Death of Angela Banner

Given my earlier posts about Angela Banner and the Ant and Bee books, it is only right that I should also memorialize her (belatedly) with links to articles about her death on May 30, 2014.

First, as befitting of the paucity of information about her, my first hit of "new" material in my periodic internet wandering is an expression of exasperation from alt.obituaries:

"I can't believe I can't find a more formal obit!" 

Second, that is it. I could find nothing more than the same piece from FindaGrave.com written by her niece, so check it out and may Angela Banner rest in peace.

Memory Lane: The Times Square Hotel or The Times Square Motor Hotel or "The Times Square"

I hadn't gone wandering/wondering for a while, but I was put on the path again—this time memory lane—after reading a piece in Granta issue 126: Do You Remember? In "The Memory Box, Olivia Laing writes about her time in New York researching David Wojnarowicz. While working in his archives at NYU's Fales Library, she was staying at a place where her "room was on the corner of West 43rd Street and 8th Avenue, on the tenth floor of what once had been the Times Square Hotel."

Well that got my own remembering going, since on my only childhood real visit to New York (not counting seeing my grandmother prior to embarking to Germany in 1956 and just after disembarking in 1959), we had stayed at the Times Square Motor Hotel, which I assumed to be the same building. In her article, Laing goes on to write some more about how this building went from "glamour to a faded gentility."

Among other things, she says that the "Times Square Hotel was at the time in the third of its incarnations, and its history encapsulated the neighbourhood's uneasy accommodations between capital and enterprise, poverty and need." I had not been acquainted with any of the history a building which had been "[b]uilt like an art deco liner, with fifteen storeys and a marble ballroom," so it seemed only appropriate after reading about memory and persistence of objects to make my own wandering again—first to the basement to find the faded stationery shown above, and then to the Internet.

Oh My, What Have They Done?! Republished Ant and Bee Books Have New Pictures and Rewritten Text!

Following up on their reappearance, I just got my first views of the three Ant and Bee books being republished by Egmont Books. I could understand that there would be new covers, and I won't really fault these stripey things:

No, the real problem comes with some sneak previews you can get by registering at http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/ and reading about the books. The first hint that something is amiss when you read: "This classic from the 1950's has been lovingly re-illustrated by the author Angela Banner to provide a fun, contempory story"(emphasis added) and "Original author and creator Angela Banner has re-illustrated the book". What, the elusive, now almost 90-year old Angela Banner has done new drawings?! And for More and More Ant and Bee, it says "Ant and Bee are back in this brand new story!" How is a book that first came out in 1961 a "brand new story?!

Washington Baseball (Nationals and Senators), Arch McDonald, and Robert Ruark

Before today's game between the Washington Nationals and New York Mets (a veritable rout, it turned out), we were walking the concourse of Nationals Park and were walking by the Washington baseball history exhibit area (roughly behind home plate--interestingly, the internet wandering I have done has turned up no discussion of this exhibit area!). I have looked at this before, although maybe not with any intensity. Anyway, today I was struck by one photograph in particular.

While I am not sure what the caption of the photograph at the exhibit was, the caption on the picture to the left is roughly the same: "Bringing the Game to the Fans: Washington Senators radio broadcaster Arch McDonald is shown calling a Senators game during the late 1930s."

This got me wondering, in particular about the chimes that McDonald seems to be about to strike, which in turn led to this internet wandering exercise. [Note: unlike other exercises in this blog, I am not going in order of my exploration, because, for example, I could not even find this photo on first or second try.]

Thanks to the Detroit Tigers broadcaster Mario Impemba for posting this photo fairly recently on his Twitter feed. I don't know Impemba, but was happy (especially after my other explorations) to know that someone still recalls McDonald.

A Book of Many Colors: Colored Sweaters in Book Titles

This is probably the silliest wandering I have done, but I got stuck on it after having finished reading The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow and then seeing a recommendation for The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World So, I had to find out how many color sweaters exist in English book titles that have nothing to do with knitting or making sweaters. The answer is: too many:

Ant and Bee Big Buy Bag

Wonderful news, Ant & Bee fans. I have found a copy of the Ant & Bee Big Buy Bag, via Interlibrary Loan and have take some pictures. Once you see it you realize why there may be none around--several pages are made to be cut up and others colored or played with. The overall "bag" measures 11 1/2" square and the interior pages are somewhat smaller.

There is almost no information about this, but you can see all the pages in this Google Photos album (click on slide show if you like).

Ant and Bee: The Mystery of the Disappearance of the Books and the Invisibility of Angela Banner

The Ant and Bee books which we came across when our children were young became a staple of our reading to them and their early reading. However, when you try to discover them today--in the real world or the virtual world--they are gone, and the scant information that I had found about their author Angela Banner is even more scant. I have Internet wandered a number of times over the years, but this time I will capture my wonderment:

[If you come here not knowing who Ant and Bee are, check out this one bookseller's nice page with pictures and story summaries of a few of the 13 books in the full series.]

Instead of Google, I start today with Wikipedia. Guess what? Angela Banner does not exist as an article at all! Not a single keystroke of biography. All that exists is a listing of the 13 Ant & Bee books with a very short introduction. Obviously, both of these can be easily remedied by editing but my focus today is rather on this search. So, on to Google.

First, do we go for finding Angela Banner or her books? I opt for the author, and luckily get a hit on someone's efforts--"The unOfficial Ant and Bee Homepage". Nothing about Angela Banner, but I do learn that Ant and Bee books are to be re-released in the UK. The note is dated January 28, 2008, but following the link to Amazon.co.uk they are taking orders for two books coming out in 2013! [In, US, you can preorder: Ant & Bee and More & More Ant & Bee.] [Caution: Added August 1, 2013: Read this!] Otherwise, this page has links to short personal memories of the books and to pictures and brief paragraphs on Ant, Bee, and Kind Dog, the principal animal characters in the books.