bekahcubed 
Congratulations to Miss Natalie who has won the Anne of Green Gables inspired carpet bag.
Natalie said:
“Dear Becca,
I love your sense of style!Your friend,
Natalie”
Why thank you–and I love spending time with you betwixt Sunday School classes.
Thanks to all who played–it was fun having my first little giveaway!
Prompt #6: “Were you enamored with another era as a child? Is there a time in history you thought it would have been fascinating to live in? Why?”
My answers are simple: Yes, Yes, and because I read it in a book.
When I was in my early elementary years, my Social Studies book had a unit on American Indians–and I was absolutely fascinated by it. I spent long hours poring over that book, books from the library, and most especially the article in the Compton’s encyclopedia about American Indians.
I guess I don’t know which “era” particularly I was interested in, but the “American Indian” lifestyle was what I wanted. Of course, I freely mixed between tribes in choosing what I wanted to emulate.
I would have a Hopi dwelling, an adobe pueblo in the cliffs. I’d wear moccasins (I tried rather unsuccessfully to make my own using some brown fabric I’d found in my mother’s stash.) I’d make beaded buckskin clothing and weave beautiful blankets. Of course, I’d eat pemmican. Naturally. I was an old pro at making it with the maple buds that littered our driveway.
In those days, I loved to practice “stealth”, sneaking up on siblings or otherwise like I would on an animal I was hunting. I also practiced running like the wind, making endless circles around our darkened church sanctuary while my parents were having Bible study in the fellowship hall.
Later on, pioneer days appealed, fueled by my love of the Little House books and Janette Oke’s “Love Comes Softly” series.
I wanted to build a house from logs found by the crick bed, chink it up with a nice mud plaster. I wanted to stuff a tick with feathers or hay (my romantic ideas didn’t really consider allergies those days). I wanted to kill a chicken and boil it, to sun-dry wild-grown fruit, to make cheese from my own cow’s milk.
Thing is, this particular yen didn’t die.
I don’t yearn for those days anymore (since my romantic view has tarnished somewhat and realizes that being a pioneer would be HARD work)–but I still want to do all that stuff.
Reality shows were just beginning when I was in high school, and I dreamt of a show that I’d be on that would let me pretend to be a pioneer for a month or a year. (Eventually, I think PBS did create a similar show, but I haven’t seen it.)
Now, as I window shop for houses, my heart is often pulled to those properties with a house that’s not at all a house of my dreams but that has the luxury of 19 acres or 23. A crick. Outbuildings.
I could keep a cow, I think–fresh milk for making cheese. (Yeah right–my family comes from dairymen, and keeping dairy cattle is seriously hard work.) I could heat my home with wood I “make” myself (as my family calls it when they ask my grandparents if they can come up to “make wood”.) I could grow everything I need to live on, keep bees for honey, maybe get sheep and take up weaving.
Never mind that keeping such a home would be a full-time occupation for more than one person–and that it’d probably leave little for paying the infernal property taxes. It’s still a pet dream of mine–to escape into back-to-the-land pioneering.
Of course, I have to make a living, so these imaginings stay in the realm of imagination. But this year I have a plan to do some of my pet projects. I have a friend who keeps chickens and I plan to buy one. I have some whipping cream ready to be churned to butter. I have recipes for cheese and some rennet stored up. I’m gonna be a pioneer some day, you just wait and see.
Surely I’m not the only person who has at times wished she belonged to another era. As I’m reading Little House in the Big Woods, I’m reminded of some of the times I wished I lived in while I was still a child. Thus this week’s prompt:
Were you enamored with another era as a child? Is there a time in history you thought it would have been fascinating to live in? Why?
After reading two of the “Easy Reading” Cybils finalists, my conclusion is sure: I hope any children I might have pass VERY quickly through the easy reading stage.
Dodsworth in Rome by Tim Egan is like a remarkably muted Amelia Bedelia. Dodsworth and “the duck” arrive in Rome. Dodsworth announces their destination: “Rome!” So the duck begins to roam.
The two visit the famous sights of Rome on a motor scooter, the duck with his eyes tightly shut (riding on a motor scooter can be rather scary, you know). They visit the Sistine Chapel–and the duck tries painting a duck on the ceiling. They visit a flea market, where the duck warily watches out for fleas.
Things happen. The duck is mildly amusing. The book overall is rather boring.
I don’t think it’s the book’s fault so much as the genre’s.
Frog and Friends is slightly more interesting–each chapter acts as a discrete story, similar to a story one might find on the typical picture book shelf.
Frog and his friends find a balloon and try to figure out what kind of animal it is. They grab ahold of its tail and get the surprise of their life when a gust of wind sends them sailing through the air aloft–until the balloon pops. They give the pieces a decent burial, sadly realizing that they will never know what the THING was.
In the next story, frog is gifted a scarf that he immediately pronounces as “perfect”. When he discovers that it’s not so perfect, he regifts it to someone else, who also announces it perfect only to find that it’s not. The regifting continues until frog gets it back. This time, the gifter provides some scarf-tying assistance and the scarf is at last deemed perfect–and truly is.
Finally, a hippo runs away from the zoo and decides to hang out in frog’s pond for the rest of his life–something frog’s not so sure about. How can frog show hospitality while still convincing the hippo that maybe he doesn’t want to stay quite so long?
The individual stories that made up Frog and Friends are cute, while not particularly spectacular. But I rather suppose that’s how it is with Easy Readers.
The mercy, I suppose, is that these readers are supposed to be able to be read independently–so as long as your child can do it on your own, you won’t have to put up with it too long. Even so, I hope every child makes it quickly through this stage and on to books with actual plots.
These books were both Cybils Easy Reader Finalists. I read them as a part of Amy’s Armchair Cybils. Clearly, I’m not a fan of the genre–but Frog and Friends was amusing and it’d be my pick for winner (of the two I read). I can’t help thinking, though: “If these are the best of the best…” Yeah. Scary.
Do you know who Jane Goodall is?
If you’re like me, you’d answer that question in the vaguest of terms: “Isn’t she the environmentalist… likes monkeys… kind of homely?” (And now you’ve discovered my sad secret: I judge famous people by their looks–or at least classify them by their looks.)
Me…Jane by Patrick McDonnell doesn’t give that much information about Jane, but it’s enough to get a child interested, I think.
This picture book tells of the young Jane and her stuffed chimpanzee Jubilee. Jane loves to be outdoors and wants to learn everything she can about plants and animals.
She dreams of someday going to Africa, where she’d live with and help the animals.
Each double-page spread contains only a few lines of print on one side of the page and a softly colored illustration on the opposite side–until the last page.
“At night Jane would tuck Jubilee into bed, say her prayers, and fall asleep…
to awake one day…
to her dream come true.
The final page, with that final line on it, bears a photograph of the grown-up Jane holding hands with a chimpanzee in Africa.
The second Fiction Picture Book Finalist I read couldn’t be more different than the first.
Where Me…Jane has muted colors, Press Here by Henre Tollet has bold colors. Where Me…Jane is written in past tense, with little action, Press Here is written in present imperative.
The picture: A bright yellow dot in the center of the first page. The imperative: “Press Here and Turn the Page.”
One dot turns to two.
Press again, the next page has three yellow dots. Rub the dot on the left and it turns red.
In this high tech world where children play on iPads before they’re potty-trained, Press Here is a delightful bit of magic.
With nothing more than pages and dots, Tullet creates a world of interactive fun.
But unlike with the iPad, this book lets kids see the mechanism–and be the mechanism. This is to the iPad what a flip-book is to cartoons–and (in my semi-Neo-Luddite mind) is ten times better than any “technological marvel.”
Press Here has advantages beyond its novel concept, though. The primary-colored dots overlap to form secondary colored segments (like a Venn diagram, anyone?) The instructions help the child learn right and left (they can tell they picked the wrong side if the colored dots move in the wrong direction). At least one spread allows kids to do some trouble-shooting with pattern recognition (which dots are out of order?)
Mothers will delight in sharing this little book with their children–and will find endless ways of turning the simple text and even simpler graphics into learning opportunities for their preschoolers.
These books were both Cybils Fiction Picture Book Finalists. I read them as a part of Amy’s Armchair Cybils. For the record, I’m rooting for Press Here for the big one.
At long last, my library trip has yielded a treasure-trove of Cybils nominees. Which means I’m frantically reading nominees from each category, hoping to still accomplish my original goal (of reading one book from each category.)
So far, Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu has completely stolen my affections. It’s fantastic.
“She stood looking at the line of trees that demarcated the woods as clearly as any doorway. Uncle Martin was right. She knew it at that moments. There were secrets, and there were witches in white, and somewhere there was Jack.
She wished he were with her now.
Hazel had read enough books to know that a line like this one is the line down which your life breaks in two. And you have to think very carefully about whether you want to cross it, because once you do it’s very hard to get back to the world you left behind. And sometimes you break a barrier that no one knew existed, and then everything you knew before crossing the line is gone.
But sometimes you have a friend to rescue. and so you take a deep breath and then step over the line and into the darkness ahead.”
~Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu
Have you met one of those lines, a line where life breaks in two?
Will you step into the uncomfortable to go on a mission trip? Will you break off that relationship you know you shouldn’t be in? Will you venture into an unknown city? Will you give up your most cherished dreams?
You stand at the line, indecisive, knowing that what you decide will change your life.
Behind lies comfort, life as it’s always been. Predictability. Safety. Concrete reality.
In front lie only questions.
Will you go?
Will you risk having your life broken in two?
I’ve stood at the line many a time. Will I go? Will I venture? Will I enter the unknown?
Sometimes you have a friend to rescue–or sometimes you realize that the friend beckoning on the other end wants to rescue you.
So you take a deep breath and then step over the line and into the darkness ahead.
What are some of the lines you’ve stepped over–and why did you cross them?
Don’t forget to take a look at Barbara H’s meme “The Week in Words”, where bloggers collect quotes they’ve read throughout the week–and Amy’s Armchair Cybils where we’re reading Cybils nominees.
Prompt #5: “Have you ever had your ears pierced? Where did you go to do it? Who went with you? What were the first earrings you bought yourself after you had this done?”
If I remember right, Anna and I didn’t have an official “age” for when we could get our ears pierced; but our cousin, who is seven months old than me and seven months younger than Anna, did.
Ariann could get her ears pierced when she turned eight.
So Anna and I did too (I think).
I don’t remember, actually, whether we each got our ears pierced on our respective eighth birthdays or whether we both got our ears pierced on the same day sometime in the general vicinity of one or the other of our eighth’s.
I do remember though, the events that took place shortly after getting my ears pierced around age eight.
I was standing up in the dining room, probably clowning around, talking with Anna, who was draped over a dining room chair coo-cocky. Her leg was over the chair, her bare foot making circles in the air.
Whether she initiated it or I did, I do not know, but somehow her toes got caught in my brand new earrings–and pulled.
A little rip in the ear and having earrings wasn’t quite so fun.
I dealt with the crust and goo and pus and infection for a while, but finally gave up on the matter, taking out the studs and not replacing them.
It was a rather short-lived adventure.
Every so often, for a special event, I’d stick a needle through my ear–open it up just enough to wear earrings for a night. But those times were few and far between, and always ended with another bought of painful infection.
I let them close up for good and rarely thought twice of it.
Until I decided I wanted to try to do 2012 things in 2012.
I figured, why not?
So Ruth and I read a few WikiHow articles.
I turned down my sister’s offer of Lidocaine, smeared Anbesol on my ear, numbed it with an ice cube for good measure.
Ruth sterilized the needle with a lighter, dropped it in a rubbing alcohol bath, put on gloves over her washed hands.
I prepared the potato and held it to the back of my ear. Ruth found the trace remnant of my previous holes and pushed the needle through the scar tissue into the potato.
I grabbed the needle from behind while Ruth extricated a stud from the alcohol bath. I removed the needle as slowly as I could, pulling it all the way through the back rather than returning the now-contaminated needle through the hole again. Ruth followed my extrication as carefully as she could with the stud. We anchored the stud in place with the earring back, and turned to the second ear.
It was relatively quick, painless, inexpensive, and rather a priceless experience.
Best of all?
A week and a half out, my ears aren’t flaming red, aren’t seeping pus, and aren’t painful to touch.
Instead, when I look in the mirror, I smile at my gorgeous new earrings, and thank Ruth for joining me in my 2012 adventure!
I just recently got my ears pierced (not for the first time)–so I figure now’s as good a time as any for us to tell our piercing tales.
So here’s tomorrow’s question:
Have you ever had your ears pierced? Where did you go to do it? Who went with you? What were the first earrings you bought yourself after you had this done?
Working with the elderly has a way of bringing life into focus.
It reminds us of our frailty, of the finiteness of our strength and vigor. It makes some of us fear growing old, others laugh about what kind of a cantankerous old person will be, still others eager for their own twilight years.
I know it has made me think both of the blessedness of my current youth–and my determination to be thankful and content both now and when my youth is gone.
Because there’s nothing worse than being unthankful for a gift when you have it only to be bitter once the gift is gone.
This week I’m thankful…
…for eyes that can see the subtitles on my tv screen.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. If I couldn’t read, I would be lost. But even should God take my eyesight (and I rather expect that, given my lineage of eye disorders), I will still choose to be thankful
…for ears that can hear the podcast being played from my MP3 player.
I’ve been storing up comments on what I’ve been listening to, intending to someday write posts on items as diverse as the laws of physics, Blaise Pascal’s wager, and dichotomy vs. trichotomy–all sparked by podcasts. I’m so thankful for how my ears have awakened my brain–and kept me awake–on my drives home after dark. But even should God take my hearing, I am thankful that there is a still small voice that can be heard without human ears.
…for a tongue that tastes the spicy heat of Buffalo Chicken Pizza and the sweetness of Ooey-Gooey Caramel Pumpkin Blondie Thingies.
One’s sense of taste diminishes as one ages. As one old lady told me today “It has no flavor and it’s too spicy.” I hated to tell her that the change in her perception of the food over the past three years probably hasn’t been as much about the food as it has been about her taste-buds. Yet even when my taste buds fail, I will be thankful that I can still taste and see that the Lord is good.
…for arms that can reach and bend and lift
I carry what seems like a half dozen bags, between my purse and my “travel bag” and my briefcase and sometimes a bag of books or whatnot. I’m so thankful that my (admittedly weak) arms have the strength to manage my daily activities. But even when my arms fail, I am thankful that there is One whose arms never fail, who holds me there in His unfailing arms.
…for feet that can walk
I’m a walker. I don’t like to talk on the phone if I can just walk down the hall and talk to you face to face. I’d rather not save my steps when carrying charts to a meeting–I’ll take as many trips (heavy-laden) as necessary to avoid having to use a cart. But even youths grow tired and weary. Even young men stumble and fall. But I am thankful that those who wait on the Lord will soar on wings like eagles–even when their legs can no longer hold them.
Here, in the dawn of my life, I will choose to cultivate thankfulness. And someday, when the twilight comes, I pray that I will be thankful in that as well.