From the archives: Revealing

This entry first ran on 9.08.2005.

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, [more than] 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?

And now I am forty-five.

You know what? I haven't done it all right, but I've done all right. I continue to maintain that it's fundamentally about making choices that enliven one's selfhood... and not worrying about what everyone else thinks.

At least not much.

Heh, heh, heh.

Happy birthday to me.

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

On the nightstand

Earlier this year, inspired in no small part by the format of Nick Hornby's Believer magazine column, I tinkered with my presentation of the (mostly) monthly "On the nightstand" feature -- adding headings for books acquired and read, as well as making the notable additions of review copies received and books borrowed from the library.

Books read
■ A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers (Elaine Showalter)
Brilliant. I particularly appreciated the insights into Willa Cather, Flannery O'Connor, and Shirley Jackson.

■ The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Mikita Brottman)
SFP's link to a Newsweek piece that mentioned this book prompted me to pick it up a week or two ago. The provocative title and cover overtly link reading to that other solitary vice, and Brottman's case is not entirely without merit. Moderation, she suggests. Moderation and a lot less snobbery.

p. 83
There are lots of reasons why people believe in books you "ought" to read, but I suspect most of them come down to intellectual insecurity, snobbery, residual class anxieties, egotism, and a kind of superstitious folklore rooted in tradition and nationalism, reinforced by cultural and academic turf wars, and played out in school and college curricula.

■ The Pursuit of the Perfect (Tal Ben-Shahar)
A review copy. Essentially, Ben-Shahar (who also wrote Happier) defines perfectionism and describes how to overcome perfectionist tendencies. Many parent-teachers cop to a wide streak of perfectionism -- and all, good and bad, that entails. This simple (but not condescending) book may reconcile them to "good enough." For a sample of the author's style, read the articles collected here.

■ Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary (Pamela Dean) *
Speaking of SFP... I picked up JG&R after reading this entry of hers.

Three years ago.

So, yeah.

I stockpile. Heh, heh, heh.

■ If I Stay (Gayle Forman)
A solid YA novel that featured -- wonder of wonders -- a functional, loving family.

* Denotes "partially read" books

Notable acquisitions
■ Columbine (Dave Cullen)
A birthday gift from Miss M-Mv(ii). Mr. helped her select it from my wishlist, and it arrived, gift-wrapped, from Amazon today. The enclosed card read, "Hiya. Happy birthday! I love you so much. Love, (Name)." Hiya. Heh, heh, heh. My kids slay me.

■ The Armchair Birder (John Yow)
A birthday gift from Miss M-mv(i). Again, Mr. helped her select it, and it arrived today. Her card read, "Happy Birthday, Dear Mother! I love you so. Love, (Name)." Anything you needed to know about how my daughters see the world and interact with it can probably be surmised from those two notes.

■ The Girl Who Played with Fire (Stieg Larsson)
The first book in this trilogy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, made my list of particularly memorable books of 2008. (Another related entry here.) The second book will be released here in the States in mid-summer, but it's already been released elsewhere. Let me just say: I ♥ Amazon's third-party sellers' program!

■ Love as Always, Kurt: Vonnegut as I Knew Him (Loree Rackstraw)
I've expressed my abiding affection for Vonnegut before.

■ If I Stay (Gayle Forman)


Books borrowed
■ A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers (Elaine Showalter)

■ The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Mikita Brottman)


Review copies received
■ The Pursuit of the Perfect (Tal Ben-Shahar)

"Can you imagine?"

From the Mental Floss blog (November 17, 2008): The Quick 10: 10 Famous Homeschooled People.

CNN ran the article yesterday, as if it were fresh, but the piece is, what, six months old?

Anyway, pass it along to family members and fellow parent-teachers.

Loving Will

Happy birthday, Mr. Shakespeare! (Whoever you are.)

For a complete Bardolatry experience, visit the archive.
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"Shakespeare is hard," asserts Fintan O'Toole in his book of the same title, "but so is life, and so long as you can see that there's a lot of life in Shakespeare, then the effort begins to make sense."

Now, I adore O'Toole's provocative, irreverent take on the bard, but I also have some fairly strong convictions about the "Shakespeare is, well, pretty easy, actually" camp.

At summer sessions for teachers, Peggy O'Brien, Ph.D., formerly of the Teaching Shakespeare Institute (Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.), would distribute a "Shakespeare Laundry List" to her students. Top on the list? "Everyone — all levels of society — went to see Shakespeare's plays. There weren't many other forms of entertainment... People went to the bear-baiting ring for a thrill, they went to a public execution of two — and they went to the theatre."

Bear-baiting. An execution or two. The theater. Anyone seeing, oh, I don't know, horse-racing, Court TV, and the theater? (And that's theater with an "er," please; "re" is an affectation, and I'll bet O'Brien knew it, but Ph.D.s, well... let's just say they come with their own academic baggage.) The point is that it was the "beloved groundlings" to whom Shakespeare and company played. To us. The Mountain Dew-swigging, overalls-wearing, pun-loving, regular folk.

Shakespeare can be hard, yeah. But he needn't be. Honestly, is there any doubt about his message in this passage from As You Like It, for example:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

You've got it — the seven stages of man.
________________________

Seventh on O'Brien's "Laundry List" is a much uttered rarely heeded bit o' wisdom: "Reading Shakespeare is hard. [His] plays were written to be performed — acted and seen on a stage."

Ayup. It is cold water on... okay, you're with me... to have Mrs. Grimm the English teacher pass out a musty copy of Julius Caesar or Macbeth and say, "Read Act I. Be ready for a quiz tomorrow."

*SHUDDER*

With all of the productions now available on DVD and video, why would any teacher turn her students loose without a hint of what the beloved groundlings once knew (i.e., that Shakespeare's play must be seen and heard)? If you're wondering, by the way, Norrie Epstein's The Friendly Shakespeare is a good place to begin for viewing recommendations because there is no comparison between, say, Mel Gibson's Hamlet and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.
________________________

In The Shakespeare Book of Lists, Michael LoMonico notes, "Unlike many, I didn't fall in love with Shakespeare in high school or college. No, my passion began some 30 years ago, when I first heard lines from Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello coming from the mouths of my students."

Ditto, Michael.

I took the requisite courses, both undergrad and grad. I attended if not acclaimed then certainly decent productions of the plays, oh, yes. I appreciated Shakespeare, for sure. But I didn't fall in love until my son decided that this was the "coolest" writing he had heard in his then eleven years:

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

And when my daughters dressed their dolls as a princesses and their brother's long forgotten G.I. Joes as kings and enacted the wooing scene from Henry V ("O Kate! Nice customs curtsey to great kings"), I made a long-term commitment to ol' Bill.

And here we are. Writing about him again. Hoping someone else will see what we see: That there's something in Shakespeare's plays for all of us. And asserting that, no, Fintan, Shakespeare isn't all that hard; at least, he doesn't have to be. Visit the Folger Shakespeare Library site. It's not about Shakespeare's inaccessibility, is it?
________________________

Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is a frequently consulted book in our house, so much so that my son has ordered his own copy. That said, let me hastily add that I don't think our tastes are necessarily "snobbish" (yeah, there's that word again) or even particularly high-brow. Remember? Mountain Dew? Overalls? Beloved groundlings? But Bloom's love of Shakespeare is heady stuff, his fervor infectious:

Bardolatry, the worship of Shakespeare, ought to be even more a secular religion than it already is. The plays remain the outward limit of human achievement: aesthetically, cognitively, in certain ways morally, even spiritually. They abide beyond the end of the mind's reach; we cannot catch up to them. Shakespeare will go on explaining us, in part because he invented us....

Amen.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this,—and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend;
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call:
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
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The material in this post was culled from our 4.4.2004 RDA.

Hermit thrush

We added a new bird friend to our backyard and life lists today. (More birding posts here.)

From the archives:Camera-shy?

Do you avoid the camera because you're not as thin or young or stylish as you once were?

I did.

Boy, was I ever so much younger, thinner, and more stylish twenty-five years ago than I am now!

Aside... Although I must say, I have awesome (for me) hair now. No, really. When I was young (thin and stylish), I always talked about growing my hair out, but I always ended up perming it (the 80s) or cropping it close (the 90s). Now, though, it's a bob, thicker than genetically-predisposed fine/thin hair has any right to be, and remarkably bright. I don't color it, so you can find the occasional silver "pony" hair, but it's nice hair. I like it a lot.

And I rather like my "cheaters," too. I always get a nice frame, and I like the way I look in glasses -- although I am glad I didn't need them when I was younger.

Anyway... In 1996, I became a fulltime at-home parent. And unlike the first go-'round in the late 80s and early 90s, I now had two young people to take care of and no California-beautiful culture to inspire me to hit the health club every day.

And then I became pregnant again.

And so it goes.

This a familiar story to many women.

We grow older.
We -- some of us -- grow (a bit) thicker.
We -- some of us -- fall (a bit) off the fashion wagon.

For a while, I avoided photos. I had never loved sitting still for the camera, anyway, so this didn't represent a big change (although my capacious behind certainly did -- heh, heh, heh). But one day, my husband bemoaned the fact that we only had a handful of photos of the two of us and none of just me.

And I resolved that this was how my family knew me.
And saw me.
And loved me.

Only one of them had ever known me when my waist was (yes, honestly, and truly) just under twenty-one inches. And he, for all appearances and actions and accounts was (is!) still reliably loving and wildly in love with me.

So bring on the cameras! Bring them on! Take a photo of my grinning face. Get one of me painting with my daughters! Cleaning the yards with my son! Hugging the man I have loved for more than twenty-five years!

Heck, publish a full-body shot of me on the trails of [insert name of natural setting here] -- twice! -- in the [insert name of newspaper here]. And I will clip it to send to friends. I will link it to an email message for family.

Yeah, my waist and bottom are larger, and I haven't donned a pair of heels and hose since... oh, a very long time.

But this is me now. If I were to wait for "me then," life would halt. And that would be a very poor plan, indeed. So I say:

Thank you for thinking I am worth capturing an image of.
Thank you for remembering me.
Thank you for being in my life.

*CLICK* *FLASH*

Look at me.

I'm happy.
___________________________

And now it's your turn, folks. Comb your hair. Put on your favorite scarf or shirt or whatever. Brush your teeth. And smile! Someone wants to take your picture.

This entry first ran 9.27.2007. I've updated the photo for this repost.

"[A]part from anything else, science is the greatest achievement of human history so far."

The point here is not about making more scientists necessarily, but making more people who are competent to observe what's happening in science, to be interested in reading about it, to keep abreast of developments, to be excited by what is happening in science. And as responsible and informed citizens of this world of ours, to be part of the discussion about what we should and shouldn't do with our science.

The big question in this respect is, how are we going to reorganize science education in school and how are we going to encourage more people to take more interest in science? And, indeed, to encourage more scientists to talk to the public about what they're doing in science and what they are thinking about. So the big question for me here is, how are we going to make science, which belongs to everybody, which is important to everybody, available to everybody so that everybody can be a party, in one way or another — whether as a spectator or as a participant — in this enormous adventure.

~ A.C. Grayling, "Pressing Questions for Our Century" (Edge video feature), Ideas That Matter

Related M-mv entries
■ The recommended daily allowance (2.10.2006)
■ The recommended daily allowance (6.22.2006)
■ Liberation from such tyrannies of belief (11.23.2007)

The recommended daily allowance

Watch it now...

or buy the DVD (because the commentary is as brilliant as the show itself).

Dr. Horrible: The fish rots from the head, so they say. So my thinking is, why not cut off the head?
Penny: Of the human race?
Dr. Horrible: It's not a perfect metaphor.

The recommended daily allowance

Låt Den Rätte Komma In (Let the Right One In)

Quite possibly the best horror film since The Orphanage. (Related entry here.)

Ebert's review of Let the Right One In can be found here.

Typography revisited

This entry inspired a lot of email, so I'm guessing that my correspondents will probably appreciate an article on, yes, Comic Sans.

From "Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will" (WSJ, April 17, 2009):

Typefaces convey meaning, typographers say. Helvetica is an industry standard, plain and reliable. Times New Roman is classic. Depending on your point of view, Comic Sans is fun, breezy, silly or vulgar and lazy. It can be "analogous to showing up for a black-tie event in a clown costume," warns the Ban Comic Sans movement's manifesto. The font's original name was Comic Book, but Mr. Connare thought that didn't sound like a font name. He used Sans (short for sans-serif) because most of the lettering, except for the uppercase I, doesn't have serifs, the small features at the end of strokes.

Wow.

From yesterday's WSJ: Justice Stevens Renders an Opinion on Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays.

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

Speaking of the proliferation of social network tools...

Oprah joined Twitter.

My thought on this? Time for the "The Great American Tweet Off."

From the worth-repeating files, regarding TV Turnoff Week

This entry first ran 4.19.2008.

I thought it was that time again...
Time for TV Turnoff, that is, an event that I had maligned for four consecutive years. But today I clicked over from last year's entry and discovered that the TV Turnoff Network has morphed into the Center for Screen-Time Awareness, which advocates the reduction of, well, screen-time and the encouragement of "real experiences with real people in real time." *

Now that's an idea I can embrace.

Screen-time awareness
Back in November [2007], I began scrutinizing my use of one of the greatest resources I have -- time. As many of you know, I'm a great proponent of "Making time," but to achieve my professional goals (to say nothing of a few personal goals, including the bird biology course), what I really needed to do was clear all of the tasks and activities from my schedule that took more time than they were worth.

So I did.

You know, of course, where I'm headed with this: Many of the tasks I identified as taking more time than they were worth were related to the computer.

Since then, my internet travels have been confined primarily to (1) destinations that inform my work and/or my studies and (2) a handful of blogs, most of which I have repeatedly recommended (e.g., here and here). Trimming my virtual itinerary has had the added benefit of eliminating nearly all of the writing I was, quite literally, giving away -- another time-saver.

I also identified and eliminated less apparent time-wasters. For example, after the winter holiday, I deleted M-mv's site meters. Really, why do I need to know how M-mv's readers arrive here? I already know the average number of daily readers. When that mirror (the meter) was hanging on the wall, I felt compelled -- even obligated -- to look and, too often, to follow the links it reflected. Now I don't.

These days, I check email far less frequently. My work is important, yes, but it's not, like, oh, say, the search for the "God particle", right? I get back to the client within twenty-four hours. Look, I must be doing something right: The checks keep arriving.

Turn off... or at least turn away
The irony is not lost on me: I sound a bit like a former smoker in this post, yet for four years I relied on a seemingly unrelated aside about smoking laws to describe my disgust with the zealotry surrounding TV Turnoff. Perhaps what irritated me most about the hoses aimed at the Great American Campfire was that they had targeted the wrong fire -- and even the wrong fire-starters.

Insert shrug.

Clearly, many screens compete for our attention: televisions, yes, but also monitors at the Jewel checkout, cell phones (instant-messaging), Blackberries [and iPhones/iPods], gaming systems, computers, etc. [More, social networking "tools" have proliferated, enabling anyone with a keyboard to advise the world of his or her every (boring) move and (vapid) thought.]

I certainly won't advocate a week-long screen fast, but I don't think any harm can come of suggesting that a periodic evaluation of our time management, including an earnest evaluation of the amount of time we spend in the company of screens rather than faces, is, quite simply, a good idea. If some people require an event to remind them to do this, well, fine. The event begins Monday, April 20.
___________________________

* I understand that "real people" sit at keyboards. I'm one of 'em. And Mr. M-mv and I earn our living in screen-dependent (i.e., computer- and information systems-based) industries. I'm not about to suggest that what we do isn't "real."But I am also one who has repeatedly distinguished between, for example, the virtual livingroom and the real livingroom. Is there any question as to which one we will long for [Cliché alert!] on our deathbeds?

Turn away. Turn off. Whatever. Just remember: Life is short.

Spend it in ways that enliven your selfhood.

"You do not need an iPod. Memorize poetry instead."

From "Got Poetry?" (NYT, April 5, 2009):

The grandest claim for memorizing poetry is made by Clive James, himself a formidable repository of memorized verse. In his book “Cultural Amnesia,” James declares that “the future of the humanities as a common possession depends on the restoration of a simple, single ideal: getting poetry by heart.” A noble sentiment. I just wish that James had given us some reason for thinking it was true.

I don’t have one myself, but I hope that I have at least dispelled three myths.

Myth No. 1: Poetry is painful to memorize. It is not at all painful. Just do a line or two a day.

Myth No. 2: There isn’t enough room in your memory to store a lot of poetry. Bad analogy. Memory is a muscle, not a quart jar.

Myth No. 3: Everyone needs an iPod. You do not need an iPod. Memorize poetry instead.

Cultural Amnesia (Clive James)

Related entries
■ On the nightstand (5.13.2007)
■ April is National Poetry Month (4.02.2009)
■ Poem in Your Pocket (4.06.2009)

“I am freerand less terrified than you are.”

From "Class Dismissed" (The Atlantic, March 2009):

Fussell believed in an escape pod from this tyranny of classhood: residence in a special American psycho-emotional space called “category X.” (Fussell borrowed his notion from Matthew Arnold’s analysis of the three British classes—even a century earlier, Arnold was describing this fourth set of “aliens.”) Fussell’s Xs were essentially bohemians, the young people who flocked to cities in search of “art,” “writing,” and “creative work,” ideally without a supervisor. Xs disregarded authority; they dressed down on every occasion; they drank no-name liquor (“Beefeater Gin and Cutty Sark Scotch betray the credulous victim of advertising, and hence the middle class”); they wore moccasins and down vests (in 1983, Fussell considered L.L.Bean and Lands’ End natural X clothiers); they carelessly threw out, unread, their college alumni magazines.

Related entries here and here.

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System
(Paul Fussell)

Three years ago, I received the following note in response to this entry:

Dear Gentle Blogger, I recall that you are fond of sock monkeys..? If I recall correctly, Barnes and Noble has a child's sock monkey counting book, and Target, I think, has sock monkey sheets in newest spate of ads.

Ok, Roe and Garry? I don't understand the attraction to someone with your brain power. NPR??

Thank you, your fan, C[.]

I didn't reply then, and I don't plan to say much now... beyond this: Aren't most of us are a blend of competing and seemingly opposing interests? A composite of the noble and the silly? I know that I am a riot of anomalous pursuits: Shakespeare and sock monkeys, dialectic and disco demolition, fresh flowers and fast food, "All Things Considered" and, yes, Garry Meier.

And so it goes.

Anyway...

For the Garry Meier fans among M-mv's readership (and I know there are a few), I offer the following.

Aside: Am I the only one who thinks it odd that C. gave me a pass on sock monkeys but not on entertaining talk radio? Heh, heh, heh.

"Beauty is nothing without brains."

In honor of National Library Week...

"The greatest seducer in the world"

Girl Detective sent me this link from Sunday's issue of the Guardian: "France falls in love with Hugh Laurie, 'the greatest seducer in the world'."

No wonder France adores him, said Valérie Hurier, television editor at Télérama magazine. "He is so cynical and politically incorrect. He's misanthropic and he breaks with the orthodox rules, has no time for following protocol and plays with laws, but all for a noble aim. For all that, we absolutely love him."

By the way, Master M-mv read The Gun Seller last summer or the summer before and loved it.

Horizontal triptych: Crows

Reading, life. Life, reading.

In response to this post, S. wrote:

Oh my. Some of those quotations in your chapbook entry really resonate for me. I've already checked the library catalog and am happy there's a copy on the shelf waiting for me.

As I wrote in my reply, the quotations resonated with me, too.

In fact, I finished Who Do You Think You Are? (Alyse Myers) compelled to recommend it on M-mv. But my experience reading this often painfully honest memoir reminded me afresh how intensely personal the reading life is. We bring to our books our life history, our sense of self, and our emotional landscape. How could it not be true that a book may be wonderful (or memorable or compulsively readable or whatever) for one reader and not necessarily for another?

Related aside
I once argued (somewhat unsuccessfully, I confess) that what defines a classic is its ability to transcend a reader's biography. In other words, Hamlet is a classic because it sees beyond what the reader's life story comprises and explores (in fact, defines) the fundamental -- the universal -- nature of being human. Ditto, Holden. Ditto, Huck. Ditto, Homer. Ditto, Pip. And so on. Where I went awry in my argument, apparently (apart from my invocation of Holden in the same paper as Hamlet), is the suggestion that it follows from this definition of a classic that it would not be that difficult to spot "new" classics. My English professor would not, could not allow that such a beast existed.

Heh, heh, heh.

Imagine that. The canon is fixed. No new admits.

Anyway.

The recommended daily allowance
Myers' memoir is not, of course, a classic, not even a new classic, but it reached me where I live -- it rubbed up against my personal history, my sense of self, my emotional landscape. And because it did, I have recommended it. I know that M-mv's readers, thinkers, and autodidacts understand that what resonates with me -- and S., in this case -- may not, in fact, need not, resonate with them. That is intensely personal nature of the reading life, after all.

Read. Think. Learn. Live.

Who Do You Think You Are? (Alyse Myers)

Yeah, I can be a bit of a sap.

This will take seven minutes and seven seconds of your time. I think some of you might really enjoy it. I did.

Related item added later
Should American Idol let the over-30s in?

On the nightstand

Books read
■ Admission (Jean Hanff Korelitz)
Picked up after reading EW's review.
Note: The protagonist responds "tersely" on page 34, page 37, and page 39, an excessive amount of teeth-gnashing that represents a distraction to discerning readers and/or professional editors, both of whom like their dialogue served sans adjectival rejoinders (let alone repetitive adjectival rejoinders).

■ The Glister (John Burnside)
Recommended.

■ Who Do You Think You Are? (Alyse Myers)
A review copy. Chapbook entry here.

■ Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion (Al Seckel)
For more about this book, visit the author's website, which serves to "augment and enhance" the material presented in the text.

■ Graphic Works of Max Klinger
Yes, of course. Inspired by our recent trip. Related entries here and here.

Notable acquisitions
■ Admission (Jean Hanff Korelitz)

■ Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese)
A birthday gift from Aunt M-mv.

■ Alex & Me (Irene M. Pepperberg)
Another birthday gift from Aunt M-mv.

Books borrowed
■ Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion (Al Seckel)

■ Graphic Works of Max Klinger

Review copies received
■ Who Do You Think You Are? (Alyse Myers)

Word!Signs at the Illinois Railway Museum

Stop. Look. Listen.
Words to live by. Not unlike: Read. Think. Learn.

Do not... what?!?
I'm having an Inigo Montoya moment: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

STOP Men at Work
Is it, "Stop! Men at work!" (As in, Look! Can you believe it?!) Or is it, "Stop men at work." (As in, Poor things. They need a break. Stop them from working.)

Sleeping Car
A car that sleeps? Or a car in which one sleeps?

You decide. Hey, and if you live in the Chicagoland area, don't miss the Illinois Train Museum.

Chapbook entry

Who Do You Think You Are? (Alyse Myers)

"I didn't like my mother," Alyse Myers baldly explains in the prologue to her memoir, "and I certainly didn't love her." She continues, "I know she didn't like me either. I can't say whether she loved me, as I don't remember her ever telling me so." With these unadorned declarations, this review copy hooked me in its first two paragraphs, and I finished it, swallowed it whole, the day it arrived.

No matter how you feel about your relationship with your own mother -- or your daughters, for that matter -- you, too, will likely find Myers' narrative compelling... and memorable.

p. 65
School is what saved me during those years. It was the one place I could go where I didn't have to hear the two of them fighting. I couldn't wait to get up each morning and go to class and forget about my life at home. But it wasn't always easy to leave the house -- and get to school -- on time.

p. 113
Reading was my escape into another place. As soon as I finished one book, I started another. I would eat dinner with a book on my lap, putting my fork down to turn the page. I spent hours in the school library and the public library a few blocks from our apartment building. I read everything the librarians recommended, and I would read the books I loved over and over so I wouldn't forget them. I would also read anything my mother was reading -- magazines like Reader's Digest, or books she kept hidden in her pocketbook, like Peyton Place or Valley of the Dolls. At night, I would take those books out of her bag and read them either in the bathroom or under the covers with the flashlight I took from the junk drawer in the kitchen and kept hidden under my bed. In the morning, I would sneak them back in her bag so she wouldn't know I had taken them. I was always dying to ask her to explain some of the things in the books that I didn't understand. But I knew she wouldn't tell me. Books were where I learned about the places I wanted to go and people I wanted to meet. And what I wanted that I didn't have.

My mother was always telling me to stop reading, to live in the real world. To go play with my sisters. Or watch TV. Put that book down already, she would tell me. All that reading would ruin my eyes, she would warn.

"And you won't look good in glasses," she would add.

p. 170
I had always promised myself I wouldn't have the same kind of marriage my mother had. That no matter what, I would not be with a man who couldn't love me and take care of me the way I needed and wanted to be loved and cared for. I always felt sorry for my mother. After my father died, she died a little bit, too.

p. 177
After I was married, my mother and I settled into a new kind of relationship. We didn't talk about the past -- we talked about the now. What my husband and I were doing that weekend. Where we would be going on vacation. What she was having for dinner. Nothing important, but it was civil. And I was glad.

p. 221
Later, my husband asked me why my relationship with my mother was so different from that of my sisters.

They had a different mother, I told him. They didn't see what I saw, they didn't know what I knew, I tried to explain to him. She treated me differently than she treated them. I wasn't sure he understood. I wasn't sure I did, either.

From "A Conversation with Alyse Myers":
I think the theme of her book would be "I did the best I could." My mother was handed a tough life -- and for whatever reason she just didn't know how to use her difficulties as an impetus to do better. In many ways, she gave up. On everything. I wish I knew then what I know now.

From later in that interview:
I would not have been able to write this book if either of my parents were still alive. It would have been seen as the ultimate betrayal. We were not the kind of family that spoke about our feelings. We were very much a behind-the-closed door family. In a funny way, I also think the two of them would have been surprised to know that I knew and saw so much.

And this:
The best advice I can give to anyone who feels trapped in a dysfunctional family is to find something you're passionate about -- and focus on it until everything else is blocked out. Also, surround yourself with smart and loving people. If you don't have them at home, you must find them outside in order to stay positive about yourself and the future. I worked hard to create the life I wanted, and I wouldn't give up. I also did my best not to let my mother know how much she bothered me -- that was my protection, too.

From the archives:Happy Good Friday!

Every year of my seven-year working relationship with the man whose initial signature was "JOB," he greeted me such on this day in the Triduum. The first time it staggered me. Happy Good Friday? Even in my child-like understanding of the Roman Catholic tradition, I couldn't reconcile "Happy" with "Good Friday."

"It's the beginning of the greatest mystery of our faith," he explained. "He dies, but we know how the story ends. He rises. It is a celebration, the greatest celebration in our tradition. Happy Good Friday."

Happy Good Friday.

[Mrs. M-mv now issues an advisory that some regular readers may wish to click away.]

Once upon a time ago...
I was a lector in one of the city's large Catholic parishes. I am a great reader-aloud (this is not self-congratulation, just a statement about one of my skills), and the stories on the liturgical calendar are among the greatest ever told, aren't they? Whether you believe or not, the stories inspire awe. And it is this reader's opinion that they should not be thundered or mumbled or chanted. The stories simply must be told. Read. With expression, not affectation. Oh, and I loved sharing those stories as much as I love reading aloud to my own children.

It happened, then, that the Triduum schedule was drafted. The liturgical director "scripted" the Passion readings for the evening Good Friday mass, breaking them into parts that five lectors would share. I was one of the lectors asked to read.

When I took my place at the lectern for the third time that Good Friday evening, it was to read the passages concerning Christ's crucifixion and death.

Regular M-mv readers (those who have not already clicked away) know that I am the sort of writer or storyteller who affects no false drama -- I laugh when it's funny, cry when it's sad. There can be no pretense. Artificiality is the death of narrative. Heck, it's the slow death of feeling, of everything, isn't it?

So it happened that, arriving at the sentences in which Jesus acknowledges his mother, my throat closed with tears, and that at "Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit," I was reading through tears. Usually one to look my fellow parishioners in the eye while lectoring, I simply couldn't see anymore. I chose, then, to keep looking at the page. I can't tell you what I thought or observed in the long moment that followed my last word and my move away from the lectern to take my place among the other lectors. I knew only that these were among the most profound passages in perhaps the greatest narrative ever written, and that they overcame me. (Later, I realized that, believer or no, if these words do not arouse in one overwhelming emotion, then one simply isn't human.)

I stood with the other lectors and, as they say, collected myself. Writers know that these moments arrange themselves and occur far more quickly than we can possibly describe. As regular awareness returned to me, though, I realized that silence was an immense roar in my ears. That "what comes next" had not begun, seemed unlikely to begin. That the hundreds of people crowded into that large, darkened church, the priests on the altar, the Eucharistic ministers behind me... we were, all of us, spellbound.

Of course, at some point, the liturgy did continue, in its power and the promise of hope and renewal.

But, for a few moments, we were, that Good Friday night, aware of terrible sorrow, the ineffable sadness that precedes a renewal or realization of a hopeful promise.
_______________

What wise man said that we must look at Christ and not Christians because Christians disappoint but Jesus himself never does? If we were spellbound, then the spell did not last nearly long enough. Many parishioners felt compelled to talk with me afterward, about how this was the first time they had actually heard the words, felt them, been moved by them. A hundred, two hundred, and more thank-yous and hugs and tears. My legendary personal space issues had been lifted from me for this one evening, and I began to understand the meaning of "a community of faith."

On the Monday after Easter, however, I learned that a young new priest was disturbed by the "drama" of the Good Friday liturgical celebration and was vehemently recommending a more traditional approach -- notably a "straight read-through" delivered by priests or deacons, not members of the lay ministry.

My faith is usually strong, but my religion? A fragile thing in a glass menagerie.

It shattered that day.

Christ is in my heart, I think, in the hearts of anyone who can even begin to sense the enormity of his narrative. And today, he acknowledges his mother, giving her to his trusted friend. And today, he dies. Again. Because it is only in the repetition of the narrative that we humans. get. it. He will die every year. And he will be born every year.

It's a story that perhaps mothers see most clearly.

And it makes us weep.

And that's not drama, you foolish priest.

It's life. And, perhaps, the promise of something beyond it.

Happy Good Friday.

Tenderhearted

After our dental appointments, Master M-mv suggested we go to Red Lobster for a late lunch / early dinner. Mr. M-mv and I were fine with that, as were the Misses. We arrived during a lull and were shown right to a table. The food was fine; the service was excellent. As we were leaving the restaurant, I gestured to the tank of lobsters.

"Look! They're all backed into the corners. What are they thinking? 'Hey! I'm backed into the corner. No one can see me now. You can't eat me if you can't see me.'"

Miss M-mv(i) replied in a small voice, "So it's true? People really do eat them? They're not just... mascots or something?"

"Mascots? No, babe. They really do..." I let my sentence die unfinished because my tenderheart's eyes were spilling over, even as she protested, "It's okay. It's silly, I know. Let's get out of here."

(Of course, it would have been imprudent to recite the ingredient list for Ultimate Fondue (an appetizer she had downed with the lip-smacking relish of which only the slim and fit are capable) just then.

So we refrained.)

M&Ms and punk rock

Sure, if your kids prefer their state capitals served up "Turkey in the Straw"-style, stick with the Animaniacs. But if they like their memorization with a side of chocolate and a dash of punk, give Jeff Ruby's song a shot.

"How do you solve a problem like Maria?"

Ruim 200 dansers infiltreerden in het Antwerpse Centraal Station tussen de reizigers. Wanneer de tonen van "The Sound of Music" door de luidsprekers klinken, schieten ze in actie.

Courtesy of Google Translate:
Over 200 dancers infiltrated in the Antwerp Central Station between the passengers. When the tones of "The Sound of Music" by the speakers sound, shoot them in action.

Courtesy of Babel Fish:
More than 200 dancers infiltrated in the Antwerp central station between the travellers. When the tones of " The Sound or Music" by the loudspeakers, shoot they sound in action.

Can you say, Lost in translation?

Well, here's the story. In English.

On March 23, the folks at Central Station, Antwerp, Belgium, were captivated by the performance of two hundred dancers, swinging and stepping to "Do-Re-Mi." The seemingly spontaneous display was actually a staged promotion for "In Search of Maria," a Dutch television version of a popular BBC program.

Trust me. Just go watch the video.

As I shared in my National Poetry Month entry, I have again taken the poem-in-pocket idea a step further by choosing a different poem for each day of the month. While a daily chronicle of my selections might interest some, blogging without obligation means I will likely miss a few days. Not a problem: Most of the selections will probably be taken from Good Poems. From Garrison Keillor's introduction to that volume:

What makes Kumin and Sexton matter, and make all good poems matter, is that they offer a truer account than what we're used to getting. They surprise us with clear pictures of the familiar. The soft arc of an afternoon in a few lines. Poems that make us love this gaudy, mother-scented, mud-bedaubed language of ours. A cunning low tongue, English, with its rich vocabulary of slander and concupiscence and sport, its fine Latin overlay and French bric-a-brac, and when someone speaks poetry in it, it stirs our little monolingual hearts.

The love of language is the love of truth, and this brings one into conflict with authority, since power employs deceit and is so fond of it....

It is probably no surprise that I am returning to familiar rhythms: The poem in my pocket on April 5, 2008, was "A Ritual to Read to Each Other" by William Stafford. A year later, I have tucked this deceptively simple verse into my overalls pocket again.

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

The complete poem can be found here.

Last year, after I posted this poem-in-pocket, Margaret sent the following links:

■ The Stafford Trail: Stafford's poems have been placed in plaques along the Methow River in the Cascade Mountains by the National Park Service.

■ Selected William Stafford Poetry: A collection of poems that appeared in previous issues of the Friends of William Stafford Newsletter.

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

Fine Art Friday

The Rock, 1944-48
Peter Blume, American, born Russia (present-day Belarus), 1906-1992

From the Art Institute:

The Rock was commissioned in 1939 by the Edgar Kaufmann family and intended for their Frank Lloyd Wright–designed home, Falling Water, in Bear Run, Pennsylvania. Peter Blume labored for years to complete the work. The construction of Falling Water can be seen on the left side of the composition; conversely, the right side depicts a building being destroyed, possibly referring to the demolition of an existing house in order to build Falling Water. The rock sits elevated in the center of the picture, while beneath it the earth has been dug away, leaving the boulder in a precarious position. Although Falling Water may symbolize man and nature existing in harmony, The Rock might possibly suggest man’s destruction of nature for his own gain.

Note: To see the works featured in the Fine Art Friday entries, you must click on the links that are provided. Chosen for its authority and/or clarity, each image link represents one of the most suitable of the many images of a particular work currently available on the web. The goal is to direct M-mv readers to an image that will offer sufficient detail -- enough to convey some sense of the work's appeal. Each Fine Art Friday also includes at least one link to an article or web item about the artist.

The king doesn't need to be powerful to be important.

Wise words, eh? Heh, heh, heh.

Despite my best plans, the Misses and I never really took to chess in the same way Mr. M-mv and Master did. A small article in the Sun-Times recently reawakened my interest, though, and the Misses and I are now making our way through the first book of the Think Like a King program. Over the weekend, as I learned about kings (the last piece described before heading into chess notation), the quote about power and importance captured my imagination.

The king doesn't need to be powerful to be important.

It sounds like a philosophical challenge, doesn't it?

Garry Meier got the WGN gig!

News items here, here, and here.

Bumped up one last time:April is National Poetry Month!

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

~ from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot
_________________________

The Academy of American Poets poster promoting the 2009 National Poetry Month features Eliot's query -- "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?" I've expressed before how much I love the idea of "the cruelest month" recast as a celebration of verse, so, yes, I appreciate the synchronicity at work here.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Heh, heh, heh.

As I've said several times before, you don't need a plan or a permission slip (or even a National Poetry Month) to enjoy poetry with your children. 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.

* From the poem "Dream Variations" by Langston Hughes

A selection of M-mv poetry entries
■ "I’m not having a good light here at all." (1.22.2009)
■ Poem in Your Pocket Day (4.17.2008)
■ The recommended daily allowance (12.20.2006)
■ Russian lit (3.12.2006)
■ "Not waving but drowning" (2.19.2006)
■ "The Gift Outright" (1.20.2006)
■ Czeslaw Milosz (12.02.2005)
■ Stopping by woods on a snowy evening (11.25.2004)

Poem in Your Pocket Day
On April 30, celebrate the second national Poem In Your Pocket Day! Choose a favorite poem and carry it with you to share with family, friends, colleagues... even strangers on the el train.

From the Academy:

Poems have been stowed in pockets in a variety of ways, from the commonplace books of the Renaissance to the pocket-sized publications for Army soldiers in World War II.

Last year, I decided to carry a poem in my pocket each day of National Poetry Month, and I posted snippets of several of my selections. I plan to do the same thing this April, and the Misses will be joining me this time. I heartily invite you to do the same.

At some point, I'll post a list of favorites from among the many poetry books on our shelves. Until then, though, don't miss this one (first mentioned in our 8.26.2006 "On the nightstand") or this one (found in "Writing warm-up" from 3.26.2006). I found many of last year's poem-a-day selections in these wonderful volumes.

Celebrating children's poetry
Greg at GottaBook is hosting "Thirty Poets / Thirty Days," a month-long celebration of poetry that will feature a new previously unpublished work by a different popular poet each day. He kicked off National Poetry Month with a little something from Jack Prelutsky, and the list of contributors includes other familiar names, such as Jon Scieszka and Jane Yolen. Bookmark GottaBook and visit throughout the month.

Burnout, or A balm for this spring of discontent

Years ago, I contributed the material below in response to forum posts about a fairly common malady among parent-teachers: burnout. If you are experiencing a "spring of discontent," perhaps something below will motivate or inspire you.

Homeschooling is hard, to paraphrase Fintan O'Toole, but as long as you can see that there's a lot of life in homeschooling, then the effort begins to make sense.

Look, realistically speaking, even if you put the children in a more traditional school environment, a good portion of your days, your nights, and your weekends will be given over to their education, their activities, their everything. For what it's worth, I actually spent much more time on education-related activities when my son was in school (school board president, lunch mom, art-day mom, fund-raising coordinator, office helper, parent patrol, homework helper, classroom tutor, reading buddy, etc., etc.) than I do now -- and since we are a family-centered learning project, that's saying a lot, you know what I mean? And when he was in school, he was my only school-age child. We have three children now, and I still maintain that I spent more "real time" on school then than now.

I'm betting most of my chips on the fact that you will experience the same time constraints. You see, if you are the kind of parent who undertook homeschooling to begin with, one can probably safely assert that you are one of those "involved parents" who will not easily relinquish all of your children's education to the schools. So while you may perceive that the children will be in school all day while you are home savoring alone time and planning fun activities for when they return, you will actually be worried about any number of things related to your their education, ranging from the inane (as in, "How will I ever unload all of these [fill in the fund-raising nightmare blank] before the deadline?") to the important [as in, "Why is [fill in child's name here] having trouble with []?").

I don't intend to make light of your feelings. You feel crowded, tired, overworked, etc. The thing is, you would probably feel that way in any life work at some point, no matter whether it was a job you adored or not. Does that make sense?

Homeschooling is work, my "day job." Most days, why, I just love it. But there are days when I want to cry, "Foul!" and crawl right back into my flannel sheets. I stop just short of wishing a yellow bus would appear on my block. Similarly, when I worked in the "real world," I sometimes needed a mental health day, and I always relished my vacations and any off-site travel.

In other words, the daily grind can wear one down -- no matter what the job. Some things folks do to make their working life better include reworking their office space, taking on new assignments, modifying their schedules, and, yes, changing jobs. Can you see how you might apply each of these to the job of home educator?

Look, if you choose to stop homeschooling, it's not a failure. But make sure you're quitting for reasons that will hold up when you find yourself at home alone some Wednesday morning. Spending a little time self-scrutinizing now will save you regret later. (This, of course, is true of any major decision one makes.)

Some final thoughts: You wrote, "I desperately want some alone time...." Well, you mentioned that you meet with friends once a week. Here's an idea: Meet with them once every two weeks, and use the other week to make a date with yourself. Schedule a massage, a haircut, a walk in the nature preserve, whatever it is that gives you pleasure and a chance to recharge.

In the second part of that sentence, you noted, "... and I want to free time to just bake cookies with the kids or whatever strikes our fancy." So I'm wondering why you don't just do that right now. The children are there with you. Not every moment requires a lesson or a schedule. Clear the counter, call the kids to the kitchen, and bake those cookies. And then eat them slowly, perhaps while enjoying a favorite family video. Take a walk this afternoon. Collect tiny spring flowers and press them in wax paper. Haul out the LEGOs and build "the tallest tower ever." An afternoon like this may be just the jumpstart you need.

Some related posts
■ Simple ways to inject fun into your children's learning days (11.01.2005)
■ It all begins with me. (3.18.2006)
■ Twenty-five cedar waxwings... (4.25.2007)
■ From the archives: Feed a cold, starve a spring fever