This post is not about library movies, though Winona has made two: Staying Cool and The Ten.
Rather, this post references the exclamation "Library Movie!" -- which has become part of the Hayes-Bohanan lexicon, along with "Coffee Movie!" What began as a quick way to recognize our favorite topics when they appeared in film, we have come to interject these phrases whenever libraries or coffee, respectively, unexpectedly emerges in any unexpected context.
(See the Coffee & Tea Films page for a partial list of coffee movies. But I digress.)
We both blurted out "Library Movie!" in the course of doing some low-key research as part of our Winona Ryder 50th birthday weekend festivities. Timothy Leary had been on my mind recently, as I watched the documentary Fantastic Fungi, first with Pamela and then with students in my land protection class. The film is about many aspects of that ubiquitous kingdom of living things that are neither plant nor animal. It is full of critical insights about soil, climate, pollution, food, and of course, psychedelics.
 |
| Winona and her godfather; no image details available |
Such a film, of course, must mention Dr. Timothy Leary, in his day a famous (or infamous) academic voice favoring the use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a synthetic derived from the wheat-mold known ergot. Several things come to mind whenever he is mentioned: my undergraduate psychology class, in which I learned about the psychoactive properties of ergot and of nutmeg; the Salem witch hysteria, which may have been ergot-induced; and the 1970s Moody Blues ballad that will close out this post.
Above all, of course: Timothy Leary is the godfather of Our Noni. Why this is, we did not really know, so we did just a little bit of reading on the topic. Winona's Wikipedia entry mentions that her father "worked for" Timothy Leary. (It also mentions how she came by all three parts of her professional name.)
The real insights came from items about each of her parents. Writing for Vice.com, Gabby Bess "interviewed" Cynthia Palmer for an article entitled "Winona Ryder’s Mom Explains the History of Women, Drugs, and Literature" in which she does exactly that. (I put the word "interviewed" in quotes because I have never enjoyed being the subject of an email interview, which I take as a euphemism for asking the subject to write the first draft of an article about themselves.)
Palmer and her husband Michael Horowitz (aka Noni's parents) are revealed as leading literary lights of the counterculture that was national in scope but ultimately centered on Haight-Ashbury. The interview centers on an anthology the pair have published -- through several editions -- on what Bess describes as "tripping while female." They were not the first to write about women and the use of drugs, but they positioned themselves to do so by first creating an entire library about drugs and drug culture.
Equally fascinating is a catalog entry in the archives of the New York Public Library. "Michael Horowitz collection on Timothy Leary" describes a 24-box collection of letters, manuscripts, and ephemera related to the late professor. It also describes collection contents that relate to the collection itself and to the relationship between the two men. Much more than "working for" Leary, Michael Horowitz devoted himself to collecting his papers and safeguarding them from law enforcement during critical moments in the professor's complicated life. Even the catalog entry is a fascinating read, best captured by that trending word: meta.
Taken together, these articles point to a childhood full of artistic and cultural foment. The child of two creative librarians has grown into an actor with incredibly eclectic range.
Moody Music
"The report of my death was an exaggeration," wrote Mark Twain in 1897, thirteen years before his demise. This quip comes to mind when I listen to the Moody Blues repeating -- in 1970 -- that Timothy Leary is dead, though he was merely enigmatic and would live another 26 years.
