Reading IS Fundamental

Originally uploaded by katzeye

Reading IS Fundamental

We had company the other night, and my sister-in-law was telling me about a school district with which she is familiar (I think she said that one of her kids are in this district, and I am hoping that my memory is inaccurate on this detail), that has decided to eliminate all literature classes because the kids need to be taught the basic skills of spelling and grammar instead.

Now, I would be the first to agree that such basics as spelling and grammar have totally slid into a black hole and that it appears that illiteracy is experiencing a revival. I suspect that TV was the first hit on literacy. Some people began to watch more and read less. Computers took a hit, as they provided additional entertainment and encouraged less reading. Instant messaging and text messaging seem to have delivered grave blows to literacy.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a passion for technology, and don’t know where I’d be without texting, but I am concerned that we are losing something.

All around me, even in professionally printed signs, and professionally designed websites, I see the following:

“Your really gonna love this.” I am somewhat okay with “gonna” because it is just slang, and as long as it doesn’t start to appear in scholarly essays, I will just accept that. But “Your” is a possessive so it means, “your dog,” “your hat,” “your husband”, “your illiteracy.” It can never mean, “Your invited,” or “your so funny!” Your so funny what? Your so funny dog, hat, husband, or illiteracy?

It’s YOU’RE invited, which means, YOU ARE invited!! You are likely to appreciate this (your really gonna love this)!

Also, “each other” are two words, not “eachother,” and “a lot” are two words and not “alot,” and it’s “we were supposed to…” and not “suppose to,” and it’s we went “across the street,” not “acrossed the street,” or “acrosst,” It’s “I’m not used to this,” not
I’m not use to this,” and, “this just makes things worse,” not “worst,” etc.

Oh, and these ones really get me, “Me and him went to the park,” “Her and I had an argument,” “His and I’s website.” What the hey? What’s with that? I am starting to think that there is a new, emerging sub language of illiteracy.

And while I am at it, an apostrophe is not required before every “s” and quotation marks are only used for quotations or for “supposedlies.” Yes, it is okay, rarely, to make up words, and I just made that one up to describe itself. I was a teenager in the 1960s. Notice, there is no apostrophe. I buy a lot of blank CDs and DVDs. NO APROSTROPHE!!! Are these Sheila’s CDs? Notice where the apostrophe goes. It is used for possessives, contractions, and, in pairs, for a quote within a quote.

So, yes, illiteracy is on the rise. And yes, something has to be done about it. I have gone to forums online to learn how to do some technical thing, or to get some kind of information and found people writing as if they are adults who stopped learning to write in the 1st grade. I do not have the patience to try to decipher someone’s inability to write a clear sentence.

I used to work for an English professor at CSULB. He was working with seniors in the teacher ed. program, and gave me their essays to evaluate and grade. It was the most depressing job I ever had. These were students about to graduate, get their teaching credentials, and teach our children how to write. 80% of these students had trouble constructing a clear sentence. Terrifying!

So, it is true that students need to learn the basics of writing clearly and intelligibly. But do we go about that by eliminating lit classes?

As a very young child, I was surrounded by a plethora of endless books. There were floor to ceiling bookshelves, but, in addition, there were bookshelves in every room of the house, and I do not exaggerate. I grew up with the idea that books were important, that they lined the walls of homes, and that they were worth reading, regularly. My parents read daily, and they read to us daily. My dad read us Shakespeare, Milton, Carroll and The Wind in the Willows from the time we could sit on his lap. Those are among my favorite memories.

I recall longing to learn to read, and before long, I was. Fortunately, my reading habit was fairly well established prior to first grade, when suddenly I was confronted with Dick and Jane. Such a contrast to Shakespeare!

When I got to HS, I was fortunate to attend a savvy school that had majors. They saw that while my math skills might be lacking (largely due to a lack of interest), (no pun intended), that my literary skills were big and wide, and so, I was able to skip the basic English classes where they studied grammar, punctuation, and sentence diagramming (remember that?). I was declared an English Lit major and I was put into all the best, most interesting literature classes and so, throughout HS, I was able to learn Middle English, analyze poetry, write all kinds of stuff, and read a very amazingly wide gamut of literature from around the world and from many centuries.

So, one might ask. How did I learn enough basic grammar skills to be able to be a freelance editor today?

I learned it from reading. I can skim a work of text and my head and my eye, instantly spot the punctuation error, the sentence that is poorly constructed, the descriptive word that, due to its position in a sentence, is describing the wrong word, and the ungrammatical usage. It’s not because I am some kind of idiot savant, it is not because I use my computer’s spell check or grammar check (and those can be inaccurate) and it is definitely not because I have studied these basics. It is because I have been read to since birth, and because of that, learned to read at age 4, and because of that, have had a passion for books, and because of that, I have an inherent knowledge of how things are to be written.

I have never had a basic English class. Never.

I have a friend who has taught them, though, at the college level. She is very smart and has written books on Shakespeare for kids. She wrote her dissertation on how language skills affect thinking skills. Often, people think that the words that we use are a result of our thoughts. This is true at a simplistic level. But her theory is that the better our literary skills; the better we can think.

Anyone who has learned another language knows how it opens you up to the nuances of the human experience. There are words in French, for instance, for feelings, that do not translate into English. So, if you only know English, you could even be limiting your emotional experiences!

So, I wish to declare that the way to increase literacy is not through memorizing rules of grammar, it is through loving to read, continuing to love to read, and in reading as much as possible, always! It’s just that simple! And that, wonderfully complex!

what a nut!

what a nut!
Originally uploaded by katzeye

I wrote about this photo on my blog at www.kcpetersen.com.

It's about how a child in a photo shoot is a fleeting thing, and, in real life, too.

Soak up your kids, immerse yourself in them, while you've got them.

In a sigh, they are grown up and moving all over the world!

iMac or Macbook Pro?

Kiera in my office
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Time for a new computer, looking at iMac or Macbook Pro. Any suggestions?

Altruism

Originally uploaded by katzeye

Altruism

Someone used to argue to me that there is no such thing as altruism. Every good deed has some kind of selfish motivation, whether overt or covert, subtle or transparent, large or small.

Perhaps he was right, although I am not ready to let go of the idea that altruism can exist, does exist, and has existed.

Nevertheless, we must examine our motivations for good deeds, service, charity, etc. I did just that recently. I participated in “Project Easter Basket.” It’s a service project wherein an individual or an organization shops for and creates an Easter Basket for a needy kid.

When the project was presented to me, I only had a moment to consider and to indicate the gender and age of the recipient, among several choices ranging from age 2 to age 14. I chose a girl around age 10.

The day before the Easter basket was due, I did the shopping. I hadn’t had time to look at what was on the list until I was on my way to the store. It was much more involved than I had anticipated, as it included such things as “4 hygiene items,” “4 school supplies,” “4 items of essential clothing,” etc. and there were listed suggestions for the several categories. Also included were toy and candy categories, of course.

It wasn’t until I began to shop that it started to become evident why I had chosen that category. I’d had three sons and then a daughter. The sons were adventurous, challenging, exhausting, loving, and a lot of fun. I’d enjoyed adventures with my brothers, while growing up, so I was prepared to be the mother of equally adventurous sons.

My daughter was also adventurous, and was able to fit right in with her brothers, but we had a special mother-daughter bond that was emphasized by our being the only girls in the family.

And when she was 10 years of age, that bond was even more important, in ways that she could not have realized.

It was around then that doctors found an angioma in my brain. They said that it was about ten years old, and probably occurred during childbirth. It was a cluster of abnormal blood vessels in the brain, that may have happened due to a birthing injury, such as possibly pushing too hard during childbirth ten years earlier. They weren’t sure what degree of angioma it was, but they felt certain that it was causing some serious problems, and that I would probably die of a brain hemorrhage in about two weeks.

I’d tuck my daughter into bed at night, and I was unable to avoid remembering that I had her in my mid-thirties, which, at that time in medical history, made me an older, at-risk mom, and, yes, well, it was a natural childbirth and it was difficult to get me to temper the consuming desire to push.

The complexities of loving my daughter and considering that my birth experience with her might make it impossible to raise her were nearly overwhelming. But, eventually, I was able to find a calm and peaceful place that was not only delicious to the soul, but it made every second of my life precious and expanded with vitality.

It was probably three weeks later that a special team of doctors researching my case came back with a revised prognosis that extended my life span.

But during that time, when my daughter was ten, my relationships were extra special, and more important than much else.

So, I went into the store to shop for a ten-year-old girl, and it was so easy, because I picked out the things that my daughter would have loved. And as I did this, it felt cathartic in some way. It was a time of revisiting that bittersweet time, that time when time stood still and became so expanded and so precious.

I picked out special and precious things. And they were not over budget. It was if the universe was assisting as I found wonderful things that a ten-year-old girl would love, and each item was marked down. I couldn’t believe it. I never do that well when shopping for myself!

I brought the items home and showed them to Mark as I prepared them and wrapped them up in an Easter basket lined with cellophane.

It sat in our living room all the next day, and as I passed it, I remembered the experience of shopping for the unknown girl, and my experience with my own daughter at that pivotal time, and I thought of each item and how the unknown girl might like them.

I wished that I could give it to her myself, and see her expressions when she took out each item. I wondered if her eyes would grow large when she saw the pretty summer dress I put in the basket, or the glowing flower pen. I wondered if she would immediately eat the jelly beans or save them to savor later.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought about how we receive pleasure in seeing someone’s response to our gifts. So perhaps it is more altruistic to give blindly like this. I won’t know the girl who will receive my basket. I won’t see her receive it.

As it turned out, my husband even delivered the basket to the collection location, so I never even got to see my basket join the others.

I just had to let go. I just had to simply send my good deed out into the universe, anonymously.

I think that there is a certain degree of altruism to that.

But, when I think about it, my contentious debater was right to a degree. No matter how altruistic we may be, we can not even get close to being as altruistic as He for whom Easter is celebrated.

But the example is there for us, and we can at least attempt to follow it.

soar

soar
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Is it time to soar yet?

Sometimes I think I am so tied down with so many things that I can’t get off the ground. But a lot of it is stuff that I want to do/choose to do.

But as I approach my “golden years,” not sure if this is referring to the sunset time of our lives or if it means jaundice, or that we should now, suddenly wear a lot of golden jewelry, I find myself in a quandary:

I don’t like to waste time. I like to waste time.

Okay, so I don’t like meetings, I get restless in them, and if they are not accomplishing something really superb then they are a waste of time. I wonder to how many hours of meetings have I been subjected in this lifetime so far? Can’t I get a pass on them from now on?

I like to dilly dally and lolly gag and think and ponder, and explore.

But, uh, there is still so much I want to do and who knows how many years are left. Granted, when I was young there were no guarantees there, but at least then, I could consider that I had 50 or 60 very likely. Now I have to consider that I have between six months and twenty years. 20, that’s not much. Especially if you consider that the possibility of disability (ew, that rhymes) is pretty high and getting higher.

That makes time precious and so, the people who mess up an order and I have to call them daily to either get what was ordered or my money back, and the person who corners me to tell me all about his or her ill-fated love life, or the traffic jam because about 150 cars must drive into the school parking lot to deliver their kids and so they back up traffic off campus for two long blocks, or a movie that is so lame, so predictable, so boring; out with them!

Our beloved computers, meant to save us time, can be like traffic jams, too. I am finding myself starting to eliminate internet “friends,” “contacts,” etc. who are more inclined to detract than to enhance. Same with clothes, products, books and mags, and situations.

I want to write in my journals/family and personal histories, do genealogy, help people, write a collection of short stories, write a novel, take the perfect photograph, get my business running smoothly (as if), lose weight, see the lands of my ancestors, learn to use photoshop, organize all my photos (like about a trillion of them, okay, a billion, but for sure no fewer), spend time with family and friends, but life gets in the way, always, daily.

Life has to be more than doing laundry, loading/unloading the dishwasher, cooking, cleaning, errand running, appointments and meetings, right? What do you say?

Traditional and Crazy Christmas Traditions

Originally uploaded by katzeye

homemade tamales. my dad worked downtown, near the music center, and on Christmas Eve, he had more time off, and he would go to the music center and listen to music and go to the local places he knew so well for authentic, homemade tamales. He'd get a bunch of them. I don't remember if we had them on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Maybe that depended. But we had them.

wooden shoes and clogs. Dutch tradition. Sinter Klas would appear in the area starting December 6th. I think his sidekick was Black Pete, but there was a Dutch name for him, that translated to something like that. So, sometimes on that date, we'd line up wooden shoes (they had a dutch name too, trying to remember that, z something), or clogs, or any roomy shoe if one did not possess a wooden one (I had wooden clogs up until recently, actually). We'd put carrots and straw in the shoes for the reindeer. In the morning (the 7th or the 25th, depending), there would be a small surprise in each shoe to replace the carrot or straw.

Cookies and Milk for Santa. We'd leave notes for Santa, usually notes of thanks and instruction and information about his cookies and milk. In the morning, the milk would be half gone and there'd be at least one half-eaten cookie left on the plate.

Angel hair pasta (usually on Christmas eve)

Crackers. British Isles tradition, usually in the morning at Christmas breakfast, which would include such things as hot, spicy cider, egg nog, croissants, eggs, bagels, home made cinnamon rolls, hot chocolate.

Stockings (these were usually filled with oranges, walnuts, candy canes, and a few little surprises)

Frosted cookies. We'd make them ourselves from scratch. I can do without this one, as they are very buttery rich.

Pajamas. On Christmas eve, Santa would sneak into each of our rooms to place a soft, wrapped gift at the end of each of our beds. In the morning, we'd wake up, rub our eyes, and put on the new pajamas that we found in those packages.

Christmas morning. We'd usually wake before our parents, and we learned to not go into the living room yet. We'd put on our new pajamas and find much of our breakfast on the table, ready for us. When our parents got up, they'd make the eggs, the hot chocolate, the spiced cider, etc. We'd wait for our Grandma to arrive. Then, we'd line up in order of age, the youngest first, and file into the living room that was brightly lit by my dad's bank of lights so he could film us. Our films show us blinking, squinting and shielding our eyes!

Gift Opening. We'd start with the stockings. We'd all dig into those at the same time. Then, we'd take our seats in the living room and one gift at a time would be handed to us. One person at a time would open. It took most of the day! After that, we'd play with our toys while the Christmas feast was prepared (Tamales if they weren't enjoyed on Christmas Eve).

Thank you notes. My mom would spread newspaper on the dining room table, usually on NY's day, and we'd gather around the paper, paints, and pens and create Thank You cards and art to send to relatives and even brothers and sisters who gave us gifts. There'd be music playing and we'd immerse ourselves in the creativity of it.

Later "traditions." When we were all teenagers, we added a few new traditions such as the Tree Decorating: Our parents would leave the room to watch TV while we threw tinsel all over the tree. We loved the randomness of how it fell.

Also, we would sneak things out of each others' rooms to put on the tree, for instance, I remember that a wallet-sized photo of a girl none of us had ever seen before had appeared on the tree. On the back, it said, "To Mike, love Cindy xxxoo." That was a real find since Mike, our youngest brother, had never mentioned this Cindy to any of us. That HAD to go on the tree, along with someone's hidden report card, or a really garish necklace that someone had given our mother and she was too polite to give it away, and someone's speeding ticket, and the Barbie doll that my sister still kept in her underwear drawer, the one that had lost most of its hair.

Gift Wrapping: If it was too big to fit on the tree, it was wrapped and put UNDER the tree. Jeff's old stuffed animal that he had when he was four, and the fur was all rubbed off? Wrapped and put under the tree with his name on the tag. Mike's car keys? Wrapped and put under the tree! My favorite record album? Wrapped and put under the tree! The object was to fill up that space with as many shiny gifts as we could! But we tried not to be too cruel about it, so, for instance, my brother was only looking for his car keys for two days, and was borrowing his brother's car in the meantime, the brother who had put his keys under the tree, of course. However, one year, a week before Christmas, I took my sister's electric razor, the one she counted on daily for smooth legs, wrapped it in a shoebox-sized box and put it under the tree. We'd be wandering around all week, wondering where we'd misplaced our stuff, all the while looking for more things to wrap.

I'm not sure how my parents survived all of us, but they seemed to manage by telling each other that one day this would all pass.

But I will never forget the look of relief on my sister's face when she opened that gift and found her beloved, long-lost electric razor, which she immediately hid under her long lost sweater.

It was a great tradition, as it made us appreciate what we had. (Each other!)

What about you?

There Are Times When I Am Ashamed to be a Member of Humanity

There Are Times When I Am Ashamed to be a Member of Humanity
Originally uploaded by katzeye

Mankind does so many evils against its own kind. This just makes me sick. I can't help but imagine that this young man, with, perhaps, a young family, sat at Thanksgiving dinner the day before with parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, etc. Perhaps he mentioned that he had to go to work very early the next morning. Perhaps they joked about it. Someone may have even said something about the craziness of Black Friday.

And he died, first thing the next morning.

Not due to natural causes, not while protecting or defending. He died from being stampeded by greedy shoppers wanting to be the first into the cavernous temple of discount shopping.

So, we all pause for a day to reflect and give thanks for all of our blessings. And the moment the next day breaks, we stampede a store employee to death in our reckless need to get more.

I am sickened.