ITZAH C. KRET   INTERVIEWS   ITZAH C. KRET ICK:  What's you're real name? ICK:  It’s a Secret. ICK: Oh come on! ICK:  Nope.  A little insanity is good for the soul.  But if you want to see a picture of the artist as a young man Click Here.   If you want to see a more recent self portrait, Click Here. ICK:  Pretty please with a cherry on top.  You can tell me your real name. ICK:  No way.  I don’t plan on divulging any other name right now.  Let me tell you about something that happened over a decade ago....While I was planting flowers in the Walker Sculpture Garden, the powers that be had a police officer approach me.  He asked me my name.  I said "Itzah C. Kret".  He called in the name over the radio and luckily there were no outstanding arrest warrants for Itzah C. Kret. ICK:  Why did you dedicate this book “To the Paul Wellstone In All Of Us.”? ICK:  Like many people, Paul influenced me.  He was one of the many great professors I had at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.   After hearing Paul speak, I took two or three of his classes and  did an independent study with him.  He even found me my first job as a union organizer.   When Paul became a U.S. Senator he actually represented the people and children in Washington who essentially have no representation.  And Paul didn’t back down.  Even politicians who disagreed with his ideas respected him and I believe they did so because he'd gotten where they'd gotten to without sacrificing his integrity.  (Click Here to learn more about the Wellstone Action Center.) If Paul hadn't died I'm not sure I would have found the chutzpah to attempt to illustrate The Man With The Sneezes.  Isaac Bashevis Singer once wrote that sometimes "the living  die so the dead may live" - which explains my life for a long time.  But in this case, I've found something life affirming out of death in general, Paul’s in particular.  Maybe that's the best we can do. ICK:   Huh?  What ARE you trying to say? ICK:   Over ten years ago I wrote “The Man with the Sneezes”.  Actually I’m not sure that I wrote it, it kind of wrote itself or sometimes I think it already was written when I was in elementary school and was just waiting for the right moments to allow me to find it.  Anyway, after it was done and on paper, I found it kind of intimidating.  I didn’t think I could draw it out properly and do it justice. ICK: Where did you learn how to draw? ICK: I’m not so sure that I have, but I taught myself while allegedly attending New York University School of Law.....During my second year, I read an article where someone said that if you could write   poetry you could draw.  I actually believed what I read and acted on it.  (Thank  God  I didn’t read something that said, “if you can write  poetry you can fly off a mountaintop"!) NYU Law School was also the place where I discovered how much I enjoyed classical music, which helps me relax as I draw. ICK: So how does this relate to Paul Wellstone? ICK:  Paul's death on October 25, 2002 made me realize that if I was going to draw out this one in color I should try it now.  It also helps me grieve the loss and I'm hopeful it will bring some solace to some of the people who knew him.  Frankly  I'm amazed, quite pleased and a little anxious about the color drawings.   ICK:  Wait a minute!  Back up a bit.  Most people don’t go to New York University School of Law and write children’s  poetry. ICK:  True.  I was accepted at The U of Chicago, Penn, wait listed at Harvard and I chose NYU because I sensed it was the only law school I might survive at.  Besides, I had a hunch I was some kind of an artist and was curious about what New York City was like.  After living there awhile, I realized it should have been called The Rotten Apple. During my second year at NYU Law, one of my professors asked what I was doing with myself.  I told him I was writing poetry and he asked me to show him some.  I liked him so I slipped some under his door that evening.  The next class he mentioned that my poems reminded him of Edward Lear.  I told him I had no idea who Edward Lear was.  The class after that he gave me Edward Lear's Nonsense Omnibus. Inside the front cover, Professor Thomas M. Franck wrote “Do not be leery of Lear The man was a prescient seer His way with a rhyme Was ahead of his time And now you can take it from here.” Professor Franck went on to become a Judge at The World Court in the Hague and I still treasure our on-going friendship.  (Someone resembling him appears on both the Crowd Goes Wild Scene and the Center for Diseases scenes-one way I could say thanks–Tom was the first person I’d ever met in the legal field to encourage me to explore and claim my artistic side–I come from a family of lawyers, judges & law professors.  The joke about my family in Minneapolis is, no one knows what to do with themselves except become a lawyer. ICK: Is this your only book? ICK: Nope.  This is my first of seven color illustrated children's books.  Now I need the sales from the The Man with The Sneezes to give me the courage (and the money) to help me complete the rest. ICK:  Why is the narrator of The Man With the Sneezes a Quetzal? ICK: To the Mayans who lived in Central America hundreds of years ago, a Quetzal represented freedom and wealth.  It’s been said that a Quetzal will die if placed in captivity.   ICK: What gave you the idea for a quetzal? ICK: I was sending an email to someone who’s become a friend and describing my special hat and all its feathers.  Click here if you want to see Itzah C. Kret’s hat.......My fascination with quetzales goes back decades.  When I first visited Monteverde, Costa Rica in 1979 I attended a Quaker prayer meeting.   At the end of the hour of silence everyone introduced themselves.  I said my name and told them I had come because I wanted to see a Resplendent Quetzal.  Everyone laughed.  Later an Elder gently came over and told me I was there at the wrong time of the year.  Five years later I tried again, but had no luck.  Sometime in the 90's I let go of my dream to ever see a quetzal.  However, my wife and I went back to a different part of Costa Rica at the right time of year in 2002.  We actually saw one together!  It’s funny though, not until the book was finished did I realize the significance of a Quetzal. ICK:  You do seem a bit nuts and somehow a bit familiar.  Have I heard of you before? On NPR? Minnesota Public Radio? KTCA? Do I know you? ICK:  You might know me as The Phantom Planter or the phantom poet.  We're all the same. Click here if you want to read a newspaper article.       ICK: What gave you the idea for The Man with the Sneezes? ICK:  I'm not sure.  I have this BINGO! sense about poems, mobiles, flower designs, collages, photos and paintings.  When my senses shout BINGO! I’ve learned there's something I need to pay attention to and artistically explore to find out what's already there.   My BINGO! sense was screaming and I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote out a draft of The Man With The Sneezes in the basement apartment at 3350 Humboldt Ave, South, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  (Good things begin in Minnesota!)  During the next few days I found more pieces.  Within a week I’d put all the pieces together, sort of like a puzzle.  When I recited it to the kids at the local YMCA,  I saw the sparks in their eyes and knew I had something good.  Since then I've made dozens of little changes which hopefully haven't screwed it up. ICK:  Anything else? ICK:  I’m allergic to several dozen things.  When I sneeze, I sneeze really loudly.  One right after another.  My grandparents used to say Gesundheit.  Courteous and kind people were always saying God Bless You...speaking of grandparents, my great grandfather was a veterinarian at a zoo in Hamburg, Germany, but that’s another story.   ICK:  How old are you?  You seem like an unusual grown-up. ICK:  I was born on November 23, 1960.  You do the math.  But in some ways my emotional development got arrested by a couple of traumatic incidents when I was a kid.  A neighbor (who happens to be a famous scholar) used to hit my brother and I when we were 10 and 11.  My best friend killed himself when I was 15.  Another neighborhood kid killed himself when I was 21.  During my second year at       N.Y.U. School of Law, a colleague from college also died of suicide.  By then I think I was 25 years old.  The death when I was 25 triggered a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  It took me years to be ready and able to deal with how I felt when I was 15... If you’re curious about suicide or a suicide survivor yourself, Click here for Suicide Awareness/Voices of Education.  It's a good organization. ICK: My goodness, where did you grow up? ICK: Less than five miles from Barry Louis Polisar.  There must have been something in the water. ICK: It seems to me you still haven’t surrendered to life as it is. ICK: That’s right.  I’m still trying to live first, die second and make beautiful things in between.  We’ll see how everything turns out. ICK: Before I go, will you tell me what you did with your Law School diploma?  And just what have you recently done in front of Warhol’s 16 Jackies?   ICK: Itzah C. Kret.