Book Look: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

If you are looking for yet another titillating tale of Henry VIII's love life - turn back! Go watch "The Tudors" or read "The Other Bolyn Girl"! After the first 50pgs of this dense, literary outing you'll be temped to skip ahead to the "juicy parts", only to discover there aren't any.

If you are looking for a thoughtful and detailed exploration of the politics/economics/religion/morals of the period - with particular emphasis on Thomas Cromwell's role in shaping them - then this isn't a bad place to start. It appears that Mantel's intent is twofold: (1) to shed new light on the events and impulses that shaped Cromwell into the complex man he became, and (2) to make the case that Cromwell was England's first "modern politician", a man who (by virtue of his background *not* as a member of the aristrocracy but as a mercenary, trader, and banker) understood that maintaining/strengthening national power was increasingly a matter of trade and economics rather than marriages between royal families.

If you are looking for a chance to sink into a good story, well told - well, I don't know what to tell you! This was blurbed by people a lot smarter than me, but I'm still struggling to understand why Mantel chose a prose style so difficult to comprehend. Her overreliance on pronouns rather than proper names (me: "shoot - which "he" is she talking about this time?"), inconsistent naming conventions, and "optional" use of quotation marks makes reading this a laborious process; often, I had to double back to read a passage 2-3 times before I was sure I understood who was saying what. Maybe the intent was to force readers to slow down so that they would fully appreciate the author's admittedly deft use of dialog, metaphors, double entendres and foreshadowing?

In other words, I'm of two minds ref. whether to recommend this book. While I appreciated the new insights into the period and the man (in fact, on the strength of this, I've picked up a bio of Thomas Cromwell to read next), and while I appreciated Mantel's obvious literary prowess, I felt like Mantel's prose style was more distracting than it had to be.

Kissing in the Rain

 

Why the predominance of movies featuring characters kissing in the rain (or surf, or snow)? 

Any competent English teacher will tell you that rain symbolizes change; kissing in the rain, therefore, symbolizes a change in the relationship between the characters.

A psychologist would probably tell us that being wet symbolizes vulnerability - a state in which we allow our normal inhibitions to lapse.

Cinematographers would probably tell us that this has to do with good film-making - precipitation is inherently dynamic and dramatic.

Obviously, there IS a reason ... how else to explain the number of enormously romantic movie kisses that occur in the damp? The following is not a comprehensive list, but does include some of my all-time favorites.

George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffanys

Rachel MacAdams and Ryan Gosling in The Notebook

Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in Australia

Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in Spiderman

Hugh Grant and Andie McDowell in 4 Weddings and a Funeral

Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly in Pirates of the Caribbean

Channing Tatem and Amanda Satfried in Dear John

olin Firth and Renee Zelwegger in Bridget Jones's Diary

Bill Murray and Andie McDowell in Groundhog Day

Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity

What's Wrong With Our Current Educational System? 7 Fatal Flaws We Must Address

What's wrong with our schools? Why isn't our education system churning out students prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century?  Why don't any of our "fixes" ever seem to work?

The problem is that any real, comprehensive list of what's wrong with education cannot help but shed sobering light on the enormity of the problem(s) we face.  Addressing any of the following would require a Herculean combination of political will, social reform, and disregard of powerful lobbying interests the likes of which our current democratic construct - with its fixation on short-term "fixes" and over-reliance on campaign financing - is wholly unequipped to address.

The irony, of course, is that until we start correctly identifying the problems we face, we fatally undermine all efforts to identify effective solutions.

Without further ado, then, here they are: my nominees for factors that are robbing our students of the education they need and deserve.

1. Education by Tradition. Schools still look a lot like they looked back in the 1900s: emphasis is on kids sitting in classrooms, learning the three 'R's, and making it home in time to help out with the harvest. And we wonder why they aren't preparing students for the 21st century? We need to "re-invent" how we "do" school - purpose, structure, and curriculum.
1. Purpose.  Right now our college prep curriculum is training 100% of students to be scholars - which has more to do with "the Great American Dream" than the reality of 21st century America, which requires a healthy blend of both scholars and worker-bees in order to maintain a robust economic structure.
2. Structure. Why are we still closing schools over the summer?  Research shows that we are wasting too much time every fall re-teaching students what they forgot over the summer.  Shorter, more frequent breaks would be much more efficient
3. Curriculum.  Our curriculum needs to be completely rethought.  Way too big a topic to discuss here, but if you're interested in some specific ideas, check out my blog post on the topic.
2. Education by Fad. Perhaps more than any "profession", educators seem delighted to jettison research-proven instructional methods to chase after "fads". Don't believe me? How many of the following "fads" do you remember from your own schooling? Open classrooms, whole language, invented spelling, new math, fuzzy math, touch math, universal design, multiculturalism, self-esteem/praise, discovery learning, thematic instruction, outcome-based learning, classical education, affective learning, cooperative learning, multiple intelligences, brain-based learning, learning styles, mnemonics/memory tricks, alternative assessment, Socratic teaching, grouping, block scheduling, on-line education, response to intervention, vouchers, charters, etc. Believe me now? The problem, of course, is that we have NO VALID (research-based) EVIDENCE that any of these fads actually improve learning.
1. Just because an intervention worked under certain conditions doesn't mean it will generalize to all conditions. (It usually doesn't.)
2. Just because something correlates with success doesn't mean it caused that success. (Ex: playing a musical instrument doesn't make you smarter - rather, parents who require their children to play a musical instrument also tend to require their students to take school seriously. They correlate, but one does not cause another.)
3. Just because someone wrote a book about something doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. (Often they don't.)
3. Minimum Competency Standards & Testing. No Child Left Behind had admirable intentions, but also one fatal flaw: minimum competency testing.  Why is this a flaw?  Because intelligence is variable (distributed along a bell curve), approximately 10% of students are cognitively incapable of achieving "minimum competency."  Therefore, the only way states can "win" (achieve 100% pass rates) is to cheat - by dumbing down either the standards or the tests.   Not to mention at least three other unintentional outcomes:
1. Every time we applaud students for passing minimum competency standards/tests, we send the message: "minimum competency is good enough!"
2. Minimum competency tests "cheats" the ~30% of students with above average IQs by shifting resources away from them.  
3. Multiple Choice isn't "real life".  Because they're easy to grade, schools and states are increasingly relying on multiple choice tests.  Unfortunately, these tests rob students of the opportunity to develop/practice critical thinking skills by generating their own answers.  Also, they suggest to students that in "real life," questions have right/wrong answers - when in fact answers are almost NEVER wholly right or wholly wrong, and choosing between them requires that students possess the very critical thinking skills that multiple choice tests deny them.
4. Worshipping at the Alter of Technology.  First it was white boards. Then it was smart boards. Now it's online classes.  I grant that technology is a wonderful thing, but there's a reason it took a $10M computer to compete with humans on Jeopardy.  Technology alone simply cannot replicate the critical thinking or the give/take of human interaction which is modality in which about 90% of us learn best. 
5. Business Models Can Fix That.  Am not saying that there aren't some business principles that can, and probably should, be applied to education. Just saying that anyone who thinks the "magic bullet" to improve schools rests in the pages of the Harvard Business School Annals is at best naive, at worst dangerous.  Here are some of the reasons why:
1. Businesses can choose the raw materials they use. Schools have to mold their product from the raw materials (students) they are given.
2. Business processes can be standardized. Humans learning can't be standardized.
3. Businesses use money to incent employees.  Schools must rely on students to incent themselves.
4. Businesses control their own finances.  School finances are doled out at the whim of federal, state, and local agencies
5. Businesses operate in a relatively free market. Schools are constrained by often onerous regulations (8hrs/day, no summers, no overtime, etc.)
6. Businesses are run by people who know business.  Schools are run by politicians who often know little/nothing about educational administration.
7. Businesses have metrics they can use to determine quality/success. Measuring quality of instruction/student "success" is infinitely more difficult.
8. Businesses can accept a certain amount of loss.  Schools cannot ethically tolerate any loss - not as long as each loss represents a child deprived of the preparation they need to become functional citizens and adults.
6. The Blame Game.  Just now it's fashionable to assign the blame for what's wrong with education on teachers, implying that somehow "bad teaching" is a recent phenomenon.  Can we not all agree that bad teaching has been around for decades? Here's what hasn't been around for decades: drugs, single parent households, technology distractors (internet/phones/DVDs/etc.), ADHD, universal educational mandates .... just to name a few. At the cost of repeating myself, until we start correctly identifying the problem, we sabotage all efforts to identify effective solutions.  (For a more in-depth discussion of why teachers aren't the ones to blame, check out my blog post on this topic.)
7. State Funding of Education.  As long as state tax dollars provide the main funding for education - putting schools in competition with health care, pensions, and pay raises - there will always be built-in disincentives to provide adequate funding for schools.  How is it fair (or effective) that the quality of education a student receives depends on the state they happen to reside in?

Feeling hopeless?  Believe it or not, that's not my intention.  But what I do hope is that, after reading this list, citizens will think twice about the next politician or reformer who comes along claiming they possess the "solution" to what's wrong with education.  If you believe that, then I have some nice snake oil you might be interested in ... because there is nothing simple about what it's going to take to implement the reforms necessary to "fix" what's really wrong with our current educational system.

Ray Bradbury: 10 of his Most Prescient Predictions

People who know me well, know that I've been obsessed with Ray Bradbury's fiction most of my life.  I'm not sure I've read everything he's ever written, but I bet I've giddily consumed about 90% of his catalog.  Few writers combine brilliance and prescience with Bradbury's swoon-worthy gift for story-telling and language.

As a tribute to Mr. Bradbury, who died earlier this week at the age of 91, I'm breaking my habit of posting purely original content in order to repost this thought-provoking list compiled by The Washington Post.   People who scorn readers/writers of science fiction would do well to consider the frequency with which their "flights of fancy" prove prescient.

1. Earbuds.  The people in the “Fahrenheit 451” society sport “seashells” and “thimble radios,” which bear a striking resemblance to the earbuds and Bluetooth headsets of today.
2. Flatscreen TVs.  Members of “Fahrenheit 451’s” futuristic society are also as obsessed with their large, flat-screen televisions as are any of today’s technophiles, and the viewing screens in Bradbury’s stories often take up an entire wall.
3. "The Wall".  In fact, the novel mentions that people are talking to their digital friends through the wall — the same terminology that Facebook would use years later for the digital hub that enables friends to post and see messages.
4. Social isolation.  The loneliness that can come from constantly paying attention to the screens around you, rather than the life around you, is a prevalent theme in Bradbury’s work. He explores it in his short story “The Pedestrian,” in which protagonist Leonard Mead is arrested for the dual crimes of taking a walk and not owning a television. Far ahead of the research and analysis that have spawned books on the effects of technology overload, such as Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together,” Bradbury outlined how he feared televisions would change the world. In this passage, he compares a neighborhood of television-watchers to a tomb: “[He] would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind he windows. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomblike building was still open.”
5. Self-driving cars.  “The Pedestrian” also features a self-driving — and self-thinking — car that arrests and commits the protagonist to a mental hospital. While far less advanced and much less sinister, self-driving cars are already on U.S. roads, as part of a Google project. As of last month, Google’s cars — clearly marked — can legally drive on Nevada’s roads and highways as long as two people are in the car during the tests.
6. Rising electronic surveillance.  The idea of electronic surveillance also popped up in Bradbury’s work, way before closed-circuit television became a fixture in major cities around the world. He was early in warning people about how such surveillance could be abused — worries that still echo today.
7. Short attention span "news".  Bradbury’s criticism of the coverage of live media events in “Fahrenheit 451” is fodder for media critics’ columns today. Bradbury disparaged constant, sensationalized news.
8. ATMs.  Bradbury also envisioned automated banking machines in the novel, which bear a striking similarity to the ATM and provide 24-hour financial information to their users.
9. Artificial intelligence.  In “I Sing the Body Electric!” and other stories, Bradbury explored artificial intelligence and the philosophical implications of advancements in AI that could perhaps produce thinking, feeling machines.
10. E-books.  Books as a medium aren’t banned — thank goodness — in today’s society, but reading a paper and glue version of a story isn’t as common as it once was. Bradbury loved actual, physical books, as my Washington Post colleague Alexandra Petri points out in her tribute to the writer, and would not allow “Fahrenheit 451” to be published as an e-book until last November, the Guardian reported. He once said that e-books “smell like burned fuel” to him, but he allowed his classic to be published digitally because it wouldn’t be possible to have a new contract without e-book rights.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

Book Look: Lord of Misrule, Jaime Gordon

Back in Roman days, the Lord of Misrule presided over the celebration of Saturnalia, a holiday during which the ordinary rules of life were subverted - masters served their slaves, wives and husbands switched duties, etc. If there is a theme in this novel - and you have to look hard to find it - it's how casually (and sometimes cruelly) the lives and expectations of humans are subverted by the ultimate Lord of Misrule, fickle fate.

Appropriate that a story about the subverting of "sure things" should be set at a racetrack. What setting better lends itself to a tale of people needing desperately to believe they can exert some control over fate, only to discover otherwise? Tommy Hanson, the story's reagent, believes he can make a fast buck running ringers in a series of cheap claims races - only to see his best-laid plans thwarted right out of the gate. (Pun, sadly, intended.) Maggie, Tommy Hanson's girlfriend, carelessly indulges her penchant for violence and risk by hooking up with Tommy, confident that she can control whatever chaos ensues - only to find herself in a situation that she genuinely cannot control. Medicine Ed, an old groom at the dead-end racetrack where Tommy and Maggie wash up, believes his "goofer dust" can "magic" horses into winning - but finds himself paying a terrible price when he tries to use it. Meanwhile, various mobsters operate (mistakenly) under the arrogant delusion that they have the power to predetermine the winners of races; a rather decent gentleman by the name of Two-Tie believes (mistakenly) he will be able to protect his niece Maggie from herself (and in the process redeem a mistake he made years before - which doesn't happen either); a female jockey believes (mistakenly) that she can "sing" a washed-up "could-have-been" champion into winning; all of which culminates in a final stakes race in which fate truly has the last laugh, orchestrating the most improbable of all possible outcomes (which, don't worry, I won't spoil here, but be sure to appreciate the glorious chaos and irony of Gordon's big finale when it comes). Ultimately those characters who learn to bow to the whims of fate survive, those who insist on trying to control their own destiny come to bad ends (madness, death), and fate spins on, unflustered and unrushed, God's eternal hot-walking machine.


I mention that the book really is "about" something, because the vast majority of favorable reviews I've read don't even mention the plot, focusing almost entirely on the story's "Runyan-esque characters" and the author's "unique voice" - both of which I found so off-putting, I very nearly didn't finish this. With apologies to the National Book Award people, are you guys sure you weren't so dazzled by Ms. Gordon's literary furbelows - her faux-authentic racing lingo, her nervy employment of dialect, her flashy shifts in point of view (including whole chapters narrated in second person - there's something you don't see every day!), her fearless embracing of physical and spiritual ugliness, her disdain of quotation marks and other grammatical conventions - that you neglected to notice that extent to which these flourishes make the book laborious to read and distasteful to digest? Yes, I valued the humanity of Medicine Ed, Deucey, and the few other palatable characters in the novel; I appreciated the inherent nobility of the horses, selflessly sacrificing their sinews (though never their dignity) to fate; and I definitely teared up at Two-Tie's sacrifice. But even these weren't enough to offset the sense of general "yuckiness" left behind by the loathsomeness of the imagery (too much violence, bondage, humiliation, sweat, stench and snot!) and the moral turpitude of majority of characters in the story; my annoyance over the lack of quotation marks; or my frustration at the author for sacrificing good storytelling to the Gods of Modernism (or perhaps to the National Book Award gods, in this case).


Am not sure I've ever read a book over which opinions were so polarized - half the people loving it, the other half loathing it. I'm willing to come down somewhere in between - but having said that, am not sure I'll be reading anything else by Gordon in the future. This felt like way too much work for way too little reward; too much frosting over too little cake, if you will. Literary critics and book prize judges will have to fawn over Gordon's next tome without me.

Dead Authors I'd follow on Twitter!

It's a shame Twitter wasn't  invented until the 21st century, because I can think of a bunch of authors I definitely would have followed.  Here are a few:

1. Oscar Wilde.  Because Twitter was invented for the king of the bon mots ... sadly, 150 years too late.  ("A man's face is an autobiography.  A woman's face is fiction"; "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between"; see what I mean?)
2. Mark Twain.  He was brutally trashing the hypocracy of society 150yrs ago ("Facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable") ... can you imagine the fun he'd be having now? 
3. Homer. Because the man knows how to make anything sound epic. ("And then big-breasted Snookie said unto the bronze-chested Jionni, 'Behold, I am with child!' And Jionni said unto her: 'The brat ain't mine!'")
4. Dashiell Hammett. Because his posts would sound so wickedly hard-boiled. ("So they bring me a salad and I say: 'What the hell? Go give this to a cow, kill it, and then bring me a freakin' steak!'")
5. St. Augustine.   Everyone would retweet his awesomely profound posts without ever quite understanding what they mean.
6. Shakespeare.  Because someone besides hip hop artists ought to be in the business of inventing new slang. ("Didst thou seeest Ryan Zimmerman expound that last pitch?")
7. Edgar Allen Poe.  Because his posts would be so depressing and morbid, they'd make us feel cheerful and fortunate in contrast.
8. William Faulkner.  Every post would turn out to be an obscure biblical reference.
9. Aesop.  Each post would come with a helpful moral.
10. James Joyce. No one would actually understand his posts, but everyone would pretend to. 
11. Emily Dickenson.  Because she'd make sure we never lost sight of the little things - birds, bees, snowflakes, kittens.  Also, because the woman desperately needs friends, even if only virtual ones.
12. Dr. Seuss.  Because political commentary would be so much more jolly in rhyming couplets.  ("When Romney is waxing on taxes, it's taxing ....") 
13. Jane Austen. Because no social or cultural folly would go un-poked, but she'd go about it in such a delightfully gentile fashion. ("It is a truth universally acknowledged, that every female politician must be in want of a pantsuit.")

Reading Comprehension: Helping Your Child Understand What They Read

I'm a middle school special education teacher (English) who faces the same challenge every year: students who are great decoders - they can sound out words and read aloud like champions - but who, after reading, can't answer even basic questions about what they've read.  Sound familiar?

There are several explanations for this.  Some of the more common include cognitive overload (so much effort is expended on decoding, student doesn't have sufficient cognition "left over" to interpret meaning), attention deficits (students struggle to sustain focus during reading tasks), and a variety of learning deficits.  But another explanation is that some children can't/won't intuitively figure out the strategies that good readers use to create meaning from text.  For these children, one of the most powerful things you can do is to explicitly teach them these tricks.

Following are some of my "go to" strategies for improving reading comprehension.  I use them because they work - for both both "neurologically typical" students as well as students with a variety of learning, emotional, cognitive, and attention deficits.  These strategies are relevant for all grade levels and can be practiced at home (no boring worksheets required!). 

Hope these help parents out there who want to give their students a reading comprehension boost!

1. Strategy #1.  Preview the text.  Good readers never initiate reading tasks without previewing the text.  "Previewing" means studying all the external text features - the title, subtitles, pictures, subheaders, "blurbs", charts, etc. - and using them as clues to make educated guesses about the content of the text.  Why is this step so important? 
1. Activates background knowledge - what the reader already knows (or guesses) about the subject.
2. Facilitates storage of new info in short-term (working) memory, because the reader has already identified "hooks" to link the new information to.
3. Invests the reader in the text - they want to find out if their ideas/predictions are right
2. Strategy #2.  Turn on your inner voice.  Good readers interact with (mentally talk back to) text as they read it.  They talk back to mysteries ("I think the butler did it!"), romances ("How can she be so clueless? He's clearly in love with her!") ... even tax returns. ("I can't subtract line 58 from line 57 because line 57 is smaller!  Who writes these $#%?! instructions, anyway?!")  How do you teach children to develop and deploy their "inner voice"?  Pick a television show, movie, or even video game.  As you watch it together, practice talking back to the characters.  Ask them questions.  Make predictions about what will happen next.  Insult their clothes.  Whatever!  The idea is to model how inner voice works, and to help your child understand that they need to interact with literature in the same way  - asking questions, expressing reactions and opinions, and making connections with information they already possess.  If they need further support to transfer the idea into practice, pick a book and have them read it. At random intervals, prompt them to "write down what their inner voice is thinking" on a post-it note and attach it to the page.   
3. Strategy #3.  Read with inflection.  If your child reads in a monotone, skipping or misinterpreting punctuation, then this is a sure sign they're not interpreting the meaning of the words they are reading.  Reading with inflection (emotion) forces them to do so.  So, how do you teach your child to read with inflection?  The easiest strategy is to model the technique yourself.  Pick a highly interesting text and read it aloud to your child - really exaggerating the emotions being expressed - using word choice, word connotation (the emotional meaning of words), and punctuation as your clues.  Don't be afraid to get goofy - the more relaxed you appear, the more willing your child will be to mimic your example. Another great way to practice reading with inflection is to borrow a book of "readers theater" plays* from your school or local library and take turns "acting" out the parts. (*Plays that are meant to be read aloud rather than acted.)
4. Strategy #4.  Visualize.  Neurologists believe that about 50% of the world's population processes information through visualization - literally, they think in pictures.  (The others think in words.)  For these individuals, visualization - the process of creating a picture in your head from clues in the text - is a powerful comprehension strategy.  To practice, find a book without pictures.  Pick a random page and sketch/draw what is happening on the page, using clues from the text (sensory language, imagery) as a guide.  (Keep it simple - stick figures only - so that they don't become so involved in the drawing process that they forget the text they're supposed to be processing.) If your child needs further support to transfer the idea into practice, have them turn a few pages/chapters into a comic strip.  The goal is to teach struggling readers to use automatically visualize difficult text.
5. Strategy #5.  Use context clues.  Good readers accept that there will be words, idioms, maybe whole passages that they don't understand.  How do they cope with this frustration?  Do they throw down the book in disgust because it's "too hard".  Of course not.  Do they reread the text until they've figured it out?  Often, though rarely more than 2-3 times. Do they look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary? Almost certainly not. What good readers do do is use "context clues" (information surrounding the confusing extracts) to make a logical guess about what the words/idioms/passages probably mean, and then they move on.  If they've guessed correctly, the following paragraphs will make sense.  If they've guessed incorrectly, the following paragraphs will almost always provide enough extra information to make sense of the bewildering bits.  Children who allow vocabulary and idiomatical language to frustrate them will have a hard time ever viewing reading as fun or worthwhile. Encourage them not to give up on difficult passages, but to predict what the passage probably says and to move on. 
6. Strategy #6.  Trust the author.  The "author's compact" is the implied rather than actual agreement between the reader and the author to the effect that any information included by the author in the text is there for a reason.  Adults understand that published texts have gone through countless cycles of revision to ensure that no words or ideas are wasted.  (Well, more or less.)  Children, however, often lack this insight and need to be explicitly taught that if they've just read text that they think is "not important," they've probably missed something.  So, how do you model this for your child?  Once again, I recommend you start with a movie - something highly familiar to both of you.  (Disney movies work well for this, and appeal to a range of ages.)  As you watch the movie together, point out the ways in which scenes that seem unimportant are important - perhaps because they create a mood, establish the personality of a character, or foreshadow events to come.  After you've viewed a few movies together through this lens, your child will start to "trust" authors, which, in turn, will prompt them to pay more attention to detail and to analyze what they are reading as they go along.

This is by no means a comprehensive list.  I may well come back and add a few more strategies as they occur to me.  But I can vouch for the effectiveness of the strategies I've included so far; and if that's not enough, I can provide dozens of students equally enthusiastic about these techniques.  There's nothing as rewarding as the looks on their faces when, after spending the school year practicing these strategies over and over again, they receive the results of their state reading comprehension test and realize that they've passed, often for the first time in their lives.  :-)

Book Look: Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury

I first read Ray Bradbury's miracle of a book, Dandelion Wine, when I was 16, and I have read it every year since. Over time I continue to gain a deeper appreciation for these lovely, strange, often magical vignettes (more properly parables, each one with a little implied moral) that explore the nature of happiness, the magic of love and, above all, what it means to be alive. To me, the overarching intent of the book is to remind all us adults that:

* Being alive means maintaining a balance between Discoveries & Revelations and Ceremonies & Rites. Though the latter are important, binding us to our family & our community, our future & our past, it is Discoveries & Revelations that make us think, experience, change, and grow.

* Being alive means living in the present. Even if this means giving away the tokens of a beloved past, as happens in one particularly poignant tale.

* Being alive means being connected with the world - with family, neighbors, your community, the earth. It's no coincidence that the mysterious murderer haunting Douglas Spaulding's Childhood is called The Lonely One.

* Being alive means being able to experience happiness ... not only understanding the nature of happiness, but possessing the wisdom not to let yourself be tricked into pursuing something that can't/won't make you happy.

* Being alive means recognizing the presence of magic in our everyday lives. Because magic is out there ... in the spring of a new pair of tennis shoes, in the mysteries of love, in the essence of Dandelion Wine.

Contrary to popular opinion, I do not believe Bradbury intended this to be a book about childhood. In fact, his 12yr old narrator, Douglas Spaulding, does not appear in many of the parables. I do think that Bradbury intentionally chose a child as his narrator, however, because children are inherently alive -- always discovering, always filled with wonder, connected to their family and the world and the present in ways that we begin gradually to forget as adults. Dandelion Wine is both nostalgia and a cautionary tale, challenging us to remember what it felt like to be alive and reminding us adults that - unless we take care - we may become so consumed by life that we forget to be alive.

As far as I am concerned, this book is a little bit of magic in and of itself: part essence of childhood, part elixir of wisdom. Believe and partake!

20 Important Life Lessons I've Learned From Baseball

Why is baseball the Great American Game? 
Could it be because baseball teaches us so many critical life lessons?

1. Talent is important, but hard work is even more important
2. It takes a team
3. Sportsmanship matters
4. You have to show up to play
5. Some people are born to specialize; some people are born to be position players
6. If you're right 40% of the time, you're a phenom
7. Rookies may add excitement, but veterans are the foundation of every team
8. Always make time for a 7th inning stretch
9. Charge every base, even if you think they're going to throw you out
10. The greatest achievements in life are years in the making
11. There's always another game; what matters is how you close out the season
12. Sometimes the only way to win is to bunt
13. Don't let them get inside your head
14. Cover your bases
15. Statistics are a valuable tool, but sometimes it comes down to heart
16. Know when to take the at-bat and when to go with a designated hitter
17. Home runs are great, but more often it's base hits that win game
18. Everyone plays better when they've got fans cheering for them
19. Not all calls are going to be fair
20. If you're going to fail, at least go down swinging

10 Fun Baby Shower Games

Baby showers are sweet but almost always lame.  Here are some game ideas sure to perk things up:

1. Baby Name Darts.  Pin a variety of baby names on a dartboard.  Throw darts.  For the rest of the party, refer to the baby by the name that was struck by the most darts.
2. Baby Outburst.  Make a bunch of "top 10" lists having to do with babies (see suggestions below).  Form 2 teams.  One team reads category; other team has to guess as many items on the list as possible in 1 minute.  Alternate turns until all cards used.  Keep score. (This is adapted from the game "Outburst".)  (Potential categories: Top 10 ... boys names, girls names, reasons babies cry, toys, books, baby food varieties, aphorisms for "poop", baby nicknames, items in nursery, items in diaper bag, Disney movies, "firsts", songs with word "baby" in them, nursery rhymes, baby songs, etc.)
3. Baby Bingo.  You can purchase this game or make your own, using clipart.  Use pink or blue m&ms as placeholders.  Allow guests to eat their placeholders after each round.
4. Guess Mom's Width.  Hand out pieces of string and scissors.  Each person cuts string to approximate width of mom's stomach.  When done, wrap strings around the mom.  Person who comes closest wins. 
5. Baby Scattergories.  Identify 10 categories having to do with babies (see "Baby Outburst").  Create card/checklist listing the 10 categories, leaving a line after each category to allow guests to fill in info.  Make duplicates.  Put letters of alphabet in hat.  Mom draws letter.  For each category, guests have to come up with word that starts with that letter.  Person (if small party) or team (if large party) that comes up with most ORIGINAL (not duplicated) answers wins.  You can play as many times as you want - just draw new letter for each round.  (This is adapted from the game "Scattergories".)
6. Clothespin game.  Issue everyone 3 clothespins.  Every time they use the word "baby", guest who catches them using the word gets one of their clothespins.  Guest with most clothespins at end of shower wins.
7. Baby Mad Lib.  Create a customized "Mad Lib" for the mom of honor.  Be sure to build in lots of opportunities for humor.  Have guests contribute missing words.  Read finished product aloud.  (I usually create a story in which mom reflects back on her grown child's life - careers, achievements, family, etc.  Lots of potential for humor there!)
8. Guess the Baby Accessory.  Wrap baby-related items in tissue paper.  (Wrap them loosely but well; use tape!)  Place them in small paper bags.  Number bags.  Give guests paper, pen, and one bag.  Assign someone to act as timer.  Guests have 5 seconds to feel object through tissue paper, without removing from bag.  Then, they write their guess next to the bag's number on paper.  Pass bags clockwise and repeat until everyone has guessed contents of each bag.  Have folks unwrap/reveal objects.  Person with most correct guesses wins.
9. The Price is Right.  Give guests a list of common baby supplies & have them guess the cost of each. Then give out calculators to have them add the items up. The guest who comes closest to the actual price of the items wins.
10. Baby Predictions.  Purchase large matte for 5" x 7" photo. Write "I predict ..." on top.  Using acid free pen, ask each guest to contribute a prediction about baby or parents.  Predictions can be serious or funny.
11. Guess the Gerbers.  Pour small samples of a variety of baby food  into small plastic panekins (a.k.a. disposable condiment cups "liberated" from your local fast food restaurant).  Assign each type a number and number cups accordingly (use indelible ink).  Give each guest pencil, paper, and 5 random cups.  Have guests try to guess contents of each cup, recording their guesses next to each cup number.  Person who gets most right wins.  (TIP: Use particularly disgusting flavors, like green beans or squash.  Blends are particularly hard to guess.)

A Thousand Words: In the Beginning ....

 

I'm pretty sure that if God wrote the Bible we wouldn't be able to read it, because it would be in math.

 Source: http://math-fail.com/wp-content/uploads/Math-Fail-Pics-140.jpg

Book Look: All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren

Have never read a book that felt more like a graduate class. No, make that three graduate classes, for there's enough in here to provide ample curriculum for Ethics in Politics 320, Rhetoric & Logic 420, and at least a full semester of Modern American Literature.

The story is set in the 1930s and is told in first person by Jack Burden, former journalist-turned-aide to Willie Stark, a southern governor in the Huey Long mold: broad, brash, and bold. But now that I've gotten that out of the way you can stop worrying about it, because what this book is really about is Original Sin/corruption/moral compromise. Literally every character in this tale faces some sort of moral/ethical dilemma. A small handful (for instance, the governor's wife Lucy) manage to navigate the morass of existence without falling from grace, but the vast majority slip and fall - some out of a genuine lack of morality (for instance, the assistant governor, Tiny Duffy, a true Tammany Hall villain), but most of them gradually, one ethical compromise yielding inevitably to another, like a Jenga tower from which pieces are systematically removed until the whole thing collapses. I'm not sure whether Penn himself is clear whether this is the result of free will or a manifestation of Original Sin. One of the governor's favorite quotes, repeated often throughout the tale, is that "man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something [corrupt in their nature]" - suggesting that at least a part of him comes down on the side of Original Sin. But it's hard not to want to kick many of the (largely unsympathetic) characters in the butt every time they wittingly make choices that are obviously going to lead to catastrophe.

Students of Ethics in Politics will relish the examination of how Governor Stark's noble motives become gradually corrupted by the realities of the political system in which he operates. Originally convinced to run for office by corrupt politicians counting on him to split the "rube" vote so that the state's Political Machine can continue to churn unmolested, Stark eventually turns the tables on his manipulators, but in doing so finds himself resorting to increasingly unethical methods (threats, blackmail) in order to achieve his largely unselfish and well-meaning ends. Which begs the question that seems to arise every time someone like Huey Long - or, more recently, DC Councilman Marion Berry - ends up on trial for corruption, even as thousands of deservedly grateful, devoted constituents picket the courthouse steps: can even the noblest of intentions ever justify ethically questionable means?

Meanwhile, students of rhetoric and logic will be kept busy by chapter upon chapter of cascading syllogisms employed in order to justify all sorts of questionable ends. No topic seems too vast or intimidating to escape Penn's scrutiny, from life, death, and fate, to the nature of good, evil, and God. The narrator, Jack Burton, uses these syllogisms as justification for a series of increasingly dubious acts; what's less clear is whether he is self-aware enough to realize the extent to which his syllogisms are laced with sly and intricate fallacies, enough to keep a class of grad students huddled over pints of ale for months, hashing them all out.

And, lest students of Modern American Lit feel left out, there's plenty left for them in examining the parallelism between ancient Greek tragedy and Stark's gradual fall from grace (substitute Judge Irwin's fall from grace, or Adam Stanton's fall from grade, or Jack Burden's fall from grace, if you prefer), culminating in a series of climaxes as horrific as they are undoubtedly hubristic. Even the names of the characters in the story - Jack Burden, Tiny Duffy, Willie Stark - are loaded with symbolic and metaphoric relevance. No - English lit students needn't feel slighted; there is more than enough here to keep them churning out papers until final exams week.

In other words, this book is stuffed full of juicy, complex content - which makes it a capital book for studying, but perhaps doesn't much contribute to creating a diverting or entertaining reading experience. The characters aren't particularly likeable, the plot is largely introspective rather than event-driven, and - believe me - I'm not spoiling anything by letting it slip that no one lives happily ever after, which can make portions of this tough slogging. Guess I'm saying that while there's plenty of meat here, definitely requires an investment in energy, attention and cognition on the part of the reader in order to appropriately digest it.

Hollywood's Handsomest Leading Men

Have decided to devote a page to the Hollywood Leading Men who make my heart skip a beat. Some might quibble with the fact that I've neglected to include some more modern heartthrobs - Ryan Gosling, for instance - but much like the governing bodies of sports halls of fame, I believe it's necessary to allow 10-20 years to pass before it's possible to reliably identify the men with true classic appeal. 

This list is in no particular order ... they all have a similar effect on my pulse!




George Clooney.  Classic good looks
plus charm, humility, a social conscience
and a sense of humor? Seems too good
to be true, except apparently it is!



Clark Gable.  He was gorgeous, charming,
rakish, and just a little bit bad ...
which is just the way we like them,
isn't it, ladies?



Dennis Quaid. That rougish grin! 



Gregory Peck.  To me, Peck is the epitome of
the hot college professor you lust after all year
but who you know would be far too principled
to ever make a pass. 



Cary Grant.  When you think Hollywood
Leading Man, this is the picture that pops
pops into your head, isn't it?  Cary Grant was
suave, sophisticated, witty, and he established
for once and all the standard against which all
men in tuxedos would be judged. 



Brad Pitt.  Handsome without
lapsing into pretty, and he does this
simmering thing with his eyes
that I can't explain but that
makes women swoon.



Colin Firth.  Sexy
for the thinking woman.



Hugh Jackman. Sexy for the woman
who doesn't want to have to think about it.



Jimmy Stewart. One inevitably thinks of him
as the desperate husband and father in
It's a Wonderful Life, but before that he was
was a romantic lead. I, for one, was definitely
jealous of Grace Kelly in Rear Window!





Sean Connery. I was going to choose one
of his young James Bond photos, but
this is one Hollywood hunk who just
keeps getting better looking with age.

 

 



Denzel Washington. You know what
they say - smart is the new sexy.



Robert Redford.  If Gregory Peck is the
 college professor you'd most want to sleep
 with, Robert Redford was the coed
you most wanted to bring home for Spring
Break to introduce to your parents.

 

Johnny Depp.  One forgets how good he looks
beneath all those layers of eyeliner.



 

 

Tony Curtis. 
Almost too beautiful to be a dude.

Humphrey Bogart.  Not conventionally handsome,
but he had that husky voice and that dangerous glint in his eye
that let you know he was a bad boy.



Rock Hudson. His looks draw you in,
but it's his ability to laugh at himself

that makes women fall in love with him.

Michael Caine. Beautiful in an indefinable British way.
 

    








Daniel Craig.  The epitome of steely-eyed sex appeal.
 




Erol Flynn. He made even a pair
of green tights look good!



Lawrence Olivier. I'd play Ophelia to his Hamlet any day!

 

 

Movies that Make Me Cry

Sometimes, after a really difficult week at work, there's nothing more cathartic than a good cry. Fortunately, crying isn't a problem for me. I'm so weak, a particularly sentimental Hallmark commercial has been known to reduce me to tears. (Most recently, it was the one that aired around Christmas, where the soldier opens a storybook sent to him by his daughter, and her recorded voice starts reading the story aloud. You can't tell me other people didn't cry at that one.)  Really, I should probably just quit work and invest in Kleenex stock.

But if commercials aren't enough to do the trick, I have the following list of go-to movies I know I can rely on to trigger a lovely, cleansing cry. How does my list compare to yours?

1. Going, Going ... Gone. Filmmakers know that the most reliable way to wrench a tear out of their viewers is to kill off a main character. God knows it always works on me.  For this reason, I tend to deliberately eschew such movies, which explains why I've never seen Love Story and Brian's Song.  But every once in a while I drop my guard or get taken by surprise, and the next thing you know I'm digging in my purse for tissues.  Million Dollar Baby, The Pride of the Yankees and Finding Neverland all had me discretely dabbing my eyes; but there was nothing discrete about the way I bawled like a baby when Ryan Hurst died in Remember the Titans, and don't even get me started on Titanic when Leonardo de Caprio passes.  Damn that plaintive Celtic soundtrack.
2. Going, Going ... But wait!  Then there are the movies that manipulate me into believing the main character is going to die off, only to spare their lives at last possible instant.  I still remember the first time I watched, horrified, as that little light in E.T.'s chest faded, then winked out.  And how hard I clapped for Tinkerbell the first time I saw Peter Pan. I start crying because I'm convinced they're going to die, then I just keep cying because I'm so relieved they're okay. Talk about doubling down.  
3. Mourning.  And then come the movies about the lovers that all those tragic deaths have left behind.  I'm particularly thinking of Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle, the scene when he's describing to the late-night radio host all the different ways his wife used to smile; and P.S. I Love You, every time Hilary Swank opens one of those letters that her wonderful (and gorgeous) husband left for her to find after his death. I'm crying because it's so damned beautiful and tragic at the same time.  
4. Death is Just the Beginning.  And just when I think it can't get any worse than pining over the death of loved ones, along come the movies where death is just the beginning: not only can't the surviving partner bear to live without their love, but the ghosts of their loved ones remain tied to earth by their devotion.  Always, starring Richard Dryfuss and Holly Hunter, gets me every time, as does Ghost and Madly/Truly/Deeply.  Nor can I resist weeping at movies where people who are already dead fall in love with the living.  (Talk about setting yourself up for disappointment.) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, City of Angels, and Meet Joe Black all fall into this category.
5. Thwarted Love.  Movies where lovers are separated by circumstances beyond their control reliably reduce me to sniffles.  I didn't even like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but still shed tears over the debacle of lovers doomed to live out their lives in opposite directions. In West Side Story love is thwarted by hate, in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind it is thwarted by pain, and in the incomparable Casablanca is it thwarted by honor and politics: whatever the cause, though, thwarted love inevitably means Niagra Falls for me.
6. Unrequited Love. Ditto movies devoted to the misery of unrequited love.  How can Jenny keep turning her back on Forrest Gump when it's clear to everyone else in the world that they were meant to be together?  And how come not a single person in Legends of the Fall manages to fall in love with someone capable of loving them in return?  
7. Overcoming Obstacles.  I'm a sucker for movies where, by dint of enormous personal courage and dignity, people triumph over disabilities or injustice.  The scene where Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump asks Jenny if their child is "normal" breaks my heart, and even before Russell Crowe starts addressing the Nobel Prize ceremony in Beautiful Mind, I'm already a mess. And as for The Shawshank Redemption ... basically, I start crying from the moment Tim Robbins emerges from the drainpipe straight through to the last scene where he and Morgan Freeman reunite on that beach in Mexico. Yes, that's a lot of tissues.
8. Just When You Thought Their Lives Couldn't Get Any Worse.  Into this category I place all those movies that feature characters who endure grevious hardships and who, tragically, never make it happily ever after. The name Les Miserables should have given me a clue what to expect: even so, nothing really prepares one for the relentless tragedy of Eponine's story. The Birdman of Alcatraz is another movie that layers hardship and tragedy like a parfait of grief.  But I think the granddaddy of them all, for me, remains Slumdog Millionaire.  Even the (relatively) happy ending can't undo the damage that 2hrs of nearly unrelenting weeping inflicts upon my poor swollen eyes.
9. Nostalgia and Childhood.  Waxing sentimental over times gone by is another personal weakness.  I still can't watch Toy Story II or Toy Story III without wishing I could go back in time and thank Fuzzy Wuzzy, my loyal teddy bear, for all the times he stood by me.  (Could that song "When Somebody Loved Me" be any sadder?) And I once read (and completely believe) that 95% of men cry at the scene in Field of Dreams when Kevin Costner finally gets to play catch with his father ... so it's not just me.
10. When "Happily Ever After" Isn't an Option.  And then there are those movies where "happily ever after" isn't an option, because the filmmakers are confronting real-world cruelties and miseries like racism, hatred, cruelty, intolerance, and regret.  These are the movies I prepare for in advance by packing not just handkerchiefs, but also dark glasses so that I can hide my swollen eyes when the lights come up in the theater.  Schindler's List. Philadelphia. The Color Purple.  Sophie's Choice. Atonement. Saving Private Ryan. To Kill a Mockingbird.  And back when I was in elementary school, a short film called The Red Balloon that I'm not sure even exists anymore, but that was so tragic (the boy's magical red balloon is punctured by bullies hurling stones), it used to regularly reduce the entire 6th grade class to sniffling wrecks.
11. Honor & Nobility, Courage & Sacrifice. Another guaranteed tear-jerker for me is are plots that feature characters nobly sacrificing themselves for others.  That scene in Armageddon where Bruce Willis sacrifices himself to save the life of the man his daughter loves. The scene in Last of the Mohicans when Duncan sacrifices himself so that the woman he loves can find happiness in the arms of Daniel Day Lewis's Hawkeye. The scene in Gladiator when Russell Crowe kills the emporer, restoring Rome to democratic rule.  The finale of Dead Poet's Society, when the boys defy their schoolmaster and climb up onto their desks in order to pay tribute to their departing friend and mentor, Robin Williams. Yes, even that scene in the Star Trek movie (I forget which one) where Spock sacrifices his life to save the Enterprise. Not to mention pretty much every scene in The Green Mile. 
12. Oh, the Humanity! Sometimes it isn't the fate of the main characters that moves me, but the larger tragedy of the story being told.  Yes, I cried when Leonardo died in Titanic, but I'd already been going for a while by then, moved to horror and pity by the spectacle of so many deaths.  And the scene in Henry V when Kenneth Branaugh and the battered English survey the horrific aftermath of Agincourt always evokes a similar cathartic sob.
13. No More Dead Dogs!  I'm not sure why Hollywood can't make a nice movie about animals without killing them off in the end.  I only know that I'll never, ever forgive them for Old Yeller.  I cried so hard, it's a wonder they didn't have to cart me off to the hospital to be rehydrated. Since then I've deliberately boycotted movies featuring animals, and I understand from friends who saw Marley & Me that it's just as well I have 
14. Happy Endings.  Sometimes, however, filmmakers cut us a break, and the tears streaming down my face are triggered by joy rather than sorrow.  I typically lose it at the moment when the characters I've been rooting for all movie finally achieve their dream - when Hickory High School wins the regional championship in Hoosiers, for instance, or when August's parents find each other in August Rush; when Richard Dryfuss finally gets to hear his composition performed in Mr. Holland's Opus, or when Gene Krantz, playing NASA Flight Director Gene Krantz, surruptitiously wipes his eyes as Apollo 13 crashes safely into the sea; and, of course, when George Bailey realizes, every year at Christmas, that it really is A Wonderful Life.   

A Thousand Words: The Truth About Cats and Dogs

SOURCE: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1LhvOa/lol.desire-z.us/2011/12/just-few-christmas-cards-photo-from.html/

Book Look: Holy Ghost Girl, Donna Johnson

I can imagine several reasons why people might pick up this non-fiction account of the "daughter" of David Terrell, one of the most famous (some would say infamous) Pentecostal preachers of the 50s/60s. But I bet, when they've done reading, few will discover this to have been what they expected. This is not a passionate homage to the "tent preacher" tradition, now mostly passed into memory; but neither is it a vindictive expose of the corruptions and hypocrisies that have come to be associated with the tradition. Holy Ghost Girl is, instead, the unapologetically complex tale of a life indelibly marked by faith, cruelty, doubt, miracles, greed, and love.

Donna Johnson's prose is stark, unemotional, and effecting as she recounts a childhood that was alternately remarkable (she regularly witnessed miracles of healing and faith) and horrific (she was also regularly abandoned by her mother, left in the care of "guardians" ranging from merely inept to deliberately cruel). The book traces her life from her earliest memories - of fidgeting in wood chairs, sticky with sweat, as "Brother Terrell" preached hellfire and salvation to the poor - through her years as a young woman, struggling to reconcile the part of her that loathes the growing hypocrisy of Terrellite movement with the part of her that still believes in the power of faith and love. Along the way, she finds ways to cope (demonstrating a resilience I found both astonishing and heartbreaking) with challenges to include a childhood almost entirely devoid of childish experiences; a nomadic existence featuring a succession of donated "homes", each more bleak than the one before; a mother who consistently choose religion over her children; a brother who suffered from a horrific medical condition; racism and the Klan (tent revivals being one of the few places in the 50s/60s where whites and blacks came together as equals) and - most confusing of all - her relationship with David Terrell, the man who treated her as his own daughter and who regularly shared her mother's bed ... yet who required her to call him "Uncle Terrell" in public, and who never attempted to divorce the wife and mother of his other children.

As I suspect others will do, I approached this book with definite biases that I expected to be reinforced by the author's story. What I found instead was a story much more unsettling, much more morally complex, and much more moving than I expected.