Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!
While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.
For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.
And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.
Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:
To celebrate the release of Winnie the Pooh from its terrible prison of copyright, I decided a few years ago that I would rewrite the whole thing here, on clerkmanifesto, in my own way. This turned out... really well! I was surprised. But as with all of the large scale specific projects of clerkmanifesto, I did not finish it. Sticking with something as big as that entails a different kind of work and commitment that always becomes unsuited to the more inspiration based clerkmanifesto. In a different world I suppose an insightful publisher would have called and given me an advance to write the whole rewritten Pooh all the way through, and I would have found joy in doing that as well, but we are in this world, which is why you are reading this, and why cheese is so delicious, and why your foot hurts.
So this then is from a few years ago, maybe? It comes, of course, early in the book. The original is provided for comparison afterward, for the scholars among you.
When you got back to the tree with the umbrella Winnie the Pooh called out: "Whew! There you are." Then he added "The bees definitely suspect something." And then he amended that loudly to "The bees mistakenly suspect something." But that last part he said more to the bees than to you.
"Should I unfurl my umbrella?" You asked.
"That would be great," Pooh said. "But we should do it properly. We need to convince the Queen Bee most of all. Can you see the Queen Bee?" Pooh asked.
"No."
"Ohhhh. That's too bad. Well, maybe open up your umbrella and walk around under it saying 'Oy gevalt, it sure does look like rain is coming!' And I'll sing some kind of song one would expect a cloud to sing."
"If clouds sang?" You asked.
"Exactly!" Pooh exclaimed, delighted by your understanding.
So you walked about wondering if it would rain while Winnie the Pooh sang this little song:
"I am a little cloud,
Trying not to schvitz.
I always sing aloud,
Not meaning to kibitz.
The rain is coming soon dear bees,
It is my cloudy wish,
And now my song must end,
For I am out of Yiddish."
The bees though only seemed to become more excited by Pooh's song. After the first verse one of them even landed on Pooh's nose! So Pooh called down to you. "I just remembered something!" Pooh called down.
"What's that?" You asked.
"I'm vegan." Replied Pooh, sadly.
"You're vegan?" You asked.
"Yes." Pooh answered. "And I don't think these are the vegan kind of bees."
"So they probably don't make the vegan kind of honey?" I asked.
"Yes." Pooh answered. "And that's the kind of honey I like.
"Is it?" You asked, trying to figure it all out.
"Yes." Pooh answered. "So I think I'd better come down."
"How?" You asked.
"I hadn't really thought." Pooh said. So he thought, but not being able to put his head in his paws his thinking wasn't fancy. "Do you have a gun?" Pooh asked.
"Silly bear." You replied.
"Do you see any soft places then?"
"Yes." You said. "I see a soft place."
"I'm going to drop, then." Winnie the Pooh said.
He didn't drop.
"How soft?" He asked.
"It looks pretty soft."
So he dropped.
And he fell.
And he bounced a couple of times.
And then it was over.
"I was the soft place?" Winnie the Pooh asked. "Wasn't I?"
"I have some honey at my house." You said.
"Is it vegan honey?" Pooh asked.
"No."
"Good." Pooh said.
"Oh, there you are!" called down Winnie-the-Pooh, as soon as you got back to the tree. "I was beginning to get anxious. I have discovered that the bees are now definitely Suspicious."
"Shall I put my umbrella up?" you said.
"Yes, but wait a moment. We must be practical. The important bee to deceive is the Queen Bee. Can you see which is the Queen Bee from down there?"
"No."
"A pity. Well, now, if you walk up and down with your umbrella, saying, 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain,' I shall do what I can by singing a little Cloud Song, such as a cloud might sing.... Go!"
So, while you walked up and down and wondered if it would rain, Winnie-the-Pooh sang this song:
The bees were still buzzing as suspiciously as ever. Some of them, indeed, left their nests and flew all round the cloud as it began the second verse of this song, and one bee sat down on the nose of the cloud for a moment, and then got up again.
"Christopher—ow!—Robin," called out the cloud.
"Yes?"
"I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important decision. These are the wrong sort of bees."
"Are they?"
"Quite the wrong sort. So I should think they would make the wrong sort of honey, shouldn't you?"
"Would they?"
"Yes. So I think I shall come down."
"How?" asked you.
Winnie-the-Pooh hadn't thought about this. If he let go of the string, he would fall—bump—and he didn't like the idea of that. So he thought for a long time, and then he said:
"Christopher Robin, you must shoot the balloon with your gun. Have you got your gun?"
"Of course I have," you said. "But if I do that, it will spoil the balloon," you said.
"But if you don't," said Pooh, "I shall have to let go, and that would spoil me."
When he put it like this, you saw how it was, and you aimed very carefully at the balloon, and fired.
"Ow!" said Pooh.
"Did I miss?" you asked.
"You didn't exactly miss," said Pooh, "but you missed the balloon."
"I'm so sorry," you said, and you fired again, and this time you hit the balloon, and the air came slowly out, and Winnie-the-Pooh floated down to the ground.
But his arms were so stiff from holding on to the string of the balloon all that time that they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off. And I think—but I am not sure—that that is why he was always called Pooh.
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