Down a Rabbit Hole
Constructing this week’s acrostic reminded us of the many hares and rabbits that grace the pages of our stories, from Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare to Beatrix Potter’s tales to Lewis Carroll’s imaginings. Then there is Harvey, the six-foot pooka in the form of a rabbit that befriends Elwood P. Dowd in the lovely 1950 film that bears the pooka’s name.
These creatures also figure prominently in two recent memoirs that we recommend. One is Raising Hare, by Chloe Dalton, in which we found the quotation for this puzzle. Largely homebound during the Covid pandemic, the author brings an injured wild young hare (a leveret) into her home in Britain. Her book, published in 2024, captures the remarkable ways in which this act and her ensuing relationship with the hare changed her life.
The other memoir, an extraordinary multigenerational family history touching down in Odessa, Paris, Vienna, Tokyo and London, is The Hare with Amber Eyes, published by Edmund de Waal in 2010. The hare in this case is not a live animal but rather one piece in a set of miniature hand-carved Japanese sculptures known as netsuke. Dave and his sister, Ruth, had a chance to see the collection a few years ago when it came to the Jewish Museum in New York City.
If you’ve never seen Harvey, or otherwise require some elucidation as to the ways of pookas, perhaps this will help: