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Clarification, s’il vous plait
On Monday, we received a progress report for Maya’s Core Class, and there was a comment in the appropriate field that said, “Missing Work”. Her grade thus far in the class is an A-, so I wasn’t too worried. (I don’t worry too much about grades anyway, but at this school, Core is English and Social Studies, which are Maya’s two favorite classes, so if she’s not doing the work, that would surprise me. Actually, she always does her work, so it would surprise me even if it were a class that weren’t her favorite.) So I thought about it a bit, and sent the teacher an email: Dear Ms.…
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(Not) Wordless Wednesday…Vernal Falls Edition
I was prepared to write up a long post all about our weekend in Yosemite, but Ted beat me to it. He did such an awesome job, you can read all about the bears, etc., here. I got our pictures developed…since we THOUGHT we had forgotten our camera (it was in a side pocket, which we didn’t check. NEWMAN!*), we bought a disposable camera to use…and we only took pictures on the hike up to Vernal Falls. No pictures of any other camping stuff, I’m sorry to say. Anyway, if you read my post on Saturday, you know that hiking to Vernal Falls was the one thing I REALLY wanted…
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Waiting
Waiting is the story of a man, Lin, who lives in Communist China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. He is a doctor in a military hospital, and is satisfied with his life there. His aging parents live in a remote village, and want to arrange a marriage for Lin, so that the wife will care for them in their illness and old age. Lin agrees, and so he is married to Shuyu, a devoted and old fashioned woman who cares very well for Lin’s parents, and gives him a daughter, Min. Lin does not love Shuyu, and never has, but he is grateful to her for all that…
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Stopping Abuse
I read over on Roc Rebel Granny about blog against abuse day, which was last Thursday. I didn’t read about it in time to do a blog post at the time. Coincidentally, I read about a study which suggests that teens with several close friends, especially same sex friends, are less likely than other teens to be in abusive relationships. Here is the article, in its entirety: Teenage girls who stick close with their circle of friends are less likely to take abuse from the boys they date, a new study suggests. The intricacies of the teen years include more than the physical sprouting and associated zits. Teenagers begin to…
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Sunday Book Coveting*
The other day I was walking Genevieve, our lovely dog, and listening to To the Best of Our Knowledge on my beloved iPod. The episode is titled Women & Islam. (You can click from this page to listen, if you wish). The first segment discusses a book titled My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes. I might want to read this book, even though I’m not a big non-fiction reader. It is a series of essays written by Iranian women, and discusses the Iranian revolution, and how it has suppressed women in Iran, and yet in no way has it completely stifled feminism there. From Powells.com: In…
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Vernal Falls
(photo found here) My favorite thing to do in Yosemite National Park is to hike up to Vernal Falls. It’s a moderate hike, and takes awhile, but heck, what else are you going to do all day? 😉 If you’re feeling brave, and you have longer, you can keep hiking up to Nevada Falls. It’s a cool feeling to find yourself at the top of a waterfall (see the tiny person there, to the right of the falls?), and a unique way to experience the beauty of Yosemite. Hopefully, while you’re reading this post, our place is in the process of being sold (goes back on the market today, first…
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Why I Heart This American Life…
You may or may not know that I like to download podcasts of a few of my favorite NPR programs, which I then listen to on my beloved iPod while walking Genevieve in the morning. I download three shows from NPR. The first is Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me, which makes the people walking past me think I’m insane, because I just start laughing out loud to myself, seemingly at nothing. The second is To The Best of Our Knowledge, which I’ll admit is last in my queue, and sometimes I get to it, and love it, and other times it falls by the wayside. The third show I download…
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Calorie Restriction
A few weeks ago, the Sunday SF Chronicle had an article on people who practice calorie restriction as a way of life. I’m sure you’ve read the hypothesis by now…scientists have found that if they feed lab mice 25% fewer calories than their recommended daily intake, the mice live longer. In people who practice calorie restriction, also consuming 25% fewer calories than their recommended daily intake, the health benefits are evident: lower bad cholesterol, higher good cholesterol, healthier arteries, and lower levels of triglycerides. Other benefits include very low blood sugar levels and a very high response to insulin, indicating a very low risk for diabetes. So, if we take…
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Wordless Wednesday – Baby Edition
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The Name Game
Julie Julie bo bulie, banana fanna fo foolie, me my mo moolie, Julie! (The picture is of the newest American Girl doll, Julie!) I’m totally grabbing this one from Susan in Italy, she to whom I am forever indebted, because I found out from her that Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is available via podcast. But I digress. Here’s a fun little meme, in which the goal is “to choose a fact, word or tidbit that’s somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your name.” Since Susan’s blog, Porcini Chronicles, is a food blog, she chose a different food for each letter of her name, and she did a…
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Blessed Rain
We awoke on Saturday morning to a long, slow rain…the first rain of Autumn, coming in like a promise, a promise that unlike last winter, this will not be a drought year…a promise that there will be enough water for everyone, for long showers and healthy lawns…a promise of a change in weather, of crisp cool mornings, yet still warm afternoons. A promise of apple cider and pumpkin pie in our future. Today the sun is out, and they’re saying by Wednesday, it will be back in the mid to high 80s again. But I don’t care. I know, Autumn is here, and though it comes slowly and gradually in…
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On a wire between will and what will be
Have you ever woken up on a Saturday morning with visions in your head, scenes that tell you exactly how you’ll be spending your afternoon? You lay there, eyes not yet open, and you see a middle aged fat man, dancing in a bunny suit at a Halloween party. You hear the sleazy strip club owner call the failed comic in the alligator suit, “Izod”. You hear Alex calling for her elderly friend…”Hannah…Hannah…”, then the capable older woman bluntly says, “She died….yesterday.” Then you see Alex smoking cigarettes and picking at the threads in the holes of her 501s while Kim Carnes sings “I’ll be here where the heart is”,…
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Runaway
Last week, while banished from my house so that painter men could change our walls from a boring white to an inviting brown, I was thankful to live in beautiful California, and that our townhouse has a pool just outside the front door. So, I sat beside the pool and finished the next book in my Book Awards Reading Challenge, Runaway, by Alice Munro. This book won the Giller Prize, which is an award given for outstanding works of Canadian fiction. If you’re unaware of Alice Munro’s work, it is almost exclusively comprised of short stories, and Runaway is no exception. There are 8 short stories in this volume, all…
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Wordless Wednesday
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TiVo Alert
I was listening to Forum, a show that runs on our PBS radio station in the mornings, and they were talking about a film that is being premiered this month on PBS. It’s called “Seeing in the Dark“, and it’s about astronomy, and what individuals see and feel when gazing up at the night sky. Of course, it’s about a lot more than that, but that, and the fact that some of the music is by Mark Knopfler, got me interested. So I’ll be taping it when it airs locally, which is 8pm tonight on KQED. Check it out!