Here's a Good One from Echidne...

Echidne has a wonderful post for December 27, "A Fully Wired Dark Age" by Anthony McCarthy.
Here's just one provocative paragraph:

Watching several young teenagers, my nieces, nephews and their friends and their use of online media I’m horrified at what it’s leading to. The sales pitch of lap tops in the schools, of online access was that it was supposed to provide children (and adults) with a hugely expanded source of important information. What I’m seeing is that it is the worst of TV raised to a staggering power.

 The comments for this post are especially thoughtful and thought-provoking. I would add, also, that I totally agree there has been a decline in many young people's ability to navigate the English language. Not all of them are so hobbled by the vastly impoverished offerings in American elementary schools, however. My school-age grandchildren are wonderful writers and readers (though one says he "hates English,") and they are at the same time highly media-savvy. But they have been exposed from the cradle not only to the best writing in children's stories but also the best in books and magazines their parents have left around in the house.

My Baptism Day....

I was born in Nebraska, and when I was one day short of four weeks old, my parents took me to Holy Name parish on December 27 and had me baptized.  I still have the little pink dress they dressed me in. My god parents were the doctor who delivered me and his wife. A good time was had by all.

Baptism is, purportedly, about new life, and on this December 27, I'm starting yet another new life. Appropriately enough, considering they are about beliefs, there are two new items I'm happy to add to my list of "Blogs I Love" for my readers to  njoy. (Thank you all, and Happy New Year coming up!)

#1 is Onward Studio, home of Max Ink Blink Comic's Weblog.  Open Salon has Blink's Christmas Comic "What's to Believe?" I've also posted this on Facebook. So funny, and so right on the mark with what I believe, too.

#2 is Reiko Eoh, one of the authors of Realpolitix.com. Eoh is one off Max Ink's favorites!  and also featured on Open Salon.

I love how you can find stuff you really really like by following your instincts online.

We Write Letters....

I got this letter in an email from Cathy this morning.  It's so wonderful, I'm posting it here with her permission.  We can't all write as well as she can, but we CAN write to our congress critters--even (and especially) the ones who are rock-headedly set against anything even remotely constructive or beneficial. Here's what Cathy wrote:

Wellll, I sent Harry Reid a note thanking him for keeping the Senate working in the face of Republican intransigence.

The only Republican I could think to contact, not being a person who can stand listening to them for more than 3 minutes let alone remember what they say, was Lindsey Graham. Soooo...this letter is a little angry, but at least it gives me the energy to face the dishes.

Dear Sen. Graham,
Of COURSE the Dems are making stinky deals. You Republicans leave them no choice. I--who believe most people have good hearts--can only excuse this by thinking that you and the rest of your party are locked into an ideology that is at best outdated and at worse evil (although perhaps you really don't know it).

Our nation needs health care, sir, and you and the rest of your party can tell our grandchildren and great-grandchildren how you tried every tactic in the book to stop it. Shame on you.

And, yes, you can throw out this note, because, as you see by the address, I am one of the nearly 1 million Americans who is totally unrepresented in Senate. This in the country that calls itself the most democratic in the world. Again, thanks to ideologues, power-logues, and racists such as yourself. Come to think of it, it is not just our grandkids and the rest of humanity that you will have to face, but God Himself. Good luck.

Cathy

"Emily Dickinson: Her True Self" by Flash Rosenberg

Lida Daehlin, an alumna of Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, and a friend & knitting buddy of LRH, sent this wonderful VIMEO recently.  It's by her good friend Flash Rosenberg, and you'll notice on the VIMEO site that there are more of Rosenberg's unique cartoons.  I especially liked the "Mile High and Dry Club." But here's "Emily Dickinson, Her True Self":



Emily Dickinson – Her True Self from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

Many thanks, Lisa!

I hate moving...

...But here i am, doing it again. This is my fate. I have finally wound up entirely alone in a new town--again. I'm tired, and I'm not even one-tenth ready for the movers tomorrow. Well, actually, that's today already. But enough....

Red Nose had a great post today/yesterday (!) in her Holidailies series. It has great photos and sensitive ruminations on her day. She starts out "It seems like nothing has been easy lately," and it hasn't. Her mother is in ill health, and she's been working hard at her job. But at the end, she says her husband smiled at her after work and made her a steak.

Nothing has been easy here lately, either. But believe me, nobody is making me any steaks. I did have a nice chopped salad tonight at the Chop House, though. And the waiter was a nice, friendly guy with a cute smile. God bless waiters everywhere. And God bless the mover guys who are gonna come tomorrow and load up my stuff. And God bless the lady who answers their phones and made sure I'm scheduled.

So, here's to new vistas. The new place has a humongous flat TV thing on the wall in the family room. I just may watch the damn thing if I can figure out how to work it. Or better yet, I may put an ad in the local webthing and see if anybody wants to ride bikes on the many cool paths in the area.

This just in from Dumfries & Galloway: "I got you want for Christmas, ladies version"

Henry sent this on Facebook...it's very cute. Thanks, Henry. What do YOU want for Christmas? Besides an armored bicycle, that is....

Happy Hanukkah, too.....

Cosmic Navel Lint, one of my favorite (excuse me, faVOUrite) blogs from the UK, has this jolly song for all his Jewish readers. I'm pinching, er..reposting, this one, too. Happy Hanukkah, especially to Tracy & Lisa out there in LALALand! and to Barbara and Jutta right down the street. (And you, too, Mo...even though you are Lutheran.) And Cathy, another lapsed Quaker like XE.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

About this time two years ago, I posted cartoonist Joshua Held's video of "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas." It's turned out to be my most popular post of all time, right ahead of the one about our wood stove in Iowa, the one about my Italian hiking boots, and the one about the Deaf KFC in Egypt.

Here's another musical selection for this Christmas season. Hope you like it. I love it. And I pinched it from Wrath of Dawn.

Love my books!

My mother had been a school teacher before she married, and she convinced me when I was about three years old how much fun it would be if I read to her! She gave me a few lessons in phonics, and I was on my way. She would go about her chores in the kitchen or the upstairs rooms while I droned on from the couch. We'd go to the children's section of the library at least once a week in the summer and check out the maximum number of books allowed. And we had a set of John Martin's Big Book--seven volumes of John Martin's delightful poems and rich illustrations plus fairy tales, mythology, Bible stories, simple stories for very small readers, and just plain nonsense that I waded through from beginning to end. When I entered first grade at the age of five, the teacher would pin a note to my sweater and send me up to perform for the 6th grade teacher by reading a sample of their texts for the big kids.

And my brother Gene and I used mom's phonics method to initiate my oldest niece to reading, too. Her mother wanted her to enter kindergarten before the teachers did, so she made an appointment with the school and brought along my niece. When they were seated in front of the teacher, my sister-in-law picked up a copy of the local newspaper, handed it to my niece, and said, "Read the first article for the teacher." My niece read, and she got into school early. She's now a librarian who blogs about her reading.

I love books, but now they've multiplied in my place to the point where I've decided to find new homes for a few bookcases' worth. This is a very slow process, since I keep finding wonderful books I haven't read for a few years, forcing me to sit down and read them again.

One book I found last weekend is a small paperback called Ten Fun Things to Do Before You Die, written by Karol Jackowski. If you like Dave Letterman's Top Ten lists, this is your book. The ten fun things is a list, and at the top is "Have More Fun than Anyone Else." In case you don't know how to have fun, the author has another list: "Four Ways to Have Fun," and number #1 is "Find Fun People." The author helps out here, too, in case you need help recognizing fun people. She tell us "what to watch for": "Good appetite, interesting work, good storyteller, slightly twisted humor, fresh insight, and brave choices." All of my good friends have great appetites. I've never trusted anyone who doesn't love to eat.

Kristin Lavransdatter

I try to read Sigrid Undset's novel Kristin Lavransdatter every year. Last year I missed because I retired and moved. And with a bunch of freelance deadlines and my decision to move yet again, I'm probably not going to read it this year, either.

Happily, however, I rented the movie "Kristin Lavransdatter" from Netflix this week, and once I wade through a bunch of Tukey tables and reformat some references, I'll get to watch it. The screenplay based on the book was written by none other than the superb Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. She directed it, too. When the movie opened in Norway in 1995, more than half of the Norwegian population bought tickets to see it.

Why do I like this book so much and return to it every year? Because every year it's a new book! Every time I read it, I see new things that resonate with my entire life experience. Like this utterance by Lady Aashild: "Love makes hard rules--and breaks them all."

It also depicts a Catholic life such as was not entirely dead when I was a child. True, life in the 13th Century in Norway was far different from mid-20th Century life in Fargo, North Dakota. But there were still pockets of Catholic piety even in Fargo, whose residents were mostly Scandinavian and Lutheran when I blew on the scene at the age of 18 months. Kristin Lavransdatter, the heroine of the novel, lived before the Protestant Reformation. She didn't have to endure the taunts of the followers of Martin Luther: "Dirty Catlicker, mackerel snapper." But her religion was rooted in nature as well as in the church, and it was this that touched me as a lonely kid and moves me still.

The book is full of testaments to God's mercy, also. Mercy seems to have gone by the board in the present-day RC church. The bishop of Washington, DC, has threatened to close down the church's services for the needy in DC if the City Council passes the gay marriage act. Perhaps God is dead, after all. All the more reason for me to drink from the sweet, sustaining well of Sigrid Undset's novel, which is really three books in one.

C'mon, New York....

Digby has a wonderful post today (besides the one on Al Franken). Here's the main part: