Walt Disney World

When I think of how much influence Walt Disney has had in my life, it’s strange to realize we never shared the planet. My earliest memories, like most people my age and younger, center around things Disney, yet Walt passed away several months before I was even born. We all grew up in pre-VCR America watching the old-school classics like “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” and “Bambi,” every seven years in the theater. And there was a certain magic to those films that I believe came from the vision of Walt Disney himself, because it just wasn’t the same for a long time after he was gone. The last animated feature to have been produced under his watchful eye is “The Jungle Book,” which hit theaters Christmas 1967, not quite a year after the House of Mouse lost its master. Then came a pretty extended dry spell broken only by the undersea adventures of Ariel and her crew a generation later. The touch of Walt Disney is easy to see in the telling of Mowgli’s story--examining the definition of family, stressing the importance of loyalty and relationships over conforming to societal norms, well-meaning but often bumbling good triumphing over sleek yet heartless evil. It took more than twenty years after Walt Disney’s death for the studio to remember that those themes have a purity and clarity of purpose any generation can relate to. In the Random House version of The Jungle Book, all our favorite characters are present. As it should be.

http://catalog.ebay.com/Walt-Disneys-Jungle-Book-Rudyard-Kipling-1974-Hardcover-Illustrated-/2664903

http://www.randomhouse.com/

Voices From The Past

I am fascinated by the science of retrieving sound waves from wherever they go after they hit the air and dissipate. Since waves don’t end but keep spreading out, any sound ever made is technically still out there waiting to be rounded up and heard again. That’s incredible. It means, among other things, that if we could refine the science enough, we could literally hear epic moments like the Gettysburg Address or re-experience sweet, personal exchanges like a baby cooing. How eerie yet thrilling would it be to stand in a field in Pennsylvania and hear Abraham Lincoln’s actual voice brought back to life by modern technology corralling scattered sound waves? But, in some ways, I don’t think we need to wait for those advances. Have you ever been somewhere and heard the echoes of the past? Not specific words, maybe, but whispers of sound that seem to linger. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, there is a massive natural stronghold of great tactical benefit during the Civil War. The army that controlled Lookout Mountain, with its towering height and expansive view, was in a position of virtually impenetrable superiority, and as such it was the scene of fierce fighting. At the base of the mountain, if you stand very still and listen very carefully, the wind still carries the sounds of long ago. It is haunted. In Walt Disney Production’s The Haunted House, Mickey and friends are hearing things. I wonder if it would help to know it’s just trapped sound waves.

P.S. Enjoy your book, Little Rhys!

http://www.amazon.com/HAUNTED-HOUSE-Disneys-Wonderful-Reading/dp/039492570X

http://www.earlymoments.com/Our-Products/Disney-Book-Club/