Poetry Saturday: Updike and light verse, with detours through science and suburbia

I was so keen yesterday to slip Phyllis McGinley’s January admonition into the very last Poetry Friday of the month that it didn’t even occur to me to give the late John Updike his due as poet, let alone light versifier; the poet Robert Wallace once called his friend “clearly the preëminent American light-verser of [...]

Poetry Friday: Admonished

Admonition in January (On Passing a Florist’s Filled with Pussy Willows) by Phyllis McGinley An urban mind has learned to bear The calendar’s perpetual treason: Strawberries ripe for winter fare And skating out of season; Shop windows of December, bold With swim suits daringly contrived here, And August magazines grown old Ere June has half [...]

Although we do wash our hands before meals…

“Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat,” [Dr. Joel V. Weinstock] said. He and Dr. [David] Elliott pointed out that children who grow up on farms and are frequently exposed to worms and other organisms [...]

Happy birthday, Edgar Allan Poe

Another bicentennial to celebrate this year: Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809. The fine folks at Naxos Audiobooks, whose Junior Audiobooks selection we are especially fond of, are offering a free download of Poe’s The Raven: The Raven (MP3 file, 8 mins., 2.9 MB) *  *  * And, also from Naxos for another bicentennial, [...]

Say goodnight, Dick

“Goodnight, Dick.” Odd, no?

“A dream and an ideal”

In November 1939, several months after the beginning of World War II, American educator and civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955), who was also a friend and adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor, participated in a panel discussion on NBC’s weekly public affairs radio broadcast “America’s Town Meeting of the [...]

Goodnight, Bush

From Goodnight Bush by Erich Origen and Gan Golan: In the situation room There was a toy world And a flight costume And a picture of –- A refinery plume. And there were war profiteers giving three cheers. A nation great A Church and a State A pair of towers And a balance of powers. [...]

“More precious than diamonds or silver or gold”

From the acceptance speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, delivered at Oslo on 10 December 1964 I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial [...]

The Lincoln bicentennial: New and newish children’s books

To help me keep track of the new books and other resources that are available, I’m putting up this list, which includes something for everyone, from picture books to historical fiction to a graphic novel: Gettysburg: The Legendary Battle and the Address that Inspired a Nation (“A Day That Changed America” series) by Shelley Tanaka, [...]

Sunshine gardens

I was happy to see a new article, “Extreme Makeover:  White House Edition” in Friday’s Wall Street Journal by former House & Garden magazine editor Dominique Browning, whose books I discovered by accident and loved last summer.  The first part of the article is devoted to redecorating the family quarters, frugally and comfortably, but the [...]

Just a theory

To help Cambridge University celebrate its 800th anniversary, illustrator and Cambridge alumnus Quentin Blake has made a series of special drawings of two other celebrated alumni, Charles Darwin (celebrating his own birthday this year) and Isaac Newton. Mr. Blake‘s drawings will be projected onto Cambridge’s Senate House and Old Schools today, Saturday, 17 January (7:15pm [...]

Happier and better

Melvyn Bragg, who’s been popping up around here lately, on his friend and neighbor — and “Libertarian and quaffing socialist” — John Mortimer, who died today, in The Guardian: I’ve known him for years. I made a film about him and never had a dud moment with him. It wasn’t only the jokes and the [...]

Poetry Friday

I was going to skip Poetry Friday today (yet again…) because we’ve been busy, and I’ve been away from the computer, with the Farm Curl (the kids are curling with Tom and two others), a birthday party that suddenly  materialized for tomorrow, and writing 4H speeches, but then I saw that Karen Edmisten is hosting [...]

Radio Darwin

In the comments to the previous post, Sheila mentioned Melvyn Bragg’s wonderful BBC Radio 4 podcast for his show “In Our Time”, which much of the time is a bit beyond the kids, though I like it very much. Now there’s something for the whole family, the “In Our Time” Genius of Evolution broadcasts/podcasts, all [...]

The joy of books, by ear

In the previous post, below, about author Susan Hill and reading literature in the classroom, JoVE commented about some comments in Miss Hill’s Standpoint article, about the benefits of reading aloud, even to older children.  Readalouds are a central part of our day, something which we started long before we began home schooling.  Here are [...]

Fear, loathing, and bad manners in the classroom

Still across the pond, English author Susan Hill, whose books are included in GCSE and A-level syllabi and who has more patience in one pinky than I do in my whole body,  in The Telegraph says that “she has been flooded with ‘desperate’ emails from pupils struggling to understand her novels”: “It saddens me greatly [...]

There’ll always be an England

The latest campaign from across the pond: Save Our Squirrels, with the rallying motto “Save a red, eat a gray!” If you live in the UK and would like to help the cause, you can order your squirrel pâté now. No word on whether red or white wine goes best. As Cluny Brown would say, [...]