They say that boys and men respond better to nonfiction than to fiction. Probably true, overall. As a volunteer at Dan's school library, I've seen far more boys than girls in the nonfiction section. On the other hand, it's not like they're a bunch of history buffs or science nerds. They're checking out books from exactly one category: Legos. And sometimes Lego Star Wars, that insanely popular combination of two already insanely popular brands. Sports, cars, wars, and drawing tie for a very distant 3rd place. If Star Wars counted as nonfiction--and judging by the number of Star Wars encyclopedias out there, it might as well be--it would be right up there with Legos. So maybe there are some latent nerds in the bunch.
And then there's my boy, who enjoys nothing better than a good story. I do love that about him.
Still, he also devours those Lego and Star Wars reference books. What is it about boys and men and their fanatic trivia-hungry little brains? I suppose there must be girls who are checking out horse books and real-life princess books (I hate to stereotype, but I haven't seen a single second-grade girl check out a sports book or a Lego book). Somehow, though, it's just not the same.
Read a discussion of this issue here, at an online teacher forum.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Addenda to Rat-a-tat-tat
1) Context: Four adult siblings (RT and his three sisters) and their sig. o's and kids, matriarch, and patriarch and his sig. o. Middle-of-Nowhere, NY. Two cabins on a lake. 20 degrees Fahrenheit, plus wind chill. Effing freezing for me, "not cold at all" for the Minnesota contingent.
2) If you're a math type, you're going, "Wait. Six guns, seven cousins. Huh?" Why it worked out: Cousin E is a thirteen-year old girl and--as befits a girl of her age and temperament--was wearing inappropriate (for battle, that is) attire. Her micro-miniskirt and high-heeled boots made it unseemly for her to climb the ladders into the lofts, though she was wearing tights. So she got to be Ammo Girl--collected darts that fell short of their targets and returned them to the shooters. One time she forgot herself and climbed too high up the ladder. Her older brother S--who had gotten her that skirt for Christmas, incidentally--shouted, "E! Clothes!" and rolled his eyes and shook his head, "Gahd!" (He's from Minnesota.)
3) Ammo Girl reminds me of J. A few years ago, RT and I went to J's bat mitzvah, where she read the Torah, led the service, and did her parents proud. At the party, she wore a knee-length strapless dress--all grown up. Except that, being only thirteen, she didn't know how to wear that dress and sit on a chair and be lifted above people's heads. Clearly, no one had thought to coach her. It wasn't dreadful, but I don't know how the videographer captured that iconic dance or whatever it is discreetly. Anyway, what a great metaphor for being on the cusp of adulthood.
2) If you're a math type, you're going, "Wait. Six guns, seven cousins. Huh?" Why it worked out: Cousin E is a thirteen-year old girl and--as befits a girl of her age and temperament--was wearing inappropriate (for battle, that is) attire. Her micro-miniskirt and high-heeled boots made it unseemly for her to climb the ladders into the lofts, though she was wearing tights. So she got to be Ammo Girl--collected darts that fell short of their targets and returned them to the shooters. One time she forgot herself and climbed too high up the ladder. Her older brother S--who had gotten her that skirt for Christmas, incidentally--shouted, "E! Clothes!" and rolled his eyes and shook his head, "Gahd!" (He's from Minnesota.)
3) Ammo Girl reminds me of J. A few years ago, RT and I went to J's bat mitzvah, where she read the Torah, led the service, and did her parents proud. At the party, she wore a knee-length strapless dress--all grown up. Except that, being only thirteen, she didn't know how to wear that dress and sit on a chair and be lifted above people's heads. Clearly, no one had thought to coach her. It wasn't dreadful, but I don't know how the videographer captured that iconic dance or whatever it is discreetly. Anyway, what a great metaphor for being on the cusp of adulthood.
Rat-a-tat-tat late at night wit my gat
Probably Dan's second-favorite Christmas present after the Wii was a pair of Dart Tag Fury Fire Nerf guns (they're sold in pairs). I settled on these for three reasons:1) With a pair of guns you can play with a friend (or a little brother),
2) they're not as big, badass, or scary-looking as some of the other Nerf guns out there, and
3) thank the Lord for small mercies, they were the ones that Dan wanted.
What convinced him that he wanted the Fury Fire set was this ridiculous commercial, which he happened to click on when I was surfing the Nerf website way back in November or maybe even October. His jaw dropped and he launched his Fury Fire for Christmas campaign right then and there. Luckily, he didn't see any other commercials.
So I got him the guns and looked forward to watching him open the present at Christmas. It went just as I had hoped it would:
Present distributor: Dan, this one's for you.
DAN: I think I know what this is! (ripripriprip) Yes! Awe-some! Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad! Johnny! Johnny, look! Fury Fire guns!He didn't mind sharing the second gun with Johnny; in fact, he was happy to let Johnny take one. Six-year-old cousin W got a Nerf gun (different model) from his parents too, so as not to be left out. All three little boys were pleased, cute, and eminently photo-worthy.
But the kicker was this: the big boy cousins (ages 17 and 23), were, um, a teeny bit jealous. Or maybe just nostalgic, who knows. So on a Wal-Mart run the next day, some kind aunties and uncles bought three more guns (Nerf, of course--not real guns, which were also available for purchase). And all seven cousins, ages 3 to 23, had a lovely Nerf gun war in the lofts at Aunt 'T's house.
Who knew? And yet, really. Is anyone surprised? I don't think so.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
We jump off the Brooklyn Bridge
 |
| Wii! |
The thing that tipped the scale for me was this: Dan was invited to play at the homes of twelve friends in 2010. Of those twelve households, eleven owned a video game console. It's hard to argue against numbers like that. I know, eleven out of twelve friends is a dumb argument. The image of our family blindly following the families of Dan's eleven friends as they leap off that fabled bridge comes to mind, all twelve families plunging to our watery video game graves.
But it's not the numbers alone. It's what (I think) the numbers mean. Which is this: video games are not the expensive novelty item that they were when I was a kid--they're an essential (well, maybe essential is too strong a word) part of the shared kid experience. Kind of like bikes. And (dare I say it?) guns, which we also got for Dan and his sidekick Johnny, and which will appear in a later post. What it comes down to, I suppose, is that I was beginning to feel sorry for him. It really is kind of miserable when you feel like everyone has something cool and you don't.
A smaller factor was that Dan had pretty much given up on ever getting one. He pined for one every time he came home from a friend's house, but I'm sure he never thought we'd listen. And it's so much fun to grant a wish that someone believes will never be granted.
So, to mix metaphors, it's a slippery slope to the edge of the bridge. First it's a Baskin Robbins Star Wars birthday cake. Then it's Clone Wars cookie cutters, then Captain Rex shoes. Then Nerf guns. And now the Wii, and the frigid depths of the East River in January. But it's okay. It's okay.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Panic
Spent twenty minutes combing the house in vain for Dan's biggest and best Christmas present. Fought back a rising tide of panic as I ransacked every closet, peered under and behind every piece of furniture, checked the tops of kitchen cabinets, rooted around in the crawl space...finally found it (whew!) at the bottom a pile of other boxes that are waiting to go into the crawl space. Hidden in plain sight, as it were. Christmas is saved.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Comeback
After over two months' hiatus, she's back.
Difficulties with Dan (formerly TZ) have sort of sapped my energy of late--and one doesn't like to complain too much on a blog (at least, I don't). But I think things are on the upswing. Also, goofy issues with school and babysitter schedules have taken away a few of the hours I used to use to write.
I was thinking the other day about stuff I used to teach, and I remembered something I loved. That is, fragments of something I loved: moths and fire, the word "immolate", the image of a monk. So I had to google it: poem moth immolate. The poem came right up. When I saw it, I realized there was something else. I thought maybe it was by the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (seach: Tinker Creek; result: Annie Dillard). So I searched for Annie Dillard moth. Ta-daa. I love living now.
The first piece is a poem by Don Marquis in the voice of archy, a cockroach who cannot punctuate or capitalize because he's, well, a cockroach typing on a typerwriter. The second is an excerpt of an essay by Annie Dillard. I especially love the images in Dillard's piece, and I love the voices of the moth and the cockroach in Marquis' poem.
the lesson of the moth
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy
From "Death of a Moth"
One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when the shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspread, flapped into the fire, drooped abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, and frazzled in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, like angels' wings, enlarging the circle of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine; at once the light contracted again and the moth's wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke. At the same time, her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burnt away and her heaving mouthparts cracked like pistol fire. When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone, gone the long way of her wings and legs. Her head was a hole lost to time. All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax---a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle's round pool.
And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth's body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the shattered hole where her head should have been, and widened into a flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like an immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two winding flames of identical light, side by side. The moth's head was fire. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.
She burned for two hours without changing, without swaying or kneeling---only glowing within, like a boiling fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled while Rimbaud in Paris burnt out his brain in a thousand poems, while night pooled wetly at my feet.
Difficulties with Dan (formerly TZ) have sort of sapped my energy of late--and one doesn't like to complain too much on a blog (at least, I don't). But I think things are on the upswing. Also, goofy issues with school and babysitter schedules have taken away a few of the hours I used to use to write.
I was thinking the other day about stuff I used to teach, and I remembered something I loved. That is, fragments of something I loved: moths and fire, the word "immolate", the image of a monk. So I had to google it: poem moth immolate. The poem came right up. When I saw it, I realized there was something else. I thought maybe it was by the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (seach: Tinker Creek; result: Annie Dillard). So I searched for Annie Dillard moth. Ta-daa. I love living now.
The first piece is a poem by Don Marquis in the voice of archy, a cockroach who cannot punctuate or capitalize because he's, well, a cockroach typing on a typerwriter. The second is an excerpt of an essay by Annie Dillard. I especially love the images in Dillard's piece, and I love the voices of the moth and the cockroach in Marquis' poem.
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy
--Don Marquis
From "Death of a Moth"
One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when the shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspread, flapped into the fire, drooped abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, and frazzled in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, like angels' wings, enlarging the circle of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine; at once the light contracted again and the moth's wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke. At the same time, her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burnt away and her heaving mouthparts cracked like pistol fire. When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone, gone the long way of her wings and legs. Her head was a hole lost to time. All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax---a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle's round pool.
And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth's body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the shattered hole where her head should have been, and widened into a flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like an immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two winding flames of identical light, side by side. The moth's head was fire. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.
She burned for two hours without changing, without swaying or kneeling---only glowing within, like a boiling fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled while Rimbaud in Paris burnt out his brain in a thousand poems, while night pooled wetly at my feet.
--Annie Dillard
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