Sunday, March 29, 2015

Too much reading?

Here is a question:

Can you read too much? Is there such a thing?

Isn't that sort of like doing "too much charity work" or being "too nice" or "too pretty"?

Reading is not only fun, it's educational and whatnot. Who ever says "You learn too much! Stop learning things."

No one, that's who.

But then, people say, "Everything in moderation."

Does that mean I have to be moderate in my reading? Is it selfish of me to read? If the world was ending and I just sat on my couch and read would I be crossing a line?

I really want to know. Please tell me what you think.


Thursday, March 26, 2015

The Alot -- A Beast of Mythic Fame

No Blogspot, this is not a typo. I know a lot is not one word... I distinctly remember banging my head against the table while grading 7th, 9th, and 10th grade papers. "Why is it so difficult?" I would groan, circling yet another miserable alot in yet another miserable essay.

Enter Hyperbole and a Half. This blog traipsed into my life with a solution that was so entertaining,  true, and obvious that I wondered where it had been all my life.

The beautiful and brilliant and talented and GENIUS blogger (no, I don't know this person. No, she did not pay me to write this. Yes, she is that awesome) over at Hyperbole and a Half introduced me to the ALOT. Here is a picture she drew of the Alot:
This image was drawn by Allie Brosh. Click here to visit her blog.
I taught my kids about the Alot monster and they stopped using alot and started using a lot overnight. Every once in a while one or two kids would revert back, but I like to think it was on purpose now and not because they didn't know any better.

I hope I've intrigued you. If so, click here to read about this wondrous creature and put some socks on because you're about to laugh them off. And I don't want to know what would happen if you started laughing your socks off and DIDN'T HAVE ANY SOCKS ON!

Also a word to the lazy reader, who just can't seem to drag that little mouse arrow over to the link and click on it...because then you'd have to wait for a page to load and you don't have the time, and who knows what it might do to your internet tabs (I know; I've been there - will it open a new tab or navigate away from this page? What if it isn't funny? Why didn't this person just paste the whole story here so I don't have to click on links all the time?). But I must insist. You must go learn about the ways of the Alot. You will thank me in the comments if you do.

Also please share with all your teacher friends. It will save their forehead from a perpetual bruise.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Harper Lee's New Novel...Please contain your excitement.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time a few years ago when I had to teach it to my sophomore class. I was (and still am) in awe of Atticus - not because he was the perfect parent, but because he was so human and natural with his children. I remember thinking that if I ever became a parent, I wanted to be like Atticus. Except I wanted my children to call me mom, not by my first name.

A few months ago I heard the delightful news that Harper Lee had been harboring a sequel, a book that was actually written before To Kill a Mockingbird, but which takes place after the events in To Kill a Mockingbird.

The good news is we don't have to wait too long either (I mean other than the 55 years we had to wait already...) -- the book is scheduled to be published in July.

For more info, listen to or read this snippet from All Things Considered.

So just how excited are you about this? Let me know in the comments.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Ode to Imagination

The other day I took my friend's kids to the park. They are ages 4 and 2 and Baby Melon is almost 10 months now. I feared for myself. But, like all good warriors, I strapped on my armor (or in this case my baby carrier), made good use of my pockets, and dove into the fray.

It was great actually. The oldest is right at that age of make believe where you don't need anything to play other than a wide open space for lots of running and falling over dead. During one of his make believe escapades, he raced out of the jungle gym yelling, "Quick, we've got to get away from the bad guys!" Another little boy who was probably around the same age looked at his mom with sudden anxiety: "Bad guys?" he whimpered. "No, no," I looked at the mother apologetically, "these are just pretend." The little boy looked relieved. Meanwhile my friend's son had fallen over "dead" in the dirt.

I was delighted to see that someone in the world still only needs their imagination and their pointer finger (for a gun, of course) in order to enjoy themselves. I so rarely see that anymore, which is probably because I don't spend a lot of time with children that age, but also because of the evil television. I say that jokingly. I love TV and movies, especially good TV and movies. I'm really not super anti-TV. I'm just anti-only-TV.

I've been rereading the Anne of Green Gables series and Anne has imagination to spare. She has so much imagination that it makes me feel like a dull lump of reality-focused clay. Not only do I want "kids these days" to be more like Anne, I want to be more like Anne.

Why does Anne have so much imagination and I seem to have so little? What can I do to be more imaginative? After considering this for some time, I decided that Anne's main inspirations for imagination include people, books or poems, and nature.

Not even the Anne girl can just imagine things out of thin air. She needs a spark, some ideas rolling around in her head to begin with. My little friend on the playground needed to read stories about bad guys in order to make up his own. As Tozer pointed out, "We learn by using what we already know as a bridge, over which we pass to the unknown. It is not possible for the mind to crash suddenly past the familiar into the unfamiliar." I would add that we imagine by using what we already know as a bridge from the real to the unreal. For Anne, the starting point for her imagination is always a combination of people, stories, and nature.

These are often things that we don't let into our lives. I live in an apartment complex, where my view of the sky is blocked by a large hotel and a call center. When I drive I listen to music or the radio, when I'm bored I look at my phone (there's an app for boredom). I do read a substantial amount, to be fair, but I know lots people don't have the time. But Anne had the time. Anne looked at the sky, not her phone; Anne looked at people and if she didn't talk to them, she imagined things about them; if she did talk to them, then she imagined things about them later based on what they had said. I'm going to try to be more like Anne in the hopes of resurrecting my imagination.

So this is my exhortation: Feed your imagination, lest it die. Give it whatever it needs: people, books, and nature, or stranger fare than these. It is imperative that we do this -- otherwise we will be left scared on the jungle gym while others fly by us in a rush of enthusiasm for things unseen.

What sparks your imagination?