14:55 - Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008
im all better now, just call me an impatient boob!
see what happens when ya speak outta turn? i was at the employment office when i launched the previous mini diatribe/bitchfest, when, just for shits and giggles, i sauntered on down to macys and lo and behold, i got my check!! all is right with the world now, we now have world peace, president obama has washboard abs, and yes, virginia, there is a santa claus!
im sorry if i offended anyone during the last diattribe/bitchfest! really, shame on me for being so impatient! so, i'll shaddup now! im all good, sitting in online coffee company with an ever calming bowl of earl grey tea, hot, just like capt. picard! so, there!
i been reading once again america's newspaper, the new york times, on a nightly basis, after chapel and dinner and up in my bed, before lights out, and in yesterdays edition, i read a most interesting article in regards to the aforementioned virginia and here live and in person, is that article published yesterday!
The Child and the Paper Are Long Gone, but Their Exchange on Faith Lives On
Article Tools Sponsored By BRILLO!
By CLYDE HABERMAN
Published: December 22, 2008 that was yesterday!
A card was slipped last Friday under the front door of the Studio School on the Upper West Side. �Dear Virginia,� it said in purple ink. �Merry Christmas and thank you.�
This was intriguing. There is no Virginia at the school, which occupies space that used to be adjoining row houses at 115 and 117 West 95th Street. Once upon a time, however, a Virginia did live at No. 115. Her last name was O�Hanlon. She was born in 1889.
You may well have guessed where this is going.
At age 8, troubled by her friends� skepticism, that girl wrote to The New York Sun asking if Santa Claus existed. Her letter led to what is surely the most enduring editorial in the annals of American journalism.
�Yes, Virginia,� the Sun responded on Sept. 21, 1897, �there is a Santa Claus.� The editorial, written by Francis Pharcellus Church, continued:
�He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.�
The card delivered to the school was signed, �That Guitar Man from Central Park.� It bore a sketch of a shirtless man standing in snow and playing a guitar by a lake. We figured it had to be from David Ippolito, who has long serenaded crowds near the park�s rowboat lake (though generally on warm days, not in subfreezing temperatures). We guessed right.
Mr. Ippolito said he was enchanted by the Virginia story when he saw it discussed on a television show about 10 years ago. That�s when he began leaving his Christmas greetings. The O�Hanlon house had been divided into rental apartments many years earlier. By the late 1990s, it had few tenants. What they might have done with his cards is anyone�s guess.
�I�m probably the least religious man you�ll ever meet,� Mr. Ippolito said, �but I have more faith than anyone you�ll meet. I love this time of year.�
�Frank Church,� he said, referring to the editorialist as if he were an old chum, �wrote the absolute truth when he wrote to that little girl.� And what might that truth be? �That the most real things in this life are the things we can�t see,� he said, echoing a line from the editorial.
Mr. Ippolito stopped delivering his cards several years ago when Nos. 115 and 117 became construction sites. New quarters were being built for the Studio School, which has about 120 students, ages 2 to 14. It has moved several times since its start in 1971. By coincidence, 1971 was the year that Laura Virginia O�Hanlon Douglas, a retired school teacher, died just shy of 82.
The school opened in its new space in September 2007. No. 117 is its official address. The number 115 remains where it always was on an exterior wall. But the old house is gone and no longer recognizable as a separate building.
Mr. Ippolito said he resumed sending his greetings to Virginia last Christmas. People at the school do not recall that card. They were charmed, though, by this year�s.
�It served as a reminder of how really important the Virginia O�Hanlon story is to us all,� said Marie Helene Lane, who teaches creative writing to children, ages 7 to 9. It also reinforced the school�s determination to follow through on a pledge made a few years ago to put up a plaque recognizing No. 115�s special niche in New York history.
The durable Virginia story has outlasted The Sun. The newspaper, which first appeared in 1833, died in 1950. It was reborn in 2002, but couldn�t make it in the hostile financial climate that all newspapers face these days. The new Sun folded in September � but not before it had published the �Yes, Virginia� editorial once more, around last Christmas.
�I think it was much appreciated,� said Seth Lipsky, the Sun�s editor. �I wouldn�t say there were crowds outside the office looking to purchase copies, but it was appreciated.�
There was a grouchy reaction or two on the newspaper�s Web site. �Telling a child that there is a Santa Claus is treating the child as a plaything, a violation of the dignity of another human being,� one commenter grumped.
That is hardly the view on 95th Street.
Last year, Ms. Lane encouraged her students to emulate Virginia by writing to The Sun. They did, but unlike Virginia, they got no response. One girl wanted to know if Santa�s helpers were real. Another girl said she wanted to believe in Santa, but wasn�t sure. As for Virginia, �We think her spirit is in the bathroom,� she wrote.
When it comes to Virginia�s legacy, Janet C. Rotter, the head of the school, is on Mr. Ippolito�s side. �The important thing is that the children fill this space with their imagination and their hope,� she said. �That, I think, is what Virginia�s letter did. And I�m afraid it�s what adults forget to do.�
joyeux noel tous sans exception!
(merry christmas, one and all!)
