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JUNE 3, 2021 | The Jewish Home
es made through the regulatory process.” For its part, CDCR said it acted under the authority of Proposition 57, which passed in 2016, allowing parole for most inmates and incentivizing rehabilitative and educational programs, as well as good behavior activities.
Eric Carle, Author and Artist, Dies
Eric Carle, author and artist of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and dozens of other children’s books, died last week at the age of 91. Since its publication in 1969, The Very Hungry Caterpillar has sold over 50 million copies and been translated into 66 languages. “I didn’t think it was going to be an extraordinary book,” Carle told Entertainment Weekly in 1994, as the book turned 25. “But children
love it. Caterpillar reassures young kids that ‘you scrawny, ugly little thing will grow up and fly and display your talent and beauty.’” Carle received honorary degrees from over five universities, including Amherst College and Smith College. Carle was born in Syracuse, NY, to German immigrant parents. When he was just 6 years old, his family moved back to Germany as the Nazis were seizing power. Though expressionist art was not permitted in Germany at the time, Carle recounted to NPR in 2011 that, when he was 12 or 13, his high school art teacher secretly showed him expressionist works at his home. “I was used to pretty paintings with a mountain in the background. Although I was shocked, I always carried that day in my heart,” Carle told the outlet. Many of Carle’s famous books featured nature and animals. He credited his love of nature to his father. “When I was a small child, as far back as I can remember, he would take me by the hand and we would go out in nature,” Carle said in a 1994 interview. “And he would show me worms and bugs and bees and ants and explain their lives to me. It
was a very loving relationship.” In 1952, Carle graduated from art school and returned to the United States where he initially made a living by working as a graphic designer with The New York Times. He got his first big break when Bill Martin Jr. needed an illustrator for his recently completed book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Martin had seen Carle’s artwork in a magazine while in a dentist’s waiting room. “The art was so striking that I knew instantly that I had found my artist!” Martin said about Carle. In 2002, Carle and his late wife, Bobbie, opened the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts. On Carle’s website, his family acknowledged his death by writing: “In the light of the moon, holding on to a good star, a painter of rainbows is now traveling across the night sky.”
A Speedy Summit
A teacher is now the woman to have reached the top of Mount Everest in the shortest amount of time. Tsang Yin-hung, 45, climbed from the base camp – at 17,390 feet – to the summit – at 29,032 feet – in 25 hours and 50 minutes. The previous record for fastest female climber was held by Phunjo Jhangmu Lama, from Nepal, who scaled the mountain in 39 hours and 6 minutes. “I just feel kind of relief and happy because I am not looking for breaking a record,” Tsang, who is from Hong Kong, said . “I feel relieved because I can prove my work to my friends, to my students.” Tsang stopped only twice along the way so she could change clothes. Her climb was also not hindered by other climbers on some of the highest trails. The only other climbers
she met along the way were headed back down. “For the summit, it is not just not your ability, teamwork, I think luck is very important,” Tsang revealed. This was Tsang’s second attempt to climb Mount Everest. On May 11, she reached very close to the summit but was forced to turn back because of bad weather. The fastest man to climb Mount Everest is Sherpa guide Lakpa Gelu, who reached the summit after only 10 hours and 56 minutes in 2003. You know what they say: He who travels fastest travels alone.
Old But Bold
Speaking of Mount Everest, Arthur Muir, 75, recently became the oldest American to climb the world’s tallest peak, beating the previous record set by Bill Burke, who was 67 when he reached the summit in May. Muir, a retired attorney from Chicago, started mountaineering when he was 68 and first took trips to South America and Alaska before attempting to climb Everest for the first time in 2019. He broke his ankle while climbing a ladder at the time and had to postpone his dream of conquering the peak. “You realize how big a mountain it is, how dangerous it is, how many things that could go wrong,” Muir said after his climb. “Yeah, it makes you nervous, it makes, you know, some anxiety there and maybe little bit of scared.” He added: “I was just surprised when I actually got to there [the summit] but I was too tired to stand up, and in my summit pictures I am sitting down.” Even sitting down, he’s standing thousands of feet above us all.
Crazy Crustaceans Two really rare lobsters almost became someone’s dinner when an observant caterer noticed the bright orange crustaceans for sale in a tank in a store.
