The Purple Mango Post - Photographs, dispatches and writing by freelance journalist Corinne Purtill

Krala Village, January 2008

Krouch, 13.

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To Kill A Mockingbird, 50 Years Later

On a snowy winter's day in 1958, a despairing young writer slogging through her first novel wrenched open the window of her cheap New York City apartment, gathered the typewritten pages of her manuscript and hurled them all out the window into the snowy banks below.

It had been a hard winter. Two Christmases before, friends pooled their money so that she could quit her job at an airline reservations desk for one year and concentrate on writing. She knew how much they believed in her and what they sacrificed for that belief. Her conviction that she was now failing them was crushing, and this fear sent her only copy of the book fluttering into the snow.

In tears she called her editor, Tay Hohoff of J.B. Lippincott Company, to report what she had done. He listened. Then he ordered her to get her ass downstairs and pick those pages up.

On July 11, 1960, her novel was finally published. Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, Nelle Harper Lee's first (and only) novel To Kill A Mockingbird remains one of most simply elegant works in American fiction. The modest and classy Harper Lee turns 84 tomorrow and is alive and well in Alabama. (My biography of Lee is at Shmoop).

If you haven't read To Kill A Mockingbird, then get up from your desk, walk out of the office and get to the nearest library or bookstore (don't want to be fired? Then you should have read it twenty years ago like everyone else). If you have, then perhaps you'd like to check out the 50th birthday celebration going on tomorrow at Symphony Space in NYC. It features readings and discussions with several really intelligent people, but all you really need to know is that Stephen Colbert is going to be reading from the book.

"Atticus, you must be wrong...."

"How's that?"

"Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong...."

"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

--To Kill A Mockingbird

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Happy Birthday Bard!

Martin Droeshout's 1623 engraving, one of only two artworks considered reliable likenesses of Shakespeare. True nerdy fact!

In honor of Shakespeare's 446th birthday today, Shmoop has launched its new Shakespeare section, an all-Shakespeare-all-the-time resource headlined by my biography of the Bard. Check it out!

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

-Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5, 19-28

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In the Hammock

Prescott, Arizona.

This luscious, beautiful new poem appeared today in the journal Anderbo. With the weekend upon us and summer so tantalizingly close, "In the Hammock" evokes the best of those childhood vacations in the woods, the ones that set the standard for all relaxation and discovery that came after. How do you not fall in love with lines like:

. . . The pines were enormous

emeralds then, the birds fine silver piccolos,

things we couldn't afford. We were rich

With propane, card games, hash browns,

hammocks strung. . . .

If I might brag a bit, poet Stephanie Paterik is one of my dear friends and favorite people. She begins an MFA in poetry at the New School this fall. I for one am waiting eagerly to read what she has to say next.

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Posterous With the Mosterous

Photo courtesy of BusinessWeek.com.

Today, I'm happy to have some good news to report.

This site is run on a platform called Posterous. All I have to do to get photos and text here is email it to Posterous, and seconds later, a new post is up. I have no idea how it works and how they get it to look nice like this, but that's the point - I don't have to, because Posterous makes it so incredibly simple to get things on the Internet.

Posterous was started a few years ago by my friend Sachin Agarwal. Sachin and I worked together on house staff our senior year at Stanford. In the nine years I've known him Sachin has walked me through virtually every technology purchase and troubleshoot I've ever made (I have no idea why he didn't permanently block me from his email years ago) and when he left Apple to launch Posterous, I signed up immediately.

The company has been tremendously successful. And now, Sachin and his co-founders have just been named among the Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs of 2010 by Business Week magazine! Though they've had offers for the company, the team has decided to keep working on their vision and take the site as big as it can go. There's no doubt they will. Congratulations to Sachin, Garry and Brett, and thanks for all your hard work.

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Arizona Over the Edge

Grand Canyon, Arizona.

UPDATE: It passed. !&%$.

There's a bill sitting on the desk of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer that makes racial profiling legal in Arizona. Please take a moment to read this, and if you agree, sign the petition below.

SB 1070 requires local law enforcement to demand proof of legal residence of anyone suspected of being in the country illegally, and makes it a crime to be unable to produce those documents. So if you have dark skin, or an accent, forgetting your wallet at home or jogging without your driver's license would be a crime in Arizona.

The New York Times editorial page came out against the bill this Sunday. Aptly titled "Arizona Goes Over the Edge," the editorial notes that critics' likening of the "harsh and mean-spirited" bill to the creation of a police state "sounds overblown until you read it." Jan Brewer could sign the bill as early as today. If she signs, or if she does nothing, it becomes law.

(Sidebar: SB 1070 is the lead story on the Times' homepage. If you want to read what Arizona Republic reporters are writing about this national controversy unfolding in their backyards, you have to click past updates on the Coyotes and the dangers of tree trimming. Pull it together, Republic Web editors.)

Arizona has gotten attention in the past for the gimmicky antics of its ego-driven politicians. Pink underwear and green meat - Google "arpaio pink underwear inmates" if you don't know what I'm talking about - are childish enough that people have laughed off the legal exploitation of a group of people for political gain. This bill also panders to ignorance at the expense of human rights. If this bill passes, we're saying that it's acceptable in America to harass and arrest American citizens and legal residents in the alleged pursuit of illegal immigrants. We are saying that the color of your skin is enough to place in question your right to be in this country. If we open those doors, who knows what might come through them next.

And in other Arizona news, Casey Newton reports that the Arizona house just passed a bill requiring presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate in order to be listed on the ballot in Arizona. You know, like this one. Goddamn it.

Please take a moment today and sign this petition from the advocacy group Presente.org to let Governor Jan Brewer know your opposition to this bill. This isn't just bad for Arizona. It's an ugly scar on America and a step - rather, a giant, vaulting leap - in the wrong direction.

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A Notion of Patriotism

London.

"I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism."

-- J.K. Rowling, on her reasons for not decamping for a tax haven after the success of Harry Potter, in the Times.

*(Her anti-Tory op-ed "The Single Mother's Manifesto," is well worth a read. Other gems: "If Mr Cameron’s only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is 'get married, and we’ll give you £150,' he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation. How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life’s necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3am?'")

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Sooper Shmoop!

Take a bow, Mark Twain.

The Webby Awards are presented each year by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in recognition of the best of the Internet. The 2010 nominees were announced today, and for the second year running, Shmoop was named a Webby Honoree in the Education category (a distinction reserved for the top 15% of entries).

In the official citation, judges wrote: "Special commendation to Shmoop's Biography writers, whose tireless scouring of the Internet in search of YouTube clips, factoids and pop song lyrics has given us priceless insight into the interior lives of our greatest literary figures. It's hard to believe we once lived in a world where Mark Twain's family tree wasn't posted on the Internet in a colorful and visually appealing manner, nor the fart jokes in Dante's Inferno so deftly illuminated."*

Way to go, Shmoop!

*No one actually said this. But it was implied.

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Why I Love New York

New York City.

Because this is what Fifth Avenue looks like on Easter Sunday.

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Public Smooching

Upper East Side, NYC.

This week, the Complaint Box in the Times' Metropolitan section was given over to Nicole Ferraro's jeremiad against the proliferation of public affection. Ferraro, a 26-year-old editor who lives in Manhattan, is in a bit of a fix. The whole city is in love, the lovers won't stop touching each other, and she can't stop looking, leading to the following conclusion: "Everywhere I go, people are fondling each other as if the entire city were a cheap motel room."

So far there have been more than 460 comments to Ferraro's story on the website, and most are in the pro-fondling camp. So am I. I understand the aversion to public displays of lust - on her last visit, my poor mom got stuck on an otherwise-empty E train car with a couple doing things that could make someone pregnant - but Ferraro's threshold for disgust is considerably lower. Consider this harrowing encounter:

"At a restaurant on the Lower East Side recently, I was enjoying a friend’s company when the man and woman next to us joined hands across the table. If it had stopped there, we could have just rolled our eyes and continued our conversation. Instead, they leaned in for a lengthy, passionate kiss that lifted them off their chairs. We skipped dessert and decided to cap off the meal at a nearby coffee shop."

Despite the depravity of food-serving establishments, her worst ire is reserved for the subway. People stand too close, people kiss, people nuzzle. None escape her bitter gaze. "I have news for you, canoodling commuters," Ferraro warns, Ann Landers-style. "These are subways, not private gondolas." So true! Also, there's too much kissing in the motion pictures nowadays and the television ads are too loud between programs!

Maybe we ride different trains, but given the panorama of inappropriate public behavior that is the New York subway, I would pay extra to be guaranteed a car with nothing creepier than canoodling. None of the smooching, cuddly couples I've seen on the subway linger in my mind. Can't say the same for:

- The man flossing his teeth and spitting the excavated gunk on the floor.

- Same guy, threatening to "put a bullet in [my] back" for looking at his floss.

- The woman eating her fingernails (not biting - tearing off chunks of fingernail, popping them into her mouth like pork rinds and chewing, loudly).

- The guy delivering a long, loud sermon the whole commute to work, of which the only intelligible words were "sin," "lesbian," and "jay-ZUS."

- The woman who screamed, "Bitch, push me, I'll push you BACK!!" at a lady who was jostled by the crowd.

- The homeless guy who reluctantly accepted a passenger's offer of food (instead of the money he asked for), sniffed it, and threw the entire meal on the floor.

- The girl who pried the closing door open with her prosthetic arm (okay, that was kind of awesome).

- The unimaginable act that caused the floor of the 6 train to be covered with human feces.

Public affection isn't just the lesser of many evils. I believe a publicly affectionate New York is a happier place. When New Yorkers' lips are pressed against each other, they're not telling anyone to fuck off, not throwing elbows on the subway, not ordering shady business deals nor relentlessly getting ahead. It's a reminder that people have room for emotions other than frustration and sadness. It's a reminder - one of many available - that being alive doesn't have to suck all the time.

Also? The couple holding hands and smooching at the restaurant like a pair of shameless harlots could easily have been my husband and me. We've kissed in public before and we're going to do it again. As a commenter named Texican pointed out on the NYTimes site, "Absent love and affection, I would be hard pressed to identify any attributes that make humankind worthwhile. I’m not here for the laundromats."

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