caldecott

i'm excited about reading this book:

I heard about it on All Things Considered in January when they were discussing the American Library Association's awardwinning books for 2007. Here's another NPR clip that goes into more detail about the story.

I let you know how I like it in the end, but I'm excited about it because it looks so interesting. It's a three-inch-thick novel, but over two-thirds of the pages are drawings - so it really is a Caldecott book. The novel moves from words to pictures and back to words again. The plot is carried on by series of pictures; it's almost like a film.

hollis woods

I read a new book last week:

It's a a Newbery Honor by Patricia Reilly Giff.
It was good stuff. I thought it was going to be another Walk Two Moons, but it doesn't end up like that. Not sure if I could have handled it if it did.

The author chose an interesting technique: she interspersed the growing plot with "pictures" drawn by the main character, told in her words. They give insights into Hollis's history so the reader can slowly piece together her story and make predictions about how it's going to end up.

I think it might be a nice book to teach for that reason: I was just discussing ways to teach writing by emulating authors. And for sure it could lead to some good discussion on family and loving.

But either way, it was a nice read now that I'm all done with it. In the process of reading, though, I was in angst most of the time...I'm not sure how much I enjoy this tactic of many adolescent writers: give small, sometimes misleading, pieces of the puzzle, keeping me in anguish over what has happened. My brain is teeming with what might have happened, what must have happened, what I hope has happened, and then it's not till the end of the book when the history and conclusion come together.


i absolutely loved this in Walk Two Moons, but I just couldn't handle the anguish this time 'round. and yet when i was done with it, i went and recommended it. so maybe it's worth it. read it.

our trunk, ME

i'm sorry i'm so slow about posting.
i know i oughta post about maine, so here's a little something to whet your appetite:

me and scout: the condition of the car after a rainy night camping

this was hysterical, as i recall

moving on

compound-complex

a good sentence:

my sister is a puppy raiser for guide dogs and its wonderful when her dog completes its training

1.  Identify the parts of speech including noun, pronoun (type and case), verb (type and tense), adverb, adjective, preposition, conjunction (type), gerund, participle, infinitive, and article.

2.  Identify sentence parts including complete subject, simple subject, complete predicate, verb (transitive or intransitive,), direct object, indirect object, predicate nominative, predicate adjective, appositive or appositive phrase, prepositional phrase (adjective or adverb), gerund phrase, infinitive phrase, participial phrase, object of preposition, object of infinitive, object of gerund.

3. Identify clauses (independent, adverb dependent, adjective dependent, noun dependent), sentence type (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex), and sentence purpose (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory). 

4.  Add capitalization and punctuation including end punctuation, commas, semicolons, apostrophes, underlining, and quotation marks.

5.  Diagram the sentence. 

soundtrack

As I was driving back from Christmas break in Maryland, I did a lot of listening to a variety of music, and began thinking about how different albums and songs reminded me of different points in my life. And since I performed a similar exercise about this time last year with books, I'm trying it with music now.


takes me back

• REM's Out of Time, especially "Shiny Happy People" - middle school

• Audio Adrenaline - Big House - high school youth group....
  
  
• Neil Young Harvest Moon (especially "Old King"); Billy Joel Glass Houses, River of Dreams take me back to high school
  

• Paul Simon's "Call Me Al" and The Phantom of the Opera - singing in physics class, high school junior year (the former because my lab partner Val sang it with her name)

at college

• Tom Petty's Best of, "American Girl" and "The Waiting" - freshman year, college
  The Police: "Every Breath You Take" and Matchbox 20: "3 AM" - freshman year, particularly frisbee on Friday night

• "Jesse's Girl" and "Summer of '69" - summer after freshman year

• Pedro the Lion and Half-Handed Cloud
  

• Ben Folds Rocking the Suburbs, especially "Annie Waits" - summer 2003, cleaning houses on the mtn.

in SK

• Paul Simon's Graceland
• Hem's Rabbit Songs
• Billy Joel's Miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on broadway)
  

driving summer 06

• Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball, especially "Waltz You Across Texas"
• "East Coast/West Coast" & "O I Drive", by Singing Mechanic
  

last year, 2007

• Packway Handle Band
• City Beneath the Sea
  

to say i was addicted to these songs last spring puts it mildly:

• The Weepies's Say I Am You, particularly, om, "Gotta Have You" - spring 2007, especially while reading for my Euro History class
• from Dylan's new album "Spirit on the Water"
• "Our House" by Crosby Stills Nash and Young

driving soundtrack, summer 2007

• "Iowa", Dar Williams
• "I Wish it Would Rain", Nanci Griffith
• "Beautiful Wreck", Shawn Mullins
• "Ford Econoline", Nanci Griffith
• Neil Young's "Cripple Creek Ferry" and Cartalk Tunes - driving with Daniel
• "New Hampshire" by the Brilliant Inventions
  

• and last fall: "As Cool As I Am", Dar Williams
  

and this winter

• Neil Young's Decade, esp. "Winterlong"
• and Over the Rhine's The Trumpet Child

*sigh* i really love music

NYTimes: Migraine

OPINION | February 13, 2008 Migraine: Patterns Oliver Sacks The "visual disturbances" that some migraineurs experience, often magnificent and intricate in design, may offer a glimpse of the geometry of the human mind.

I got a migraine on Monday. I've only have a few in my life - say once a year since the first I recall in middle or high school. I got one last summer that was pretty bad. And then on Monday as soon as I stepped out of the door I got that floaty thing in my eye, and by the time I was at school I had a headache. This article does a good job describing the image I get in my eye: the first paragraph part - I don't have any of those pattern-y things he's talking about, but it's fascinating to see how other people are affected--smells, sounds even. I didn't really know a migraine was before, and this article gave me a tinge of the what's going on in my brain and its effects. (just enough to make me want to learn more.)

I've never had a very serious migraine, and I knew the headache wouldn't last too long if I could just take a short nap, so I tried to wait it out in the office. But it wasn't working: I felt icky, and all the noises were acutely annoying. And then I recalled how the last time I had a migraine I was really pooped all day even after the headache had left. So I went home. And honestly, I wasn't quite myself for two days. I'd still like to know more about the causes, but right now I'm pretty glad to know that I'm not totally weird in this phenomena. One guy who read the article responded and hit the nail on the head.

Interestingly, I never made the association with words getting mixed up (which I do pretty badly anyway), but upon reflection, migraines definitely accentuate this behavior. I always used to say that migraines 'made me stupid' for a few days, and that I couldn't concentrate and everything seemed jumbled up, but this is the first time I've heard this quantified.

i related. wow. one should never try to teach under these conditions.

these quotes litter my desk

"In our language rhyme is a barrel. A barrel of dynamite. The line is a fuse. The line smoulders to the end and explodes; and the town is blown sky-high in a stanza." - Vladimir Mayakovsky


"There's a better way to do it - find it." - Thomas Edison


"Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars." - Henry Van Dyke


"As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." - Paul


"My God, what is a heart
that thou shouldst it so eye, and woo,
Pouring upon it all they art,
As if thou hadst nothing else to do?"
- George Herbert


"Praise to the Lord who doth prosper they work and defend thee
Surely His goodness and mercy HERE daily attend thee
Ponder aNew what the Almighty can do
If with His love he befriend thee."
- Joachim Neander



and they inspire me when i remember to read them.

have you ever seen this?

Tomorrow we are going to study Dada: an anti-art movement that rose out of World War I; artists that wanted to challenge the accepted, blur the boundaries between art and life, and provoke conventionalists.

What's fascinating to to me about Dada is the name. Its precise origins are unknown, but I think the ambiguity is intentional. Dada is a word that means 'yeah yeah' in Romanian. In French it means hobby-horse. It's a word found in several different languages, and the meaningless of the "movement's" title is the point. Of course being called a movement is counter to the whole idea of Dada. But for lack of a better word, we call it a movement, and it's called Dadaism.

We're going to look at the work of Marcel Duchamp mostly. He did the above. He's famous for taking objects already created and "perfecting" them. He would alter them somehow and declare them his artwork. Hence he made ambiguous what could be called art. He termed them Readymades. (I'm particularly good at this type of art. Yes, yes, hold your applause.)

His most startling work - well, depending on who you are: Mona Lisa defaced is pretty startling - is when he took a urinal and signed it. Titled: Fountain.

learning

I used to have a lot of questions about the primaries etc., but I found a good place with answers: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/

You can go here for some basic information which I shamefully needed.  Click on 1 "Primaries and Caucuses" for a neat map of the US that shows who votes where and when month by month.  And I found out the difference between caucuses and primaries.  I'm so glad I feel like sharing.  In a primary, anyone can vote: you don't have to be registered in a party.  A caucus is when only those registered to a specific party vote for the candidate they want.  What I am still confused about is how a state can have both.  Washington has already had their caucuses, but they will have their primaries next week.  Why don't they just have them all the same? I don't know how the votes are apportioned out.  Too confusing.  Click on 2 to find out when the conventions are.  Click on 3 to learn about the Electoral College...that's for another post. 

When you click here you can look state by state to see the results and counts etc. Lots of confusing numbers.  I'm trying to sort out the basic stuff to esplain it to my kids, but I just can't figure out what the simple figure is.  I guess the simple thing would be to say which candidate won which state, but I know that different states get different number of votes, and in some states the winner takes all, and in other states the winner only takes a percentage of the votes equivalent to what they won.  Sheesh that's confusing if you want to try to count up the votes yourself.  So, I guess we won't do that.  

writing

i went looking for some quotes on writing for class
...this one in particular:

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

[which I always thought was said by Hemingway, but apparently erroneously. it's Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith, a famous sportswriter.]


and came across a few that i wanted to share
(some which i might not share with my eighth graders)

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. -Mark Twain

Easy reading is damn hard writing. -Nathaniel Hawthorne

It's not plagiarism - I'm recycling words, as any good environmentally conscious writer would do. -Uniek Swain

I do not like to write - I like to have written. -Gloria Steinem
[substitute the word: run]

I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter. – Blaise Pascal

wif you would like to read this

i would like to draw your attention to the precious language of my dear niece in a comment from Sept. 06 which I recently came across (as i was laboriously fixing the internal links in my old posts...they all still had the old url. i had no idea it would be so much trouble. but tis done now, and done for the best.)


Anna said...

Thank you for being with us and doing what you want. I love you and we like you to come to us any time you can and wif you would like we would meet you when we're going to Prague and what we would do is we would play together but don't forget to bring your telephone. Your telepone is very cool. I can't believe that you get your message in one whole order. but thank you for being with us to our house. All done.

in new hampshire

cont'd: July 20

We picked up Jeremy to join us on our travels
(and I let him drive Scout occasionally - because Scout is so much fun to drive, and she is kind enough to oblige him)

First of course we drove through Vermont.
The Green Mountains are pretty nice, I guess...

Then we went to New Hampshire, straight to the town of Hanover. We were very excited to arrive. We went drove through town to the home of Jeremy's friends and popped out of the car. Jeremy's friends greeted us like they had seen him just the other day and known us all our lives. Turns out it was Mrs. Park*r's birthday.

The Park*rs, who extend their home to all like no one I've ever seen before, invited us to dinner, but we had other plans. Jeremy and Courtney had picked out a restaurant for a birthday dinner. They gave me cards from my friends throughout dinner. Angie's card made me smile a lot. She made me a book of pictures.

Here I am, like the birdy.
(he he - it still makes me chuckle)

The next morning we got a tour of Dartmouth.

Where Jeremy liked to study.

I was very disappointed that we couldn't have tea in the library.
But we played frisbee on the lawn. And visited Robert Frost.
(we had stopped and visited his gravesite too in a little town in Vermont) (check out the weather vane)

We then rented a canoe and went out on the Connecticut River. We first paddled downstream past a dock with a few sunbathers and swimmers. Then past a rope swing with kids lined up to jump off. We saw two guys fall out of a canoe.

And then we stopped at a little island with a tiny beach. The sun was nice and warm: the water was freezing. I wasn't sure I really needed to get in the water. And certainly I needed to warm up first.

But I would be a fool to think I wouldn't be getting wet...and of course eventually I did. We made several attempts to get a picture of us all in the freezing river.

First I (quite willingly) got out of the water to set up the camera on the the picnic table. But I was not deep enough for Jeremy's content. so we went further out while he set the self-timer on...only he didn't make it all the way back to us before the shutter released... More shenanigans involved Jeremy paddling away leaving us stranded on this island...

Naturally he came back for us, and then we had the rigorous battle upstream against the wind. That afternoon we had tea, did a grocery run, and then hung out at the Park*rs. We made our dinner of corn and hot dogs. And then actually slept there, leaving our tents lonely at the camp site a quarter mile away. (ridonculous. but we did have a nice time hanging out at the Park*rs. and two of us were glad to shower. i'll leave it to your imagination which two of us. i'll give you a hint. i wasn't one of them.)

We drove to Vermont the next day to go to church in Woodstock, where the pastor preached the gospel with a boldness and directness I have never seen before.


That afternoon we went tubing down the White River. The Park*rs and friends were going out, and it was awfully nice of them to let us join them for some good times. We piled in a couple of vehicles, one which held our tubes. Then one car was left at a bridge where we'd end.

The river was freezing but the black tube was so nice and warm. We floated along calmly, but I would be lying to say there wasn't some shenanigans too. And we came across some rapid-y places too - more rapid-like than anything I've ever done in a tube. It was exciting (if you've only ever been tubing in the Chattahoochee as far as you can remember). When we arrived at the bridge, Mr. Park*r, Garrett and some others went bridge jumping, which is a regular hobby of theirs. does one call it a hobby? It's a regular activity. Courtney, Jeremy and I watched.

On Sunday afternoon we drove up into the White Mountains to eat at Moosilake, which is apparently tradition for Dartmouthians. (?) We had a family-style dinner there, all quite good, and wandered around a bit. At our table were a few others who, as it turns out, have a mom living in Acadia, our next destination.
he he...i like setting up the camera to take self-timer photos. We were very glad, however, when some friends came along to take the above one, which I think is a nice picture. Courtney wouldn't want her camera to fall off the ledge into the creek.


















On Monday we drove into Vermont to see Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory. Took the tour and got our sample at the end. And of course, in keeping with our trip's motif, we had to visit the cemetery..

I made them pose. Jeremy doesn't look too obliging.
and Courtney wasn't feeling that well.

maybe we were just feeling sad about leaving.

here they rally their spirits tolerably.

It was on the rafting trip, while waiting for several bridge jumpers, that I found a pet. It was a teeny tiny black thing which wiggled in the water like a tadpole. I might add that several of us thought they might turn into tadpoles. We put some of the White River inside an old water bottle we found and scooped up a few of the leettle creatures. And the pet joined us on our journeys through Maine.