My two Ferdinands
There are two Ferdinands in my life. The first, a nearly lifelong acquaintance, is a bull. Born 75 years ago, right before the start of the Spanish Civil War, “el toro feroz Ferdinando” was one of my favorite characters when I was a child. To judge from the comments parents and some kids leave on Amazon.com these days, Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson’s 1936 “Story of Ferdinand” remains popular, and I hope you know it. (If you don’t, or if this column makes you wish to reread it, there’s a copy in the Cotsen Children’s Library, which is one of Princeton’s delightful — and, at a research university, unexpected — treasures.) From this short, beautifully illustrated book I learned the words “bandilleros” and “picadores” (the former not recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary), discovered that cork comes from trees and began to absorb the lesson that it’s OK to be different. Ferdinand, though a mighty creature, doesn’t enjoy butting heads with other bulls and has no interest in facing the matador. He’s a happy loner, liking “to sit just quietly under the cork tree and smell the flowers.”