The Art Book Fair

If I stayed on the couch any longer I was going to grow roots. So Mr Teacherfish made me get up and we were off to the New York Art Book Fair at P.S. 1

The museum that houses P.S. 1 was once a public school. Helen our babysitter (my daughters are in their twenties and have long since passed the age of needing Helen's services but she remains forever in our hearts the loving babysitter) went there more than a half century ago. She lived in a two room apartment in Long Island City with ten siblings, no room for cribs, she once told me, “we kept the babies in the dresser drawers.”

But I digress.
Good writers keep to their topic when writing an expository piece, I tell the freshman English class. But it is freeing to have no aspirations to be a good writer, nor to receive a passing grade in ninth grade English, for that matter.

Back to the topic.
Long Island City has changed over the last half century, since the time Helen and her many siblings lined up at the separate Boys and Girls entrance to receive the free public education that entitled them to seek lives where babies could have cribs in houses with swimming pools.

And PS 1 no longer educates the children of fertile immigrants. It has become an avante garde art museum, the more modern extension of the Museum of Modern Art. Only the peeling paint in the overheated cavernous stairway reminds you that it was once a New York City public school

It was packed to the gills yesterday, with art book merchants and many, many of the children of the immigrants whose parents' successes had afforded them the opportunity of perusing their wares.

Us among them (slightly, okay considerably older than the average peruser).

Now the Philistine disclaimer. I have no idea what makes an art book have value. I don't know why a small book with one word typed on a page is worth five dollars. I also quickly realized that I could never even hope to have even those most minimal look at one one thousandth of the material displayed. So I gave up trying and used the strategy of looking at whatever I landed in front of, hopefully in some corner with a cross breeze.

And why does this entry belong in the Teacherfish blog?

I had decided not to buy any books, I had enough, I didn't know what I was looking at, and anyway I was there to just do something
That lasted five minutes. My purchase, a pop-up book of the Odyssey- perfect for the ELA class studying Greek mythology.
“What grade do you teach?' asked the merchant?
“12th but they still can't really read,” I answered. But that doesn't stop us from placing them in an a college credit course. We have high expectations for our students. (I didn't say that aloud-I hope.)

A lot of the books I surveyed had sketchings with sexual contents. The first year I taught, I had 18 middle school, limited skilled students who were boisterous, to use a positive word. And then one week Dominic, the leader of the pack became very quiet. He sat quietly working on something at his desk throughout the day. Without his antics the class settled down. I got a word in edgewise. I didn't look at what he was doing. I assumed he was doing school work, (okay- I was 23 less than the amount of years I have taught subsequently). I was happy he was quiet.

But at the end of the week he showed me a product. It was our class's personal magazine- Playboy for class 8-412 all the girls carefully sketched naked with a floaty pen that made the bikini on the sexy girl disappeared when turned upside down. I confiscated the pen and the book I told him I could destroy it or send it to his family. I didn't do either. I took it home, it still upstairs, I think, along with the pen.

I wonder if he was at PS 1 yesterday. He would be in his mid-forties now, a little old for most of the vendors.

At the end of our time there I found another small art book related to the Greek Mythology course. This one had nine myths illustrated with watercolor sketches. Each featuring the Greek gods doing what Greek gods do- have sex with other gods or come down to earth to do it with mortals.

“Should I buy this one too, for school?” I asked Mr. Teacherfish?

“Do you want to spend the rest of your career in an administrative office on reassignment?”

I saved the five dollars and we were off through the rain, to find something to eat.

They would have enjoyed it. They would have been engaged.If I stayed on the couch any longer I was going to grow roots. So Mr Teacherfish made me get up and we were off to the New York Art Book Fair at P.S. 1

The museum that houses P.S. 1 was once a public school. Helen our babysitter (my daughters are in their twenties and have long since passed the age of needing Helen's services but she remains forever in our hearts the loving babysitter) went there more than a half century ago. She lived in a two room apartment in Long Island City with ten siblings, no room for cribs, she once told me, “we kept the baby's in the dresser drawers.”

But I digress.
Good writers keep to their topic when writing an expository piece, I tell the freshman English class. But it is freeing to have no aspirations to be a good writer, nor to receive a passing grade in ninth grade English, for that matter.

Back to the topic.
Long Island City has changed over the last half century, since the time Helen and her many siblings lined up at the separate Boys and Girls entrance to receive the free public education that entitled them to seek lives where babies could have cribs in houses with swimming pools.

And PS 1 no longer educates the children of fertile immigrants. It has become an avante garde art museum, the more modern extension of the Museum of Modern Art. Only the peeling paint in the overheated cavernous stairway reminds you that it was once a New York City public school

It was packed to the gills yesterday, with art book merchants and many, many of the children of the immigrants whose parents' successes had afforded them the opportunity of perusing their wares.

Us among them (slightly, okay considerably older than the average peruser).

Now the Philistine disclaimer. I have no idea what makes an art book have value. I don't know why a small book with one word typed on a page is worth five dollars. I also quickly realized that I could never even hope to have even those most minimal look at one one thousandth of the material displayed. So I gave up trying and used the strategy of looking at whatever I landed in front of, hopefully in some corner with a cross breeze.

And why does this entry belong in the Teacherfish blog?

I had decided not to buy any books, I had enough, I didn't know what I was looking at, and anyway I was there to just do something
That lasted five minutes. My purchase, a pop-up book of the Odyssey- perfect for the ELA class studying Greek mythology.
“What grade do you teach?' asked the merchant?
“12th but they still can't really read,” I answered. But that doesn't stop us from placing them in an a college credit course. We have high expectations for our students. (I didn't say that aloud-I hope.)

A lot of the books I surveyed had sketchings with sexual contents. The first year I taught, I had 18 middle school, limited skilled students who were boisterous, to use a positive word. And then one week Dominic, the leader of the pack became very quiet. He sat quietly working on something at his desk throughout the day. Without his antics the class settled down. I got a word in edgewise. I didn't look at what he was doing. I assumed he was doing school work, (okay- I was 23 less than the amount of years I have taught subsequently). I was happy he was quiet.

But at the end of the week he showed me a product. It was our class's personal magazine- Playboy for class 8-412 all the girls carefully sketched naked with a floaty pen that made the bikini on the sexy girl disappeared when turned upside down. I confiscated the pen and the book I told him I could destroy it or send it to his family. I didn't do either. I took it home, it still upstairs, I think, along with the pen.

I wonder if he was at PS 1 yesterday. He would be in his mid-forties now, a little old for most of the vendors.

At the end of our time there I found another small art book related to the Greek Mythology course. This one had nine myths illustrated with watercolor sketches. Each featuring the Greek gods doing what Greek gods do- have sex with other gods or come down to earth to do it with mortals.

“Should I buy this one too, for school?” I asked Mr. Teacherfish?

“Do you want to spend the rest of your career in an administrative office on reassignment?”

I saved the five dollars and we were off through the rain, to find something to eat.

They would have enjoyed it. They would have been engaged.