Political reading for the young

Looking for a book to share with your young children during this election season? This one is FUNNY, both for your child, and bonus jokes and references for you. Enjoy.

The young are wise

Last night my daughter and I were lying on her bed, chatting right before bed time. We do this every night--me on one child's bed and Justin on the other, and then we switch. If I'm going to find out what's really on my children's minds, it's going to be in that 10 minutes before sleep.

Leah asked me, "Are you going to grow any taller?"

"No," I said, "Unfortunately, I'm all grown up and this is as tall as I'm going to get."

"Well, that's okay," she said. "Your spirit will keep growing taller."

She is so wise. And insightful and kind and funny. And this was just when I had a lot of worries, say, 700 billion worries, just as I know you do.

Something more for your inbox: Writer's Almanac

I know, Garrison Keillor has his critics, but I just love him. I catch Prairie Home Companion when I can. And I absolutely adore The Writer's Almanac. But Miami University (that's of the Miami Valley, here in Ohio, as in the Miami Indian Nation) broadcasts it at an awkward time and I hardly ever hear it. So I subscribe and get a daily e-mail. I believe I like reading it even more than hearing GK read it, because I hear the poem of the day more clearly in the author's voice when I can see the punctuation and line breaks for myself. Though if it's a poem I really like, I might click the audio button and also hear GK's take on it. A poem a day goes such a long way toward beating back the barbarian forces. Whatever those may be in your life. Highly recommended. You can subscribe here. (In the menu on the right, next to a graphic of a hand holding a quill pen, you can click to subscribe.)

10 reasons to like Beavercreek

There was a hint of whine in my voice in my last post. Not good. So, to rectify, I offer you the following list.

Top 10 reasons to like Beavercreek (Edited--I had mis-numbered, so I actually had 11 reasons. That bodes well, don't you think? I could think of 11 reasons! Hurray!)

1. There really are a number of creeks and wetlands here, and I'm told there are actually beavers.
2. My children and I bike over a little wooden bridge, which spans a babbling brook, on our way to school and back every day. This is magic.
3. Beside the babbling brook there is a field of long grass, and just as the sun is rising in the morning, a low fog, mysterious and cool, hangs just above it. Often there is a flock of geese nestled in the fog, quietly going about their goose business.
4. I keep meeting people who have lived here their entire lives. Or they went away for college, and now they've settled back here, and their children have the same social studies teacher in middle school that they did--stuff like that. It's not the kind of small town that is dying out because the young leave and stay gone as soon as they can. Quite the opposite--Beavercreek is growing and the schools are almost bursting.
5. Ms. Rigano, my son's 3rd grade teacher. I believe she is a teaching genius. "She's the strictest teacher I've ever had," Jacob reports. But he also can't wait to get to school, because they're having a class election (part of their study of the presidential election), or they're opening their store, or they're publishing their books, or they're calling a NY fire fighter on the anniversay of 9/11 to hear in his words about his personal experience at the World Trade Centers, or they're practicing with money for when they work a day at Bob Evans. And on and on!
6. Ms. LeVesseur, my daughter's 1st grade teacher, another teaching dynamo. She jokes with them all the time. They are happy and relaxed and productive and they laugh a lot. When she reads aloud, she does all the voices, and when a child raises his hand and spills out a story that is completely unrelated, she listens and lets him finish and doesn't rush him back to the task at hand. She made dollars with her photo on them, LeVesseur Loot, and when the children earn them for doing great work, they proudly slip them into their handmade wallets. And on and on.
7. My neighbors are kind, thoughtful, and generous. My neighbors' kids are cheerful, happy, unusually polite, and fun. My kids love to play with them.
8. BSA (Beavercreek Soccer Association). Someone gave some land to Beavercreek, and a soccer "complex" was built, which means 27 soccer fields all located together, behind a car dealership at the edge of town. Game days are madness. It's also really fun. It feels like every family in Beavercreek is out there, staying for hours as they lumber with their lawn chairs and coolers from one child's game to another. The parents take turns working at the concession stand in a big shed, or they volunteer to coach teams (as Justin is doing). Goals are occasionally scored. Children get sweaty. It's good.
9. While our school levy has not passed, there is a passionate and sizeable grass roots movement that's working right now to explain to the good citizens of Beavercreek how important, how crucial that levy is. I'm getting involved and learning about how voting activism works. You just never know what you're going to learn about when you move to a new community.
10. Barney's Hardware. Yeah, you could drive a little farther up the road to your choice of Lowe's or Home Depot, but Justin and I try to get it at little old Barney's as much as we can. They've attached hammers onto the doors in some clever way, which serve as the door handles. They have some very young-looking employees who will trot--trot, I tell you--right over to help you reach something or find something. And this story: I needed to order a toilet seat. The young woman at the counter was recording my info in a giant, old-fashioned log book. She asked for my phone number, and after I gave it, an old guy standing in line behind me said in a perfect deadpan, "Wait a sec, let me just jot that down," and pretended to reach into his pocket for paper and pen. That cracked me up. He (clearly a regular at Barney's), said, "Don't you just hate it when you have to tell everybody in the store what your phone number is?"

"Well," I said, "I sensed I was among friends."

"You are," he said.

And you know? He meant it.

Dayton speaks for peace

And here I thought I lived in an ordinary little mid-western city. Oh my goodness, I was just surfing around a bit tonight, and found THIS. Please have a look at the work Dayton (yep, little old Dayton, Ohio!) is doing in both fiction and non-fiction literature for the promotion of peace.

This is fantastic. It reminds me that we should never be afraid to have big ideas, no matter how small our budget or out-of-the-way our city. It also reminds me that Beavercreek, my 'burb, which feels a bit small and bland and uptight to me right now, is not Dayton. I hereby resolve to get into Dayton more often, which is obviously where the ideas are flying through the air.

On having fresh herbs about

This scene makes me extremely happy. I found just the right bench to fit under the big window in the kitchen. I found the pots, ordered the organic seeds online, made the plant markers, and now, wudja look at that! Real herbs, right here in my kitchen. I am growing:

Parsley

Sage

Rosemary

Thyme

Cilantro

Cammomile

marjoram

mint

dill

basil

oregano

chives

So this is all lovely, but now we've come to the tricky part of actually using and maintaining these lovely sprouts. Wish these herbs luck, dear reader, because if my past record with plants is examined, you'll know they need it.

Dog + Stick = Happiness

At some point in this blog, I reported that we were assiduously keeping Lacey from chewing sticks in our backyard, per vet instructions. Well, we abandoned that some time ago and I wanted to set the record straight. We were at a new friend's house, where the dog was blissed out, working his jaws around a big ol' stick. Justin and I looked at each other with the same thing going through our minds--something like, okay, as long as there have been dogs, and there have been sticks, there have been dogs chewing sticks. Who are we to intervene? And life suddenly became so much easier when we let her do what dogs do in the backyard. I'm sure, I'm positive, that there have been sad cases of dogs with splinters in their throats that had to be surgically removed, just as the vet warned. But you can't live in fear, you know? I also let me kids climb trees and balance precariously on the back fence. Measured recklessness, I shall call it.

Masterworks from Georgia

A sister Kindermusik educator in Georgia (hi, Merri!) recently left a kind comment, and I took a minute to check out her blog. Wow, what an eclectic, interesting, prolific blogger! Not that I'm the tiniest bit surprised. Kindermusik educators, I've found, tend to be dynamic people. I loved this post about American women's right to vote (and what a very short time it has been since that battle, so hard fought, was won).

Also, as long as I'm talking about Kindermusik educators, I have to direct you to this post from Heidi, my pal in Texas. It cracked me up. I loved your pics from Oregon, Heidi! Beautiful family!

Wind, trees, and mindful raking

It was the oddest thing yesterday: no rain, hardly a cloud in the sky, but a wind storm ripped through southwestern Ohio with gusts up to 70 miles an hour. 200,000 Dayton residents still have no power, 24 hours later. Enormous trees toppled all over town. Two doors down, my neighbors lost both the biggest tree in their backyard AND the biggest tree in their frontyard. I would still be crying if I lost my yard's trees, but my neighbor is brave and gracious and talking about the new trees she'll plant. This is the same neighbor, a young woman with a two-year-old son, whose youngish husband suffered a stroke earlier this year. They are having more than their share, it seems to me. I sat in my family room for some time yesterday, during the height of the winds, watching the big tree right by our deck sway recklessly right down to its trunk. An astonishing sight. I willed it to stay upright. Please, I asked the tree. It did abandon some huge limbs in its fight, but it still stands. All of our trees made it. We never lost power and still have it. This is inexplicable, as most the businesses, schools, and homes in Dayton do not. We ran extension cords to our neighbors right next door and next to them, so they could plug in their fridges and watch the news for school closures. Our neighbor lost huge pieces of siding, and some of it was lugged back by another neighbor five houses down. Beavercreek schools (and all schools around here) were closed today, and they'll be closed again tomorrow. Jacob and Leah and the neighbor kids thought this was grand, and spent their day playing fort and elaborate spy games. The air was so perfectly still that I felt I must whisper outside--clearly the trees were exhausted. And mourning their fallen friends. Why wouldn't trees be aware of each other? So I quietly raked the branches and leaves beneath them--a sad job when the leaves are so perfectly green--all the while mindful of my great good fortune. Knowing that our wind storm was just the flick of Ike's tail, and that Ike stomped right through Texas. Such luck is humbling.

Grade the First

I keep accidentally calling Leah a Kindergartener. This is very Freudian and I must stop immediately. I've introduced her to two people as "in Kindergarten." I correct myself right away, but still. And then a couple of days ago, as we were walking toward the school while a bus discharged its passengers, I asked Leah if there were any Kindergarteners she recognized. she innocently replied that she didn't think she'd recognize any of the Kindergarteners. Right.

I really am glad that she's a first grader, and she's growing and learning and all that jazz.

Really.

Early

These are my children, riding off on their first day of school (I'm on my bike right behind them--my husband snapped this shot).

And that red glow? That would be the sun, not yet risen.

School starts sooooo early here--7:30. Some of the bus riders board their bus at 6:55am. When I learned that, I felt a tiny bit better about how early we have to start here at the Hall household.

I wake both of them from a dead sleep at 6:30am, when it is still perfectly dark outside. Before the birds sing. Before the dog wakes up. Before civilization as I know it wakes up. That gives them 50 minutes to be on their bikes and riding away, which is really not quite enough, but I can't bear to wake them any earlier. So, we've learned to lay out clothes the night before, locate shoes and pack backpacks the night before. I get up at 6am, which is earlier than my husband--you know, the guy in the military. Sheesh, that makes it feel early. And I have to hit the floor running, breakfast and packed lunches and all that. But I am getting the hang of it. And I try not to think of the old days in Virginia, when they could wander out of bed somewhere between 7:45 and 8am, and still have plenty of time to get to school. Sigh.

A side note--they get out of school at 2pm, but really 1:54pm. Which is so early that I often realize I haven't had lunch yet when it's time to pick them up. But I love the big gap between after school and dinner. They unwind, play, read a little, Jacob gets his homework done--it's all the luxury of time that we lack in the morning. Which is nice. We might even get to the point where we prefer it to the old schedule.

Composer's Datebook

It's been way too long since I've posted! For anyone who's been checking, wondering where I got off to, my apologies. My excuse: school has started. Oh, my. Systems seem to be mostly in place now, 2 weeks in, thank goodness.

I've got something for you! I haven't posted something even vaguely musical in quite some time, so I felt it was time. I've come across a wonderful service called Composer's Datebook from American Public Media. Many public radio stations broadcast it, but if yours doesn't or if you miss it, you can have them e-mail it to you. Oh, the joy of this, I tell you! Every day you receive a short, fascinating anecdote about a composer, living or dead. You can just read this, of course, but click on the "listen" button, and you'll hear the text as it played on the air with a snippit of the composer's music in the background, to ground your ear in time and place. It's a 30 second education about our musical heritage. It's great. Sign up here.