Dang it, we lost a good one. Sigrid Hudson Bishop, librarian, curator, scholar, and the president of SparkleBlob’s Board, passed away on December 14th, 2019 of natural causes. She was an absolute delight, my friend for over 25 years, and she was 125% engaged in books, learning, art, and exploration.
On the night of December 15th, 2019, she was supposed to arrive for SparkleBlob’s holiday show at Automata to do her volunteer shift. She’d also purchased four tickets for the show.
She didn’t arrive for her shift, which made me feel instantly weird, I got someone to fill in for her, but this wasn’t like her, where was she? A bit later, from backstage, I held the show 15 minutes late, knowing it was very unlike Sigrid to not check in or show up. I left her a voice message, and we went on with the show. The next day I found out she was gone.
When I was 22 and she was 26, I thought Sigrid was the most cosmopolitan person in the WORLD, with her own apartment in Newhall, the manager of a bookstore called “An Affair with Books” she was savvy, and worldly, and knew every book I needed to read, and I read them all dutifully.
I started out as her enthusiastic friend and later became a fellow employee of said bookstore. It was a children’s bookstore, it carried picture books by the latest and greatest authors and illustrators. We bonded over classic and modern books, talking about books we read and books we couldn’t wait to read.
Back in the day, for no good reason, I started calling Sigrid Sister Taxi Hopscotch, and called her that all the years we’ve known each other. To me she was a sister of the benevolent order of supreme encouragement: stirring things up, offering thought, while having ever so much fun. It is simply not fair to lose her, this is very unjust, wrong and I kinda can’t stand it, but stand it I must.
Therefore we offer up a SparkleBlob Salute to our dear late president, Sister Taxi Hopscotch, we shall carry on her legacy and invite you to join as well, here are some ways you can:
Visit your local library, donate to it, volunteer there, take friends to the library! Crack open a book, buy a book for a friend, tell a story, tell a fart joke, have a hot buttered rum, say something no one else in the room will say, share the sparkle in your eye, and encourage someone to follow their dreams, with detailed steps for how to start. ~JP