Winnie-the-Pooh Is on Vacation October 15, 2008
Posted by indigobunting in Uncategorized.trackback
When Sue and I were in New York a few weeks ago to see Equus, we started the day by taking in the Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. After I’d stared long enough at Landscape at Twilight, after we’d lunched and checked out a couple more exhibits, we took in the sights through one of the massive glass walls. We realized we were looking down at 53rd Street and the Donnell Library Center, the branch of the New York Public Library where the original Winnie-the-Pooh animals live.
We’d both been to see the old Milne gang in the last year or so, but not together. The animals live in this rather-unspectacular-looking-but-extremely-serviceable library in a bulletproof-glass case in the children’s reading room, which boasts the requisite fluorescent lights, dropped ceiling, and—oh yeah—some original N. C. Wyeth paintings on the wall.
We left MOMA and walked over, but the place was closed up tight and clearly emptied. It’s going to be razed, and a luxury hotel will rise up in its place.
A sign on the door said that Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends were now living at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at 42nd and 5th. We had time, so we walked over. That turned out to be the main branch, which doesn’t say “Humanities and Social Sciences Library” anywhere outside of it that we could see.
So we got in the security line, our open bags at the ready. We said to the guard, “Is this where Winnie-the-Pooh is?”
“Winnie-the-Pooh is on vacation,” he told us.
“But the sign on 53rd Street said he was here.”
“Ladies, Winnie-the-Pooh is on vacation.”
That’s all we could get from him. Not where he’d gone. Not when he’d be back.
We made the return trip through the people-lined velvet-roped corridor. We squeezed and we squoze, and then with one last sqooze we were out.
Pathetic. That’s what it is. Pathetic.
Route 153 
I wish I’d had that conversation. That’s awesome.
That Winnie-the-Pooh is a sly traveler.
Apparently Pooh will be returning sometime this fall. I’m guessing he wanted to go leaf-peeping in the Hundred Aker Wood for a while.
Maybe he’s visiting Paddington in Deepest Peru.
I wonder if he travels in his bulletproof glass Pooh-mobile, just like the Pope.
I love the idea of the glass Pooh-mobile! (And it’s been so long since I read Paddington that the memory is down deep in deepest Peru. But what a grand vacation for Pooh that would be! Now I’m a tad jealous.)
See — No one thought that perhaps Winnie-the-Pooh was visiting Rupert Bear!
Paddington Paddington Paddington.
New York City sounds so exciting!
Rupert: I see your point. In my defense, I hadn’t thought much about where Pooh had gone or who he was visiting, as it was All About Me. If I had yet gotten over my own bitter disappointment, maybe I could have been generous enough to envision him all sorts of places. Would I have thought of you? I don’t know. Now I will.
Everyone should see your open letter to Google:
http://dponline.org/weblog/2008/10/13/rupert-bears-open-letter-to-google/
I have a stuffed bear that belonged to my mother, which I believe is about 70 years old. Its eyes are gone, and I call him OediTed.
That, of course, is just an aside. Looks like it’s All About Me again.
Was OediTed in love with his mother?
In fairness, I have assumed so, simply because his eyes are gone. If he minds the moniker I’ve bestowed upon him, he hasn’t said.
Oh I get it: Oedited = edited, with O.E.D. in front of it. It is all about you……..
Mrs S: You sly dog. I capped the T (in an editorial fashion) to distract from that.
(But truth be told, I hadn’t yet completely picked up on the OED-as-other-prefix part. Sometimes oeditors are just so self-involved they can’t take the second step back. Clever lad.)