Called Uber after I got organized. Today is the first day of the final Cherry Hill Library book sale of the year. The driver going to the library arrived in five minutes, though for some reason, she kept cutting through meandering back roads and took forever to get where she was going. The driver going home didn't even take a minute to arrive and thankfully stuck to the highways.
I'm glad I went early in the afternoon of the first day. They surprisingly weren't that busy. I could actually walk around in the room where the children's books were sold without bumping into anyone or being trampled. The meeting room with the adult books was busier, but could have been worse. I was mainly looking for Christmas presents. I did end up getting a book for Finley and two for Khai. I also got two books for myself, one a novelization of an old favorite childhood movie, one a mystery set in Cape May:
Dick Tracy by Max Allan Collins
Midnight Snacks are Murder by Libby Klein
No records, but I did find three CDs, plus a two-CD set:
Soundtrack from A Goofy Movie
Christmas Eve With Johnny Mathis - Johnny Mathis
Christmas Portrait (Special Edition) - The Carpenters
Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall (This is the 2-disc set. I have the concert recorded onto DVD from a tape, but this set has a lot more music that didn't find its way onto film, including more songs from Follies, Dick Tracy, and Into the Woods, along with a lesser-known movie song, "I Never Do Anything Twice.")
After I got home, I made my Christmas lists. No, it's not what I want. It's what I'm giving. I give physical gifts to all the kids on my list (who don't need the extra sugar), plus Jessa, Lauren and Amanda, who come from small families and don't have a lot of people giving them gifts. I also made my Christmas card list and baking list. I bake five kinds of cookies. If I have time, I might make pumpkin bread or some kind of sweet bread, too. (No candy this year, though. It came out so badly last year, I'm afraid to try again.)
Watched the Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood Thanksgiving episodes as I worked and had lunch. Daniel's saying "Thank You, Grandpere!" when he comes to visit before the big Thank-You Day celebration. "Neighborhood Thank-You Day" has the Neighborhood of Make-Believe come together in the Enchanted Garden to hang Thank-You Cards and eat a big feast. Daniel doesn't know who he's thankful for, until Mr. McFeely saves the cards from being blown away.
Daniel may be even more excited for "Margaret's First Thank-You Day" than Margaret herself. As the youngest resident of the Neighborhood, Margaret gets to hang her thank-you card first. They do make it to the feast, but poor Margaret has a cold, and her father ends up taking her home. Poor Daniel misses his sister, so he and his mother take home a piece of the strawberry trifle they made for her.
Hurried out to the Thomas Sharp School after the cartoons ended. Everything went much the same as it did yesterday, only today was chillier and a little windier. I don't know why the kids kept taking off their shoes and jackets! For one thing, the playground is covered in mulch. As one of the older boys discovered, that's not much fun to walk on in your sock feet. For another thing, we're way past summer weather now. The coats were necessary, no matter what they thought. One of the younger boys claimed they couldn't find their coat. The teachers pretty much spent the rest of the evening looking for it. I comforted one of the girls who had almost lost a ring she liked and was still scared.
Went straight into Happy Go Lovely when I got home. I go further into this charming British backstage romance with David Niven and Vera-Ellen at my Musical Dreams Movie Reviews blog.
Watched Match Game '76 during dinner. Comedian and What's My Line panelist Soupy Sales made his only appearance on the show during the week I saw. He was joined by Betty White and former Klingon Madelyn Rhue.
Finished the night with Music From the New York Stage Volume Three: 1913 - 1917 3-CD set I picked up on vacation in October. This is a British collection of songs recorded for American shows made during the second decade of the 20th century, many of them recorded in England with American voices. Probably the best-known come from Al Jolson, including his seminal recording of "You Made Me Love You." They also had more comic numbers for Jolson like "Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soliders" from Dancing Around and "Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday on a Saturday Night?" from Robinson Crusoe Jr. Other comic numbers include Van & Schenick's "Hawaiian Sunshine" from The Century Girl, black comic Bert Williams declaring "I'm Neutral" in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1915, and Joseph Cawthorn claiming "You Can't Play Every Instrument In the Band" in The Sunshine Girl.
The other big genre in this era was the operetta. Most of them were imported from Europe, like The Lilac Domino and Miss Springtime, but there were popular ones made in America, too. Victor Herbert continued his run of hit shows with the charming fairy tale Sweethearts, while Rudolf Friml got a little more American with Katinka. Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin both got their starts writing comedy material for operettas. By 1917, they were writing music for their own shows, with Kern putting out small-scale shows in the Princess Theater like Have a Heart and Berlin doing the more lavish Watch Your Step.
There were also revivals of older shows that hadn't done well on their first hearing. The operetta Rob Roy had gotten overshadowed by the similar Robin Hood on its debut, but it did prove to have some fine songs on a second hearing, including "Who Can Tell Me Where She Dwells?"
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