We’re Booked!Rise early, have a tan, collect things and have hobbies. Advice imparted many years back by an older, wise gentle person who wreaked with gravitas. So I started collecting book marks. It all began as a kid growing up in Passaic and being inspired by Mona Rinzler to read. One year when we drove to Florida and stopped at South of the Border in South Carolina I got my first book mark. It was plastic and had a picture of a sombrero. I added two more one from Williamsburg Virgiinia with a picture of our founding fathers. My third came from a school trip to Old Museum Village in Monroe, New York. That one I clipped to the top of the page of one of my Nancy Drew adventures. On a random rainy day when I feel I’ve lost my place in my book, I look through my collections. Flipping pages to see what happened next, albeit antiquated is still my choice of read. In the absence of loosing battery, with no clicks or beeps and nothing to plug in to find out if the protagonist gets pulled over on the road for texting, is my slow down, regroup time. I pause the haunting thoughts, turn the beat around and as my Bubby would say, “look the other way mamala.” Metaphorically with the rapid pace of the progression of time, on the days that feel endless with emotional clutter, we put on our “Red Badge of Courage” tap into Astrid Lindgren’s character Pippi Longstocking and etch a sketch our way to Neverland. In Louis Armstrong’s “ Wonderful World” when he heard babies cry and watched them grow he knew they’d learn more than he’d ever know and he said to himself “what a wonderful world.” So here’s to the days before unplugging, rebooting, memes, twittering, emoticons or cyber bullying. As the dots come dancing in response to a text, sometimes hours later, with no audible voice, no inflections and a smiley face replacing a giggle, I pray for the millennial’s and our grandchildren a collection of bookmarks where they can find their place even if their battery wears out.