Still the coolest pumpkin ever

The recommended daily allowance

30 Rock: Seasons One and Two

[Liz enters a room and stands behind Jack.]
Jack: You've been avoiding me, Lemon.
Liz: How do you do that without turning around?
Jack: To be perfectly honest, the first couple of people I did that to were not you, but... here we are.

By the way, "30 Rock" returns to television tonight. Related articles here, here, and here.

Established in October 2003...

for readers, thinkers, and autodidacts, Mental multivitamin is now (officially) five years old.

Ayup.

Five years of "On the nightstand," RDAs (like this one), and thoughts on parenting and teaching.

Five years of Bardolatry.

Five years of birding, art, and meaningful work.

Five years of maintaining that "It's. Just. Not. That. Hard."

Looking over the archives, I realize that what most pleases me about M-mv is that it was conceived with a clear aim ("Read. Think. Learn."), and it has been used -- unswervingly -- to promote that aim.

Raising a big ol' mug of coffee in your general direction, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts: Here's to more books, more writing to know, and more (always more) learning adventures -- whether they be on the trails, in the museums, or between the lines.

Added today: This entry first ran a couple of weeks ago. Many thanks to those of you who sent notes marking the occasion.

This is Halloween. This is Halloween.

'Twas a long time ago, longer now than it seems in a place perhaps you've seen in your dreams. For the story you're about to be told began with the holiday worlds of auld. Now you've probably wondered where holidays come from. If you haven't I'd say it's time you begun.

From Roger Ebert's review of The Nightmare before Christmas:

One day Jack stumbles into the wrong entryway in Halloweentown, and finds himself smack dab in the middle of preparations for Christmas. Now this, he realizes, is more like it! Instead of ghosts and goblins and pumpkins, there are jolly little helpers assisting Santa in his annual duty of bringing peace on earth and goodwill to men.

Back in Halloweentown, Jack Skellington feels a gnawing desire to better himself. To move up to a more important holiday, one that people take more seriously and enjoy more than Halloween. And so he engineers a diabolical scheme in which Santa is kidnapped, and Jack himself plays the role of Jolly Old St. Nick, while his helpers manufacture presents. (Some of the presents, when finally distributed to little girls and boys, are so hilariously ill-advised that I will not spoil the fun by describing them here.) Tim Burton, the director of "Beetlejuice," "Edward Scissorhands" and the "Batman" movies, has been creating this world in his head for about 10 years, ever since his mind began to stray while he was employed as a traditional animator on an unremarkable Disney project.

The story is centered on his favorite kind of character, a misfit who wants to do well, but has been gifted by fate with a quirky personality that people don't know how to take. Jack Skellington is the soul brother of Batman, Edward and the demon in "Beetlejuice" - a man for whom normal human emotions are a conundrum.

The only Halloween movie that even begins to compete with The Nightmare before Christmas is the classic It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Happy (almost) Halloween, folks.

Jacking into the brain

"Is the Brain the Ultimate Computer Interface?"

Um, folks? Didn't you read M.T. Anderson's Feed? This is a bad, bad idea.

Related entries
■ Now then.
■ Yeah. We changed the subtitle.

In case you were wondering...

it's snowing here. Yes, it's snowing on the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie.

From the Sunday papers

From "The time machine" (Chicago Tribune Magazine, October 26):

"Work is a very big and important part of life," [America's preeminent popular historian, David] McCullough says. "I work all day, every day. I'm often asked, 'Why do you work so hard?' Well, because that's what you do. You work. And I love what I do."

Everything he writes is intended to drive home the simple truth that human initiative matters. Everything he writes—from the massive yet breezily accessible biographies of presidents such as Harry S Truman and John Adams, to the nuanced chronicles of great engineering feats such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal—is aimed at conveying a fundamental concept: Human ingenuity and effort are the engines that make the world go.

Gumption. If there is one word that sums up McCullough's philosophy as it forks through his books like veins through blocks of marble, it would be "gumption." He likes to write about Americans who work hard, dream big, fall hard, then get back up and try again. He likes to chronicle those of his countrymen and countrywomen who possess guts and ambition and diligence. Lofty goals—and the down-to-earth perseverance to get the job done.

From "I think I'm musing my mind" (Chicago Sun-Times, October 25):

I take dictation from that place within my mind that knows what to say. I think most good writers do. There is no such thing as waiting for inspiration. The idea of "diagramming" an essay in advance, as we are taught in school, may be useful to students but is foolishness for any practicing writer. The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.

Added a little later: The Sun-Times stretched "Iron Worker, Chicago" (1969) across the width of the Sunday Show section, reminding me afresh that, one of these days, I mean to work out my ideas about the art of photography. The image, by Jonas Dovydenas, features a man stripped to his trousers and suspended over the sprawling forest of buildings that Chicago comprises. The composition fascinates for many reasons, including the fact that it breaks a cardinal design rule: Avoid centering your subject. Yet... it works. It works well. Profoundly well. It is, after all, an iconic image, one that defines the city even as it describes it. (By the way, for the complete article, click here.)

With the many advances in digital photography -- and the many "cheats," enhancements, "fixes," layers, and "actions" now available -- everyone and his or her mother fancies him- or herself a photographer these days.

And that's fine.

I guess.

But the art of photography, at least as far as I understand and appreciate it, is not about manipulating color and putting stars in the subject's eyes as much as it is about composition -- capturing the image in a way that conveys meaning (and essential truth) well before the image is subjected to editing.

Meh. Someday I'll work out my thoughts on this topic. Until then, I'll leave you with an excerpt I posted here about a year ago. From "Is Photography Dead?" (Newsweek, December 10, 2007):

Film photography's artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera. A digital photograph, on the other hand, can be a Photoshop fairy tale, containing only a tiny trace of a small fragment of reality. By now, we've witnessed all the magical morphing and seen all the clever tricks that have turned so many photographers—formerly bearers of truth—into conjurers of fiction. It's hard to say "gee whiz" anymore. [Emphasis added.]

Perhaps Peter Plagens has already done the hard thinking for me, eh?

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

"And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!"

Note: Yes, I'm posting ahead. Tomorrow is "call'd the feast of Crispian."

From Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Works of Shakespeare:

According to a legend which can be traced back no further than the eighth century, Crispin and Crispian were two brothers, Christian, living in Rome. They fled the persecution of Christians begun under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. They traveled to Soissons in what was then Gaul (later France), and there they remained in hiding, supporting themselves as shoemakers. In 286 they were found and beheaded, presumably on October 25, which became their day of commemoration. They were the patron saints of shoemakers and their day was particularly celebrated in France. And it was on October 25, 1415, that the Battle of Agincourt was to be fought.

From Act IV, Scene III of Shakespeare's Henry V:

King Henry:
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Wondrous stuff! Watch the Branagh film today. If you have somehow missed it, here is a foretaste.

Have you read my bardolatry entries? This one in particular may interest those of you bringing Shakespeare to the younger set.

Project FeederWatch

The twenty-second season of Project FeederWatch begins soon (November 8), so it's not too late to register for this wonderful program.

Project FeederWatch is a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America. FeederWatchers periodically count the highest numbers of each species they see at their feeders from November through early April. FeederWatch helps scientists track broadscale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance.

Project FeederWatch is operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada.

Your counts will help scientists monitor changes in feeder bird populations. New participants receive a research kit with easy to follow instructions, the FeederWacther's handbook, a bird-identification poster, a calendar, and a subscription to the newsletter of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (U.S.) or Bird Studies Canada (Canada). For more information or to sign up in the U.S., please visit this site or call (800) 843-2473; if in Canada, please visit this site or call (888) 448-2473. A $15 fee ($35 in Canada) makes the program possible.

More on M-mv's adventures in birding here.

If you plan to participate, set up your feeders now and commit to keeping them filled throughout the season. Use a variety of feeders and seed to attract a greater variety of visitors. For more information, check out this site.

"[W]e underestimate our students' capacity for comprehending complex literature."

"Balancing act with books" (Chicago Tribune, October 19) revisits a familiar idea: Teens are reading less; therefore, English teachers must "do something" to make reading more appealing to them.

Pairing classics (those with an uppercase C) with related contemporary books and/or films -- a most reliable discussion starter here in the family-centered learning project -- appeals to many educators as a way to reach reluctant readers. The Tribune article also lists other techniques now used in area schools: revamping reading lists to include bestsellers and novels featuring younger protagonists, giving students more say in the selection process, etc.

Carol Jago's With Rigor for All, an engaging compilation of strategies for teaching the classics, covers similar ground, but Jago argues strenuously for making students do the hard work of puzzling through long books with difficult vocabulary and syntax (in other words, classics with an uppercase C). "Instruction is marching behind development in too many English classrooms," she maintains.

I believe we underestimate our students' capacity for comprehending complex literature. Persuaded by teenage complaints, we assign students an author's shorter novel regardless of its relative merit against a longer work... Giving in to students' moans (which to my mind are developmentally appropriate and for that reason need not be heeded), we substitute serious literature with light, high-interest, easy-to-read books.

The following sentence from the Trib piece made me realize that Jago and I probably have more in common than any of the teachers quoted in the article and I do: Ultimately, teachers said, they can't cultivate an appreciation for the complexities of literature if they can't first inspire students to open a book.

As Jago says:

Without diminishing the importance of good early reading instruction or the difficulties children with disabilities face when reading, I would like to assert that many "poor readers" are actually lazy readers. This is not a reflection on their character. It's simply that no one ever told these children that reading was going to be work. Even when students dutifully eyeball the assigned pages, few think the homework has asked them for anything more. Students turn on stereos, kick back on their beds, and expect the book to transfer information from its pages to their brains. While such a passive stance might work perfectly well for reading Surfer magazine, it is grossly inadequate for texts like The Odyssey. [Emphasis added.]

I never make any secret of the fact that reading and studying are hard work; I simply expect my students to do their job, just as I do mine: with attention, commitment, and excellence.

From William Armstrong's Study Is Hard Work, a book we have pressed on anyone who would listen:

What is study? Study is, above everything else, hard work. It has always been hard work, and there are no indications at present which hint that science is going to accomplish a vitamin-capsule method of learning that will eliminate study. Study is the total of all the habits, determined purposes, and enforced practices that the individual uses in order to learn. People have objected to study for a long time.

As a teacher, I must overcome those objections and inspire my students to open their books and get to work.
____________________________

By including statistics about the amount of time young people spend reading for pleasure, the Tribune article manages to conflate two separate issues: school reading requirements and pleasure reading. I'm not obtuse; I do see the relationship between the two. I just think that the issues need to be considered separately. If, for example, students were completing rigorous reading programs, I think there might be less cause to bemoan statistics about the decline in pleasure reading time. After all, there are only so many hours in a day.

There's another entry in all of this material, I know, but I am drained (happily) by our birthday week celebrations. When time permits, I'll revisit the idea. Until then...

"Words, of all sorts, have never seemed so now. "

From "Why I Blog" (The Atlantic, November 2008):

[B]logging suffers from the same flaws as postmodernism: a failure to provide stable truth or a permanent perspective. A traditional writer is valued by readers precisely because they trust him to have thought long and hard about a subject, given it time to evolve in his head, and composed a piece of writing that is worth their time to read at length and to ponder. Bloggers don’t do this and cannot do this—and that limits them far more than it does traditional long-form writing.

"Why do we equate genius with precocity?"

From "Late Bloomers" (The New Yorker, October 20, 2008):

Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth. Orson Welles made his masterpiece, “Citizen Kane,” at twenty-five. Herman Melville wrote a book a year through his late twenties, culminating, at age thirty-two, with “Moby-Dick.” Mozart wrote his breakthrough Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat-Major at the age of twenty-one. In some creative forms, like lyric poetry, the importance of precocity has hardened into an iron law. How old was T. S. Eliot when he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (“I grow old . . . I grow old”)? Twenty-three. “Poets peak young,” the creativity researcher James Kaufman maintains. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the author of “Flow,” agrees: “The most creative lyric verse is believed to be that written by the young.” According to the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, a leading authority on creativity, “Lyric poetry is a domain where talent is discovered early, burns brightly, and then peters out at an early age.”

But later:

Galenson’s idea that creativity can be divided into these types—conceptual and experimental—has a number of important implications. For example, we sometimes think of late bloomers as late starters. They don’t realize they’re good at something until they’re fifty, so of course they achieve late in life. But that’s not quite right. Cézanne was painting almost as early as Picasso was. We also sometimes think of them as artists who are discovered late; the world is just slow to appreciate their gifts. In both cases, the assumption is that the prodigy and the late bloomer are fundamentally the same, and that late blooming is simply genius under conditions of market failure. What Galenson’s argument suggests is something else—that late bloomers bloom late because they simply aren’t much good until late in their careers.

"The game of life is hard to play. I'm gonna lose it anyway...."*

Suicides from financial crisis cause concern.

It's not yet clear there is a statistical link between suicides and the financial downturn since there is generally a two-year lag in national suicide figures. But historically, suicides increase in times of economic hardship. And the current financial crisis is already being called the worst since the Great Depression.

From the archives

Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.

The poem above was found among Vladimir Mayakovsky’s papers after his suicide on April 14, 1930. The middle section, with modest revisions, served as an epilogue to his suicide note. Yes, plagued by critics and disappointed in his personal relationships, the poet, who had criticized poet Serge Yesenin for committing suicide, took his own life: You and I, we are quits, and there is no point in listing mutual pains, sorrows, and hurts.

And so it goes.
______________________

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the popular press' claim of a link between suicide and the holidays is unfounded, a myth. "In fact," notes the CDC web site, "suicide rates in the United States are lowest in the winter and highest in the spring."

In other words, March and April are the cruelest months.

Indeed.

Twenty-five years ago, someone I loved committed suicide. No one talked about it then. No one talks about it now, really. I didn't learn that his was a death by suicide until a couple of years ago.

Because someone decided it was time to talk about it.

Better late than never, right?

Right.

Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for all U.S. men, maintains the CDC (although, interestingly, Reuters Health reports that heavy men may be less apt to commit suicide).

Folks spend an awful lot of time fussing over (or at least paying lip service to) healthy hearts and arteries and muscles and teeth. Oh, and the time and money they throw at appearances -- hair and skin and nails... and weight.

But do they talk, really talk about mental health with their primary care physicians? Do they invest, really invest in their emotional well-being?

In short, will they seek help if they need it? Will they even know they need help?

Because, as it turns out, "with help comes hope."

"Suicide is NEVER the answer," asserts Suicide.org. "Getting help is the answer."

Getting help is the answer.
Know the suicide warning signs. If you know someone who may be suicidal:

Listen to him with sincere concern for his feelings. Do not offer advice, but let him know he is not alone.

Share your feelings. If you feel that he may make a reckless decision, tell him that you are concerned. He needs to know that he is important to you and that you care.

Ask -- in a straightforward and caring manner -- if he has had suicidal thoughts or if he has made a suicide plan. If you feel you cannot ask the question, find someone who can.

If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.

The Mayo Clinic offers these additional suggestions.

And, if you're like me, someone who knows someone who died by suicide, you may find the collection of articles at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) helpful.

From the AFSP:

[Y]ou should know that 90 percent of all people who die by suicide have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder at the time of their death (most often depression or bipolar disorder). Just as people can die of heart disease or cancer, people can die as a consequence of mental illness. Try to bear in mind that suicide is almost always complicated, resulting from a combination of painful suffering, desperate hopelessness and underlying psychiatric illness.

Take care of yourselves.

Take care of one another.

* The title of today's entry is taken from the song "Suicide Is Painless" or, more familiarly, the theme song from "M.A.S.H."

From the archives:On parenting teenagers

1. Encourage their pursuit of a sport that challenges and exhausts them (e.g., cross country running, swimming, rigorous martial arts training).

2. Connect them with meaningful work and support their efforts.

3. At the very least, treat them with the same regard that you would tender an office associate. You would never, for example, shout at or disparage or lecture someone in an office scenario -- not even a subordinate, right? Well, approach the training of the young people in your life with -- at minimum -- the level of respect you would accord fellow employees.

4. Give them all of the food and rest they need when they need it.

5. Well before their teen years, subtly guide them toward an interest or two that you share (e.g., birding or carpentry or flying or whatever). This way, no matter what, you'll have something in common.

6. Even if they grow to be your friends, never forget that you are their parents.

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

Click to enlarge

On the nightstand(or close enough, anyway)

I'm actually a week late posting this list.

:: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz)
[Store That Must Not Be Named] Bucks helped fund this purchase.

:: Blindness (Jose Saramago)
Yes, movie trailers prompted me to revisit this.

:: Economics for Dummies (Sean Masaki Flynn)
It's a simple matter to figure out what prompted this purchase, no?

:: Crash Test (Hobson Brown)
This review copy arrived -- unbidden -- on my porch. I read one paragraph, and wondered, "Did the person who put this in the mail for me ever visit Mental multivitamin?"

:: The Incredible Shrinking Critic (Jami Bernard)
Currently bargain-priced at $6.49, this fun read blends memoir and weight loss tips, yielding an altogether satisfying snack of a book.

:: Gilgamesh the Hero (Geraldine McCaughrean)
The Misses M-mv recently reread this excellent retelling.

Don't mess with the science crowd.

Watch the donut, not the hole.

My friend, the little sparrow, flew close enough to see.

Written on a rainbow is this philosophy:

When you walk the streets, you will have no cares, if you walk the lines and not the squares. As you go through life, make this your goal: Watch the donut, not the hole.

The recommended daily allowance

The Life of Birds

If you appreciated...

my 3.04.2007 RDA and you share my dis-... that is, my concern about a vice presidential candidate "who is darned near good enough" (ARGH!), then you will enjoy this article immensely.

Granted, diagramming usually deals with written English. We don't expect speech to reach the heights of eloquence or even lucidity that the written word is capable of. In our world, politicians don't do much writing: Their preferred communication is the canned speech. But they're also forced, from time to time, to answer questions, and their answers often resemble the rambling nonsense, obfuscation, and grammatical insanity that many of us would produce when put on the spot.

Yet surely, more than most of us, politicians need to be able to think on their feet, to have a brain that works quickly and rationally under pressure. Do we really want to be led by someone who, when asked a straightforward question, flails around like an undergraduate who stayed up all night boozing instead of studying for the exam? [Emphasis added.]

Hell, no.

Sad news

Nick Reynolds, the founding member of the Kingston Trio, has died. He was seventy-five.

I learned to love the music of the Kingston Trio ("Tom Dooley," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "Worried Man," "Take Her Out of Pity," "M.T.A.") on Sundays when my mother went to work, and my father pulled out his favorite records, and my sister and I danced and sang and laughed with a man we knew best when the tail-lights disappeared around the corner and the music (Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, the Kingston Trio, and more) crooned, crashed, and cascaded in the tiny white house with the black shutters.

The Kingston Trio at Large

Added later: The LA Times compiled a list of YouTube links featuring the Kingston Trio.

The recommended daily allowance

The Day They Came to Arrest the Book (Nat Hentoff)

If, like us, you're "Celebrating the Freedom to Read," you will likely appreciate today's RDA.

I'm an optimist, too.

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.
— Stephen Hawking, in a 2001 interview with the Telegraph

I included that passage in my 1.25.2004 M-mv entry. Today I learned that Hawking is still trying to impress upon people the need "to boldly go where no one has gone before."

From "The final frontier" (Cosmos, September 24):

There will be those who argue that it would be better to spend our money solving the problems of this planet, like climate change and pollution, rather than wasting it on a possibly fruitless search for a new planet. I am not denying the importance of fighting climate change and global warming, but we can do that and still spare a quarter of a per cent of world GDP for space. Isn't our future worth a quarter of percent?

Oh, happy, happy day!

The first of our dark-eyed junco friends has returned!

A few related entries
■ Year of the Dark-Eyed Junco (1.31.2007)

■ They returned. (9.24.2006)

■ Dark-eyed junco (1.07.2005)

■ Backyard birding
We've made several additions to our backyard list over the last few weeks: Yellow Warbler, Pine Siskin, Wood Thrush, and Eastern Bluebird. (The last was, in fact, the mystery bird featured in this entry. While M. provided the link that clinched the identification, several readers did maintain that it was an Eastern Bluebird "between plumages," as it were. Thank you to all of you who replied.)

"May something go always unharvested!"

Unharvested
by Robert Frost

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what has made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.