give her a ticket… or when she tells one of us that we’ve lost weight. Saturday, December 2, 2006. We’ve determined a date for a gallery show at the Beacon Fine Arts Gallery in Red Bank, New Jersey. Dave Griswold, the owner of the gallery, said Red Bank was one hour from New York City and one hour from Philadelphia. Details to come regarding the plans for that weekend. Pet Peeves. One of Tomie’s is when someone writes that Strega Nona lives in the town of Calabria. STREGA NONA begins, “In a town in Calabria…” That is, Strega Nona lives in a town in the region of Calabria. My pet peeve concerns aggressive telemarketers. Although we’ve signed up all phone numbers, fax numbers and cell phone numbers at donotcall.gov, we still get unsolicited calls. This week a telemarketing firm representing sports teams at a high school several towns away from New London called. These people call every year. Instead of getting annoyed with the caller, I asked for the name of the company he represented and the company’s phone number. I then laid the phone on the desk and went to the computer to file a complaint at donotcall.gov. (Months ago, I had read that DirecTV had been fined over $5 million for Do-Not-Call violations. Maybe it was better to file a complaint online than to spar with the telemarketer.) Eventually, the caller hung up. Until next time, best wishes, http://www.tomie.com UPCOMING EVENTS OF INTEREST Monday, May 15 Book Signing at Tuesday, May 16 Book Signing at Wednesday, May 17 Thursday, June 8 Wednesday, June 14 – Sunday, July 2, 2006 Friday, July 28, 2006 Saturday, July 29, 2006 Thursday, September 14, 2006 Saturday, December 2, 2006
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