Renovation complete

Sure, it's simple, but it's always been more about the message than the medium here.

Thank you for all of the kind notes in our email box.

And many thanks for the inquiries about Mental multivitamin gear. We're offering several other items with an alternate design, so check it out.

Another "Thank you!" for your business, both at Cafe Press and at Amazon. We don't do this for the money, but it helps.

See you tomorrow, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. Family M-mv is leaving the building.

Read a banned book.

Banned Books Week: September 24 through October 1

Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
— Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

For more about Douglas, click here.


The recommended daily allowance
From 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature (Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova):

The phrase "suppressed on political grounds" casts a shadow of a heavy-handed government blocking its citizens from receiving information, ideas and opinions that it perceives to be critical, embarrassing or threatening. This image, unfortunately, is too often reality. It is not, however, limited to dictatorships such as those of Hitler's Nazi Germany, Stalin's communist Soviet Union and Suharto's Indonesia. The governments of democracies also participate in attempts to censor such critical material in order to protect their own perceived state security.

Further, the impression that censorship for political reasons emanates only from national government is mistaken. The second common source of such activity is at the local community level, generated by school board members or citizens, individually or in groups, who attack textbooks and fiction used in schools or available in school libraries.

Like All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque), Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo), Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut), and The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn).

Read. Think. Learn.

We're offering some new M-mv gear. Check it out.

The recommended daily allowance

Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the Shakspeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He cannot step from off his tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. Read the antique documents extricated, analyzed, and compared, by the assiduous Dyce and Collier; and now read one of those skiey sentences,—aerolites,—which seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which, not your experience, but the man within the breast, has accepted as words of fate; and tell me if they match; if the former account in any manner for the latter; or, which gives the most historical insight into the man.

From Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Shakspeare; or, the Poet."

The incomparable R.T. had this to say about our last RDA:

I love it when a writer states my own way of thinking.

Golding was the first to validate my distaste for groups and my personal understanding of group-think (that they generally sink to the lowest common denominator) when I was in high school. Wow! I remember thinking. Someone who gets what it is that scares the beejesus out of me when I am in this place called High School. Maybe it IS okay to be a loner. He probably did a fair amount to contribute to my newly forming skepticism of institutions, too.

He did it again in the essay you linked, "Thinking as a Hobby." That grade-three thinker may be feeling, but [s/he is] moving mountains in terms of our culture. It's a heady thing to consider and makes you want to grab hands with as many as possible and sing kumbayah. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em? And while I realize I have been stuck in his grade-two level of thinking for a long time, as I read the essay, I found myself considering that I might have occasionally leaned toward a grade-one level. Until, that is, he held up Einstein as an example. (Marvelous!) Even I am not self-inflated enough to put myself in a category with him.

Back to grade-two I go. Professionalism, although I have done my turn at that, may be a good opt out. Or, since I am probably long past the profession where I had any great expertise, there is always (as you have pointed out in another essay) the "professionalism of motherhood" that might be an option. Of course, my kids are getting pretty old and themselves moving out of that grade-three thinking, which means, of course, that it is unlikely they would be willing participants.

Wicked, wicked. And such delicious brain food you served up. Many thanks.

No, thank you, R.T., for your message.

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

Ayup. Another month gone. Another heap o' books read. We tossed the joint over the weekend, checking on nightstands, under pillows (and beds), in knapsacks, under chairs, on the library table, and in the bathroom. In this, the twenty-second installment of the monthly "On the nightstand" feature, we present a few of the books that have recently become a part of the geography of our imaginations.

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer (Peter Turchi)

Writing is often discussed as two separate acts -- though in practice they overlap, intermingle, and impersonate each other. They differ in emphasis, but are by no mean merely sequential. If we do them well, both result in discovery.

If there is a more beautiful and intriguing book on the subjects of exploration and presentation, I'm certain I haven't seen it. Highly recommended.

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (Amy Krouse Rosenthal)

You name the question, "Busy" is the answer. Yes, yes, I know we are all terribly busy doing terribly important things. But I think more often than not, "Busy" is simply the most acceptable knee-jerk response.

Ayup. I've been saying this for years. Dispense with the "Oh, I'm so busy" replies. We're all busy. When I ask how you are, give me anything other than this banality. And demand it of me.

This book is no literary sensation, but I found myself listening as if to someone I know, if not well, and sort of like. Okay, like quite a bit. I am, of course, attracted to people with the balls to say the sorts of things that I am known to utter -- for example, that it's "just so sad and ridiculous" to talk on a cell phone while working out at a gym or walking your child to school. Or driving with your family. Or watching your children at the park. Or shopping in Target. Yeah, "sad and ridiculous" about covers it. Recommended.

The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 1 and Volume 2 (Harold C. Goddard)
For the permanent collection.

Lectures on Don Quixote (Vladimir Nabokov)

One commentator in a well-known essay on Cervantes remarks that during his ling series of battles "Never by any chance does [Don Quixote] win." Of course, one has to read the book in order to write about it. We have, and are in a position to refute our commentator's incomprehensible assertion.

I am not only going to refute it. I am going to prove, by means of a play-by-play account of the forty episodes in which Don Quixote acts as a knight-errant that these episodes reveal several amazing points of artistic structure; a certain balance and a certain unity; impressions which could not have been produced had all his encounters ended for him in defeat.

For the "I read [am reading] Don Quixote sans bitching" set only. Highly recommended.

Shopgirl (Steve Martin)
For tonight after spending an hour with Horatio. (We all have our (inexplicable) vices.)

Physics Made Simple (Christopher G. De Pree, Ph.D.)
Love the "science for lit-types" approach. Discovered the series in the incomparable A Common Reader catalogue. Required reading for those of us vainly attempting to keep pace with students who are reading the likes of...

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics And Reality (John Gribbin)

Rick Steves' Great Britain 2005
Exchange rate today: 1 US Dollar = 0.56459 British Pound; 1 British Pound (GBP) = 1.77120 US Dollar (USD). This exchange rate becomes even more distressing when you are standing in queue at Waterstone's and realize with a creeping dread that the copy of Peter Ackroyd's Shakespeare: The Biography you're cuddling -- a top-of-the-wishlist title that will not be released back home until October 25 -- is about to set you back 44 U.S. dollars. Argh. Decisions, decisions....

Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London (Susan Tyler Hitchcock)
Yes, that Mary Lamb. The one who teamed up with her brother Charles to craft Tales from Shakespeare. Recommended. Both books.

The Trader Joe's Adventure: Turning a Unique Approach to Business into a Retail and Cultural Phenomenon (Len Lewis)
Not at all recommended.

Roosevelt's Secret War : FDR and World War II Espionage (Joseph E. Persico)
Recommended.


Briefly noted

The Printer's Devil (Paul Bajoria)

Companion to Narnia (Paul F. Ford)

Rabbit Hill (Robert Lawson)

Sarah, Plain and Tall (Patricia MacLachlan)

The Old Country (Mordicai Gerstein)

Asterix and Cleopatra (Rene Goscinny)

The Paper Dragon (Marguerite W. Davol)


Previous "On the nightstand" entries
8.25.2005
8.5.2005
7.6.2005
5.28.2005
4.18.2005
3.20.2005
2.14.2005
1.14.2005
12.21.2004
11.21.2004
10.12.2004
9.13.2004
8.24.2004
7.19.2004
6.12.2004
5.19.2004
4.22.2004
3.12.2004
2.15.2004
1.26.2004
12.31.2003

The recommended daily allowance

Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

When William Golding won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, the literary world gasped. After all, Graham Greene was the heavily favored among the English authors. Golding, whose first novel, Lord of the Flies, is his most widely read, only penned a dozen novels. Yes, his Rites of Passage captured the Booker Prize, but Golding a Nobel Laureate? Yes, more than a few lit-crit types shook their heads in consternation.

Bio
Sir William Gerald Golding (knighted in 1988, just five years before he died) was born in 1911 in Saint Columb, Cornwall, England. He studied science and then literature at Brasenose College, Oxford; served in the Royal Navy during World War II; and taught at Bishop Wordsworth's School until 1961.

And he wrote. Twelve novels. Many essays. Some plays and poetry. A book about Egypt. A journal.

In the scheme of things, not much.

Yet.

Golding makes me think.

If your only exposure to this writer is Lord of the Flies, feed the hungry autodidact in you: Read "Thinking as a Hobby."

Sun-Times links for a Saturday morning

From Friday's paper:

"'Student' portraits may be masterpieces" and "'Desperate Librarians' do calendar."

Remarks: We attended the Art Institute's magnificent exhibit, "Rembrandt's Journey," last May and wrote about it here. It delights me that all three of my children noticed the article in yesterday's paper. "Look! These might be Rembrandt's work, too."

The librarian calendar article made me increase my donation to the Friends of the [our town] Public Library. No need for our librarians and clerks to pose "provocatively, using oversize books to cover what their clothes usually do."

Heh, heh, heh.

Many thanks to those who have already made purchases at our Cafe Press shop! We have some more (related) designs on the way, including one with "Read. Think. Learn." Check back later in the week, if interested. Until then, several cool items are currently available, including my favorites, the mug and the tote bag.

Click image to enter store.

And me? Will you blog me if I wear a disguise?

Of course, dear.

Secular counterculturalism

In response to this post, A. sent the following message:

This morning as I drove home from taking my hubby to his church I was thinking about how I fit in society. Secular counter culturalist describes it pretty well. Hubby goes to a non mainstream slightly Christian church (Unity); they mention God and Jesus anyway and that is a step toward Christianity for him. His usual worship is aimed at "the Creator and Mother Earth" with a pipe smoked daily at dawn and dusk accompanied by drumming or flute music. We definitely don't homeschool for religious reasons, and I doubt most people do. Our WTM group is small and none of us homeschool because God came down in a dream and told us to, instead we have a variety of reasons:

-- Some of us have kids with IQs over the top who don't "fit" in a classroom.
-- Some have kids with behavior issues that are only issues in a classroom.
-- One has a promise to a deceased spouse.
-- Some of us want our kids to get a better education than we had.
-- One family are resident non-citizens with all the kids born in the U.S. but wanting to teach what is normal for their country.
-- One has a hubby is willing to battle the schools over homework in which he doesn't believe, and the wife is terrified of contention with authorities.
-- We universally despise holding our kids back to mediocrity, which we all perceive would happen in a classroom.
-- Most of us want our kids to enjoy what many of us didn't, the process of learning.

I could go on, but won't. Some of the folks in our group are conservative Christians, and others are Pagans. I am not sure where my family fits on the continuum, but when I think of my own family I get the picture of Manny the Mammoth (from Ice Age) walking against the stream of Ice Age mammals heading south. He was on his own journey, which turned out to be one that healed his hurt from the slaughter of his family which he witnessed. Did God send him on that journey or was it serendipitous?

We have always been in places that allowed us to learn from our situations, teachers that popped up in the area, lessons thrust in our faces, etc. Are we in the right place at the right time, or is this a matter of attitude, that we would learn these lessons no matter where we were and what was going on?

"Make certain to tell your family goodbye when they leave the house because you may never see them again."

"Helping a kid stand up to a bully has lasting ripples that spread in ways you never imagined."

"Be a light in the darkness of a community and it will change the community."

"Listen to the still small voice inside you."

"There are many 'ways' in the world other than the norm."

"A traveler to another place must never think that his ways are the only ways or the better ways."

"Knowing a thing's name is the first step in giving one power over it."

"A car is not the only mode of transportation."

"Just because some people do it doesn't make it right."

"A time comes when you have to choose to do what you understand to be right rather than choose to go along with the crowd, no matter how many people tell you you are wrong."

"What worked for one generation doesn't necessarily work for all generations."

Homeschooling for lack of better options may be a reason some folks homeschool, but I don't like the feeling I get from the phrase. It sounds like a situation that happened to a family rather than a choice they made. It puts homeschooling in a spot that is "lesser" in value, a "Well, you know if we had the money of course we would send them to private school, but the public schools are just impossible around here, so we homeschool."

Being a secular counter culturalist sounds more like a choice. I wonder what they wear? How do they act? Are they like the hippies in Berkeley during the 60s with their love-ins and drugs? Do they solely unschool or are the "really" secular counter culturalists the ones that classically homeschool for non-religious reasons? Hmmm. This is a group I could be a part of, a group that doesn't fit in other groups, doesn't wear the same denim jumpers as their religious counterparts (though I would consider getting some overalls and high topped muti-colored Converses), one in which (*gasp*) fathers may take a part as someone other than the principal of the homeschool, one that doesn't take itself so seriously. Hmmm.

Thanks, A.

Grand opening

Click image to visit the store.

Well, many folks wrote to say, "Hey! Yeah! I want a t-shirt. Or two." So a t-shirt (or two) is now available. As are tote bags, mugs, caps, and sweatshirts.

If you have any questions about the products -- if, for example, you'd like a item you don't see in the store -- just drop us an email. We'll see what we can do.

And many thanks for your interest... for your email messages. You folks said some kind, encouraging stuff about M-mv, and we appreciate it.

"Will you blog me if I'm in disguise?"

Sure, honey.

We've been robbed!

The Drought of 2005 has caused some trees to go straight to brown and even to drop green leaves. (See related Sun-Times article.)

Two months ago...

we released our newly hatched praying mantises.

Today one came back to say, "Hello!"

"Secular counterculturalist." Okay. That'll work.

From "What They're Reading at the Kitchen Table" (Wall Street Journal, September 2, 2005):

Home-schooling is sort of like a college student's virginity: People figure it's a mark of religiosity, but nearly as often it's just personal taste, or a lack of better options. The majority of families who home-school are conservative Christians, to be sure. But another sizable portion are secular counterculturalists, and then there are the diplomats, foreign-aid workers or those living in the desert or Alaskan wilderness--anyone far from a school. Home-schoolers put their numbers at about two million, the federal government guesses closer to one million, but everyone agrees that the number is growing by 5% to 15% a year.

Parent-teacher

From "Feed a cold; starve a (spring) fever?" (4.22.2005):

Most parent-teachers grapple with the subtle distinction between teaching and parenting, although getting them to admit it is the stuff of another post. Many refuse to acknowledge that these are separate, for lack of a better word, jobs, each with its attendant trials and triumphs. "No, no," they maintain. "Parents are the first and most important teachers." Yeah, I know. But when we're talking about home education, we're describing a dynamic that outstrips that obvious observation. Parenting and teaching can and do intersect, but it takes a lot of self-observation to make the best use of the overlap. Invariably, when the day goes all wrong, we parent-teachers have responded to the teaching interaction with parenting techniques.

Or, I would add, vice-versa -- we've responded to the teaching interaction with parenting techniques.

Later in that entry:

When addressing the assorted problems that can occur when one spends most of her life in the company of young humans, a parent-teacher can look at the problems through bifocals of a sort. Glance through the top and see your children with mother vision. Glance through the bottom and see them through teacher vision. Most of the newfangled "invisible" bifocal lenses come with a center area of vision, a sort of middle distance. Consider this the place where parenting and teaching intersect. Now. Before reacting to this math lesson or that messy room, ask yourself, "Through which lens am I seeing this?" That smidgen of reflection alone may help you avoid unnecessary conflict and stress. If not, try this centering technique: If I were a teacher in a traditional classroom setting, and my principal were observing me, how would I handle this interaction? It wouldn't involve shouting or a Snickers bar now, would it?

Back in January 2004 in another forum, someone asked for reasons why someone shouldn't home educate. I offered the following seven reasons:

Incompatibility of temperments: Sometimes a parent's teaching style clashes with a child's learning style, and for myriad reasons, middle ground is too difficult to find.

Lack of support: It can be daunting to pursue this if you can't find support in your network of friends and family.

Lack of resources (financial and otherwise): Yes, we can homeschool on a shoestring, as they say, but if the lack of a good library is coupled with a lack of financial breathing room is coupled with cramped quarters is coupled with a dearth of community activities, camps, classes, programs is coupled with... well, you get the idea. It can get hard -- on the parent-teacher and the student. School might simply offer more opportunities in that scenario.

Lack of motivation: The simple fact is that excellent schools exist. If you are one of the families that live near one, well, you simply may not be motivated to home educate. That's not a bad thing.

Lack of patience or selflessness: Home education requires that a parent be more than comfortable with looooong blocks of time in their children's company. It is a sad fact that many parents are not comfortable (or happy or productive) with their kids. Moreover, many adults have difficulty with delayed gratification. Spending much of your morning, afternoon, and evening in the company of wee folk mean putting off assorted activities that may seem more appealing or at least easier than teaching, planning to teach, and following up on lessons (e.g., writing, reading (and I don't mean Black Ships before Troy, either), computing, thinking, napping, homemaking, etc.).

Inability to find a comfortable mix of parenting and teaching: Yes, parents are a child's first and most important teachers, but not many parents are both for extended periods of time (as homeschooling parents are). It can be tricky stuff, the negotiation of parenting and teaching roles.

Absence of desire: Homeschooling won't work if you're doing it because someone you think you admire suggested it or extolled its merits. Or because you read a book or an article that struck a chord with you. Or because the image you think a homeschooling family might project appeals to you. Etc. Choosing to homeschool must (at least partially) grow from your very own desire to teach and learn beside your own children.

When I take the time to tease out the stands that are usually braided together, the sixth item coupled with the assertions I made in the "Feed a cold" post fairly describe my feelings about our family's home education: that parenting and teaching are distinct tasks or roles and that one must be able to negotiate them comfortably for one to enjoy a successful home education experience.

There are always those who then want a description of how this looks: When are you parenting? When are you teaching? Aren't they the same?

I'll answer that last question only. No.

Any more than writing and editing are the same. Writing is the creation; editing is the attempt to perfect it. Some of us have been writing so long that we edit as we write. (Inexperienced writers are strongly urged, "Just let it flow!" for a reason: Attempting to refine and perfect while creating can frustrate a writer, dry up the piece.) But, no mater how facile we are with editing as we write, when we are done writing, we must still edit the piece overall. And while we edit, we may rewrite. Two separate tasks, each with its attendant outcome.

If you were to do a frame by frame of the creative process, you would see that experienced writers move from one task to the other -- so quickly and with such practiced ease that you understand how one might mistake the two tasks for one.

Just as one might mistake parenting and teaching for one task, role, or... hat.

The roles intersect. Often. But they are not the same.

If you were to do a frame by frame of the home education process, you would see the subtle shift from one skill set to the other.

Or you should, anyway.

More when/if time permits.

And remember: This is an opinion. Think. Evaluate. Adopt or discard. But don't rail.

The reading life

What I miss about Chicago... the short list

Anonymity. There is none in the small, semi-rural town in which we now live. Zero. Zip. Nada. None. I've had to settle for privacy. And believe me, there is most certainly a difference.

The CTA. Particularly the el.

Good bookstores. The crop of quirky used bookstores (especially Powell's) and the handful of independents (Women and Children First) come immediately to mind.

The classroom. The city, perhaps even more than our personal library, was our classroom: its museums, theaters, parks, libraries. We've done a good job of finding adventures here, but Chicago offered more and better in the way of museums and theaters, in particular.

Our martial arts school.

The sense of vibrancy and possibility. It sometimes seems that that out here folks adhere to a Rule of Four when it comes to the weekend:

(1) Lawn care.
(2) Garage sale.
(3) Sporting events (televised or local).
(4) Are all of the above done? Shop. First stop. Wal*Mart.

Wet. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Yes, of course, I know that some of my fellow Chicagoans limit themselves to the Rule of Four, but one look at the parks, museums, street fairs, restaurants, theaters, etc. and you just know that while you might appreciate the comforts of anonymity, you also appreciate the fact that you weren't the only autodidact in town.

Diversity. Over- often misused concept, I know, but I most certainly miss the variety of people, experiences, cultures, even smells associated with the patchwork quilt of neighborhoods that is Chicago.

The city college system. Master M-mv took courses beginning at twelve. It's not so easy to do this here.

Good pizza.

(The above material was adapted from a post in another forum.)

Many folks think...

that only catastropic events can undo them. The rest of us know that the accumulation of little things can crush the joy and promise out of our lives.

It's not so much that one gained weight during pregnancy, for example, but that this indignity was exacerbated by hair loss, mild acne, and the attendant loss of self-esteem.

It's not so much that the dishes piled up, but that, in addition to this, the cat puked, the dryer stopped working, and the house has taken on the sort of gray tinge it can get when you're dissatisfied with it.

It's not that one child did poorly on a math test, but that the other still isn't reading fluently, and that the other writes sloppily, and that the neighbor's children seem to know that walking like an animal up the stairs of the library is a bad idea, so why don't yours?

The little things can bury us.

Mixing metaphors
Depression is a slick, muddy slope. Once you start sliding, you have only two choices: Claw your way back to the top or sink into the mud.

As anyone who spends any time here at M-mv knows, my mantra is "It's. Just. Not. That. Hard." Few people have ever truly understood that sometimes this can be as good as saying, "It's as hard as sh-- that's been baking in the California sun for twenty days, but I choose to ignore that particular aspect of the journey and focus on all of that less-hard stuff because, because... LIFE IS SHORT! And I'd rather celebrate and sing than spend my life acknowledging some of life's inherent sh--iness, OKAY? Okay."

Heh, heh, heh. Maybe you get it, huh? Yes, tell yourself: It's. Just. Not. That. Hard.

And maybe tomorrow, or Friday, or next Tuesday, it won't be.

From Let Your Life Speak (Parker J. Palmer):

Embracing the mystery of depression does not mean passivity or resignation. It means moving into a field of forces that seems alien but is in fact one's deepest self. It means waiting, watching, listening, suffering, and gathering whatever self-knowledge one can -- and then making choices based on that knowledge, no matter how difficult. One begins the slow walk back to health by choosing each day things that enliven one's selfhood and resisting things that do not.

May you choose things that enliven your selfhood and resist those that do not.

(The above material was adapted from a post in another forum.)

It began as a joke. Sort of.

We made them for us, for Family M-mv, mostly to wear around the house. Or the yard. Maybe on the trails. Or at the beach.

Hardly a fashion statement.

We thought.

But then we posted one of them, and WHOOSH! The inquiries came in.

Folks, we made them. By hand. We hadn't any intention of selling 'em.

But now you have us thinking... Should we?

Let us know.

Brain chemistry: Good news and bad news

From "Will Drugs Make Us Smarter and Happier?" (Popular Science, August 2005):

The road to Naam’s pharma-utopia may begin here: on a slide, under a microscope, where two slices of rat hippocampus are being stimulated by electrodes. The neurons in slice one have been treated with a type of drug known as an ampakine, while those in slice two have not. A computer records the levels of electrochemical signaling within each slice. The experiment looks low-tech, like something out of my seventh-grade science class, but it has far-reaching implications: Ampakines may prove to be the world’s most powerful cognitive-enhancing, memory-boosting drugs.

From "Brain disease strikes those in middle age" (Chicago Sun-Times, September 13, 2005):

FTD, short for frontotemporal dementia, is believed to be the second-leading cause of dementia illness after Alzheimer's disease. But unlike Alzheimer's, it is not a disease of old age -- it typically strikes people in their 40s and 50s.

FTD patients retain their memory, at least initially. But they gradually lose their ability to speak. They stop caring about their appearance and often display bizarre behavior such as shoplifting, doing sit-ups in public rest rooms or reading the same book over and over.

They also become emotionless and apathetic. Asked about his disease, now in an advanced stage with no hope for a cure, Hawkinson replies, "I don't care."

The recommended daily allowance

Classic Poetry: An Illustrated Collection (selected by Michael Rosen)
You don't need a plan or a permission slip to enjoy poetry with your family. Simply pull down a collection of poems and read. Play with the language. Take turns delighting in silly poems. Teach one another the importance of old favorites. Recite from memory the poems you've learned. Let favorite pieces become part of the pattern of your family's secret language, like lines from favorite books and films.

Love of language and learning does not grow from lists or lesson plans.

It blossoms in the place where children hear:

To fling my arms wide,
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done,
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark, like me --
That is my dream!

and can imagine the speaker, draw him, talk to him, and know what he'd say next.

Look. You don't need a plan. You need a passion for this work. And the maturity to work.

Each and every day.

No matter what.

More about poetry: Patterns in Poetry: Recognizing and Analyzing Poetic Form and Meter (Greg Roza).

The material in this entry originally appeared in our 5.28.2005 "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" entry.

James Kilpatrick on E.B. White

From today's column ("The Writer's Art," Chicago Sun-Times, September 11, 2005):

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy."

I don't mean to break a butterfly upon a wheel, but that sentence may usefully be dissected. It provides a small introduction to the anatomy of prose composition.

...

For many writers, repetition is a hobgoblin. Their fictional characters will announce, blurt, cry, demand -- their people will do anything but say, say, say. White had no fear of the specter. He positively embraced it. In this regard, he could have trimmed a little fat from his first paragraph. If he had bestowed simply "the gifts of loneliness and privacy," he would have saved three words -- and lost the cadence.

Read Here Is New York. Soon.

From E.B. White's "serenade to the city he loved":

All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.

Today read, think, remember.

Look up!

This Week's Sky at a Glance.

Jupiter and Venus continue to draw farther apart low in the west-southwest after sunset. You may need binoculars to pick up Spica, much fainter, at Jupiter's left.

Still evolving

From "Human brain is still evolving, U. of C. researcher finds" (Chicago Sun-Times, September 9, 2005):

We tend to think of human beings as the end product of millions of years of evolution, but two new studies are showing that humanity still is a work in progress.

Researchers have documented two striking examples of how evolution is continuing to change our most defining organ -- the brain.

You must register at Science to read the reports themselves, but Forbes has this longer article.

Revealing

SFP at "Pages Turned," wisely observed, "There is nothing less revealing than reading someone's top ten books list when the list contains nothing but classics." Her remark followed this quote from Alan Warner's essay, "The curse of the classics":

Today, someone's taste for the "classics" can cover up no discernible individual or original taste of their own. Classic trumpeting can be a refuge for philistinism or nationalistic indolence. Unlike the word masterpiece, the classic category only pretends to be an aesthetic valuation.

I can (and have) named some of my favorite companions, but a top ten books list? I'm not sure I could confine my sprawling list of recommendations to so small a number. And I won't.

But a list of ten books that reveals something about you... that's a challenge.

Ten books above all others that have shaped or even defined you.

Can you do it?

I tried.


The annotated list

1. Children's Guide to Knowledge
I've written about this treasure before. It is, as I have said, "the one book largely responsible for preventing my young mind from atrophying in my parents’ blue-collar, “we-have-the-largest-newest-clearest-color-television-in-the-neighborhood” home."

The subtitle of the book is Wonders of Nature, Marvels of Science and Man, and it was published by Parents’ Magazine Press. An aunt gave it to me when I finished third grade. Her inscription notes that the book would help me complete fourth-grade reports. Thirty-two years after its publication, Children’s Guide to Knowledge continues to deliver a compelling world of animals, plants, history, geography, and scientific achievement (through early space exploration, anyway). The spine is crumbling, and the book has a damp, forgotten smell, but it still seduces.

2. Blubber (Judy Blume)
My closest friend in fifth grade, Mary Ann, pressed this book on me. "It is just like this class," she said. "It's true."

Mary Ann and I formed a two-student workshop led by our newly minted teacher, Miss T. Miss T. had identified us as "advanced" readers and writers. ("Well, no kidding," Mary Ann muttered.) But we suspected from the beginning that the "workshop" was about isolating us from the other students when she was teaching. She didn't do well under our scrutiny. "But Miss T.," coming from Mary Ann or me was capable of reducing her to tears.

(An aside: My preoccupation with exposing mediocrity began around this time.)

Mary Ann was also adept with numbers... and one-liners. I admired her often venomous wit and was fortunate to have grown reasonably thick skin by the time she attempted to inject me with it seven years later, when we were seniors in high school.

She and I read difficult books like The Red Badge of Courage and collections of O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe stories (most of which I reread in adulthood and realized, "Man, I never appreciated these until now"). And we (over)wrote and illustrated wildly creative stories about our secret lives as witches.

We didn't spend much time trying to play well with the other girls in our class.

And our fifth-grade teacher watched us carefully.

Anyway, the ease and truthfulness with which Blubber unfolded resonated with me in a way that the Little House books or even A Wrinkle in Time hadn't. I knew I was a writer by the time I was in third grade. With Blubber, I became fascinated with writing "the truth."

Mary Ann and I didn't write many more stories about witches after that.


3. Harriet the Spy (Louise Fithugh)
I popped the lenses from my sunglasses, donned an old hooded sweatshirt, and took to carrying a composition notebook wherever I went. My classmates never read the notebooks. My mother did. Let's leave it at "That wasn't the best day of my childhood."


4. Ronnie and Rosey (Judy Angell)
By any standard, this book is, if not ridiculous, then overwrought, as many "problem novels" are. But when I first read it, what, nearly thirty years ago, its truth electrified me.

I reread it a couple of years ago, anxious to see if my early-teen recollections would bear the harsher light of adult scrutiny. "Would I recommend this to my daughters?" was the question I was trying to answer. As it turns out, I would, although more for its sentimental value than for its (dubious) literary merits.

Simply put, Ronnie and Rosey was the first book I had read that made me realize, "Someday, perhaps someday soon, I will feel strong enough as a person to act and think without worrying about what Mom will say and do."

Yes, I credit this sometimes silly book with helping me grow up.

Which means, of course, that at the time, it wasn't silly to me. At. All.


5. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)

Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

E.B. White died when I was an undergraduate. To mark his passing, I reread Charlotte's Web.

And cried.

Again.

I have, since that time, read it no fewer than two dozen times.

And cried each time.

And, yes, I've read every collection of his essays.

At least twice.

Rereading Charlotte's Web as a young person hovering between childhood and adulthood, reawakened in me the desire to arrive at essential truths through clear, measured writing.


6. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
I am no longer able to discern if this is a good book, but through it, I met Arthur, which set me on a quest that has filled several shelves and many of my mind's rooms and chambers.

And so it is important to me.

A belated thank-you to Ines, who recommended the book to me as I headed home for the summer between sophomore and junior years.


7. Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
I read this during my final semester as an undergraduate. Mr. R. insisted. It is heresy, I know, to mention these two books in the same entry, let alone the same sentence, but, like The Mists of Avalon, Slaughterhouse Five sent me on a journey of discovery that, again, filled several shelves and many of my mind's rooms and chambers.

Years later, while in grad school, I spent the day with Vonnegut. I was a grad assistant in a small liberal arts school where he offered two workshops for the English department and a ninety-minute address followed by a book-signing for the general college population. By then, I had read everything of his that was in print. My assignment that day was to help usher him from here to there. Trust me, faculty members vied for his attention, and my services proved non-critical.

But I sat beside him for both workshops. "And this is enough," I thought. "To know that he is a real person who grows impatient and smells old and loses his train of thought sometimes. This writer is real."

Perhaps that is the essence of my reading and writing life: discerning what is real and true for me and recommitting to it periodically.


8. (Wo)Man Writer: Occasions and Opportunities (Joyce Carol Oates)
I can and have written volumes about Joyce Carol Oates. She is partially responsible for my success in graduate school: One of two scholarly essays of mine to capture honors in my second year of study there concerned JCO, and part of my oral defense concerned Oates and the Burkean pentad. It went swimmingly, thanks. I was, after all, an energetic and earnest student.

Plus... shhh.

I brought snacks to my appointment.

Yes, the professors who awarded me "Highest Honors" had a hint of chocolate-covered strawberries in the corners of their mouths when they left my final presentation.

Heh, heh, heh.

More on Oates' place in my reading, writing, learning life some other time.


9. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, 10. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (Harold Bloom), and 11. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.
(Yes, I'm aware that this actually makes eleven titles.)

I've amassed a collection of thousands of volumes, but if it were all lost tomorrow, the only books I would need to replace immediately are these three.

Nothing has reworked the geography of my imagination like my (re)discovery of Shakespeare.

(Except maybe parenting, but that's an altogether different subject, no?)

Shakespeare. Talk about a recommitment to what is real and true.

_________________________

And there you go. A list of books that (I think, anyway) actually says something about the reader.

Are you up to the challenge?

Assigned topics

This summer, I visited Patagonia, the Madeira Islands, and Padua New Guinea. I danced with Katherine Dunham and discovered the expanding universe with Edwin Hubble. Alban Berg, Henri Matisse, Vicente Aleixandre, Friedrich Engles, Sherwood Andersoon, and many other thinkers, dreamers, writers, and creators made. me. think.

I didn't stray far from the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie this summer, but I read and researched and wrote.

About a thousand words per topic.

About seventy topics since scoring this assignment.

You do the math.

Sold.

Hear that? That's how satisfaction sounds.

Life is short, but it's often good. And cool. Especially if you love what you do.

Do you?

Technorati

It sure is neat how M-mv ends up with visitors via Newsweek (scroll to see the entry (and some of you will appreciate this) "Cool") and and the Washington Post (see the side box)... all because of Technorati.

Neat. Neat. Neat.

Attitude clothing

"Hi, loser."

"No, not you," continued the August 24 Chicago Tribune article. "That's the slogan on a popular T-shirt sold to teenagers as part of a booming trend in 'attitude' clothing that is doing exactly what it was designed to do: amuse the kids wearing them while appalling their parents and teachers."

Here's the link to the complete piece.

"You're ugly and that's sad."

"It worries me how dumb you are."

What lowbrow gene goes into high gear when we are overcome with giggles by something as inane as cartoon bunnies mouthing the thought bubbles that sometimes slip into our heads?

The thing is, slogans, some so smirkingly cutting they're practically angry (T-shirt rage, anyone?), are not terribly difficult to generate:

Can't homeschool today, honey. I'm going to blog about it instead.


You're so clever. Too bad you're not cute, too.


Homeschool? Well, it was easier than getting up on time.


My homeschool's better than yours. So there.


I like it best when it's all about me.


Of course they're all mine. I think.


You're just not that bright, are you?


CLUE: The homeschooler. In the library. With the book.


See what I mean? It's almost too easy.

We opted for something tamer. (See photo.)

Yeah, we won't be able to meet the demand, so we're not even going to try. Heh, heh, heh.

Hey, if your circumstances permit, find some joy in the holiday weekend, folks. It's there. Give what you can. Celebrate what you've got. Live.

American Red Cross Hurricane Relief

Click image to donate via the Amazon Honor System.

Today

Give what you can, then celebrate what you have.

Life is short.

Lit-crit revisited

From our entry "Was there anything so real as words?" (7.28.2005):

...I tend to be a little wary of lit-crit that looks at or through the author — his struggles, personality, life, etc. — as a sole means to the work. [Emphasis added]

Later:

The text should stand alone, I wrote to my virtual friend, noting that all of the observations about Oscar Wilde's character, while compelling (and exquisitely rendered in, for example, Richard Ellman's biography), do not alter the message of the text itself.

On revisiting this, I'd amend that slightly: The text can stand alone. If only we let it.

In correspondence over the weekend, I was roundly chastised for dismissing the value of the writer's biography and historical context. "Immature," scolded my correspondent.

With countless biographies and collections of letters on our heavy shelves, how could I dismiss the value of knowing more about a writer's life and place in history? And even if I had been dismissive, why must you choose petulance clad in scholarly anecdote as your response?

Dear critic, far from dismissing anything, I am only arguing for a space-time in which a work can be considered and appreciated simply for its effect on the reader.

Because the text can stand alone.

Just as a piece of art or music can stand alone.

Are we often inspired to pursue a better understanding of a work? Of course. And when we are, many rich resources await us. If we are not, however, then we must be free to crack the next tome, click to the next track, clop to the next gallery. We can't all be moved by the same themes, textures, or tones. It is childish to suppose that we all will... or that we all must.

While casting Hamlet on the shores of Shakespeare's historical context is certainly a valuable exercise, for example, I maintain that it is unnecessary on the maiden reading. Recount the skimpy biographical details of Shakespeare's life, narrate the landscape of his once-upon-a-time-ago world, share more of the secular scripture of the inventor of the human... after introducing the melancholy Dane. Or Prince Hal. Or dear Falstaff. Or Mercutio. Or Rosalind. Don't dilute their initial magic.

In my experience as teacher and as student, I've learned that it is only the overbearing pedant (or the overzealous grad assistant) who insists that one must know the contents of an author's life before succumbing to the wonders of his or her work.

I've also learned that I can entice reluctant readers with the fruit far more easily than with a diagram of the tree. As they lick the sweet, sticky juice from their lips and fingers, they are open to the discovery of how that wonderful fruit came to grow from such a tree. That's the time for the diagram.

Yes, dear critic, that first time out with a text, sonata, or painting, I choose child-like wonder over pedanticism. Every. Time.

On the cusp of autumn

Under the sun butter-yellow in the crayon-blue sky, the first fallen leaves dance in the yards and skitter along the quiet street.

And the one who grabs the newspaper in the morning dons a common sweater -- too short for him, much too long for them, just right for her -- before darting down the driveway.

Summer is dying, not in gasps and throes; no, it is fading in shades and degrees.