My Reading Place

Perfect day, a cool-breeze 75 degree afternoon...

I think I'll read a book.

Great Poetry Reading Day

We’re drawing near to the end of April, Poetry Month, with today being GREAT POETRY READING DAY.                  

If you wish to participate, you’re supposed to read some “great” poetry today. I guess what constitutes “great” is in the mind of the reader. Just to be on the safe side, I celebrated by reading some poetry from the literature textbook,  

THE EXPERIENCE OF LITERATURE, edited by Lionell Trilling. Surely poetry found in a college textbook can be considered “great", right? The dozen poems I read for GREAT POETRY READING DAY are:

OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING - Walt Whitman

A SUPERMARKET IN CALIFORNIA -  Allen Ginsburg

TO AUNT ROSE - Allen Ginsburg

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT -  Dylan Thomas

VARIATION: ODE TO FEAR (Timor mortis conturbat me.)  - Robert Penn Warren

ALL IN GREEN WENT MY LOVE RIDING - E. E. Cummings

THE ELEPHANT IS SLOW TO MATE - D.H. Lawrence

THE SECOND COMING - William Butler Yeats

THE SUBALTERNS - Thomas Hardy

BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH - Emily Dickenson

A WOMAN’S LAST WORD - Robert Browning

THE JUMBLIES - Edward Lear

Poem in Your Pocket Day

April is NATIONAL POETRY MONTH and yesterday was POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY. It originated in NYC in 2002 and went nationwide in 2008.  The idea is to carry around a poem in your pocket all day and take it out to share it with family, friends, co-workers, passersby, etc.  I can just see folks in Central Park in NYC doing this --- but in MY town???

The poem I had in my pocket today was Vachel Lindsay’s “The Congo.” (Well, the first of the three parts of this long, excitable poem anyway.) I learned the first part of the poem when I was in the 4^th grade, and I still remember it 4 decades later! I just loved the dramatic way our teacher read it to the class. I still think it’s a great poem that’s meant to be read aloud with gusto! I love this poem!

I was going to my very first ever F2F Book Club Meeting at the public library last night, and the discussion topic just happened to be POETRY!  If I got the chance, I planned to pull it out of my pocket and read it for the folks.

I never got the chance.  After fishing all day, even though I was thoroughly exhausted, I drove the 20 minutes to town and found the library almost deserted. The librarian told me that the Book Group had more or less fizzled out, people had stopped coming. I was so disappointed. I pointed out that the monthly announcements were still posted on the library's website. I left my name & phone number with a note that if anyone wanted to revive the group, I would gladly commit to showing up for the monthly meeting.

I even stopped by the bookstore, but it was closed too. I was wanting to share my poem with them. So in deep dejection, I blew my diet and had a corn dog and a vanilla ice cream, before I hauled my sorry ass home and dropped in to bed at 8 p.m. --- and was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I did get my chance to read my poem many times that day, though, practicing reciting it for my dog!

Oh, just in case you want to read the poem here's where you can find it:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/237642
 

Love Those Red Hats!

Bayfield, Wisconsin

 Today is RED HAT SOCIETY DAY.  It all started when Sue Ellen bought a bright red fedora hat on a impulse at a thrift shop.  A few years later, she read a poem called “Warning” written in 1961 by Jenny Joseph which is about an older woman in purple clothing wearing a red hat. The poem begins with the lines: “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me.” She liked the poem so much she gave a framed copy of it, along with a red hat, to her friend Linda as a birthday present.  Linda enjoyed the gift so much that Sue Ellen started giving the same gift to other friends. One day they all decided they should dress up in purple (like the lady in the poem) and wear their red hats out to tea together. Soon they were doing this on a regular basis and inviting other friends to join them. As the group became too large, sister groups were formed. Now they hold conventions that fill entire hotels with red hatted women having a great time together. Women over 50 are the “Red Hatters”; those not yet 50 wear pink hats.

This year the Red Hat gals will celebrate their 14th birthday at the Hard Rock Café  - Hollywood.  They are now a global sisterhood of women whose mission is fun, friendship, freedom, fulfillment and fitness. In only five years they’d grown to 40,000 chapters worldwide. For more information, their official website is: http://www.redhatsociety.com/

To read Jenny Joseph’s poem that inspired this sisterhood and, see:

http://www.wheniamanoldwoman.com/pages/348544/index.htm

I first heard about this group while at an artist retreat near Duluth, Minnesota in the summer of 2006. One of our fellow artists was a member and was explaining to us what the group was all about.  Imagine my surprise when one Saturday morning a year later, I happened to spot a small group of “Hatters” while on a self-directed artist retreat in Wisconsin. I was waiting to board a tour boat when I spied this group having their pictures taken on the balcony of their bed and breakfast suite. There appears to be three of them, posing with a sign and holding a couple of extra red hats (maybe for members who couldn’t be with them that day for one reason or another).

Below is my review of Sue Ellen's book:

THE RED HAT SOCIETY: Fun & Friendship After Fifty  - Sue Ellen Cooper (432 pp, LP)
©2004   Maybe, by now, you’ve heard of the Red Hat Society or wondered about those groups of middle-aged women seen frolicking in public dressed in purple and wearing red hats. The Society, whose only rule is “no rules,” just celebrated its 12th anniversary and has grown from a small group of friends (inspired by Jenny Joseph’s poem “Warning”) to a “disorganization” of many chapters in the U.S. and 17 other countries.

The book tells the history of the group, with many inspirational testimonials from members about the fun and friendship they’ve found by starting and joining a chapter. While many people dread the Big 5-0, this book illustrates that one’s Half-Century birthday need not be a time of looking back nostalgically at the great times one enjoyed when she was younger, but can be an awesome adventure in aging gracefully and looking forward to more great times ahead.

Money-Smart Kids

Don't forget to teach the importance of sending thank-you cards!

Today is TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO SAVE DAY. This awareness day was established by the American Banker’s Association Education Foundation to express the importance of teaching our children how to save money, how to set up and use budgets, how interest works to make savings grow, and most importantly (in my opinion anyway) how to recognize the difference between needs and wants.

As a parent of a grown child, I tried to instill sound financial awareness in my now-grown son in the areas of saving, spending and charitable donations. But to him, money burned a hole in his pocket most of the time.

I’m very proud to say that as an adult, he’s finally learned to save, to use credit responsibly, to meet his payment obligations on-time, and to cut down on money wastage (he finally stopped smoking!). So even though you may not think you’re getting through to your kids at the time, sound money management education early on pays off in the long run!

I suggest every parent start a savings account for their first child (and any others that follow) as soon as he or she is born. But don’t just stick some money in it at first, then forget about it. Make a habit of depositing a small amount on a regular  basis (weekly is ideal, so monthly if that suits you better), so your child learns as he or she grows the importance of maintaining a savings habit. As the child gets older, let him make the contributions from a part of his allowance or after-school jobs.

photo courtesy http://pdphoto.org/   Thanks, Jon!

Also, start small. Sure, the lowly penny won’t buy anything nowadays. But a piggy bank or a simple jar with a slot cut in the lid will soon fill with lots of pennies. And when it’s full, it’s so exciting to take your little one to the bank to exchange those pretty copper coins for paper money and then a trip to the store to pick out a special toy or book that they can proudly buy with their own money. Later your kid(s) can graduate to saving larger value coins: nickels, dimes and quarters.

But my favorite tip is to teach your little ones that Mommy and Daddy are not money-dispensing machines and that money doesn’t grow on trees (as old-fashioned as that sounds). Saying no to whim purchases teaches the difference between needs and wants, and encourages them to save for the things they want. There’s always plenty of time when they’re older to learn about credit and plastic.

Here are a couple of good books that teach kids all about money:

THE KIDS' ALLOWANCE BOOK
by Amy Nathan (86 pages)
©1998  This cute and informational book was written for children ages 9-14: to help them learn about allowances, how to ask their parents for one, how to handle their money responsibly, the pros and cons of both chore-based allowances and “just because” allowances, what to do if parents forget to pay up, and how to save.

Parents would also benefit from reading this book, preferably before the discussion of allowances comes up. About half of children in the target age group receive allowances, according to surveys done by Nickelodean TV and Zillions magazine, which is published for kids by Consumer Reports. Many of these children were interviewed about how allowances were handled in their families. I wish I’d read this book when my son was little---I learned a lot of great parenting tips from it, and you can too!

ULTIMATE KID’S MONEY BOOK - Neale S. Godfrey (122)©1998 This really IS the ultimate book about money for kids! It has everything that the average person should know about money (and many don’t). It starts out with a history of money, then talks about making money, spending it, saving it, sharing it, etc.  It also has chapters about how banks work, different accounts you may have, the economy (local, federal and global), investing money, taxes, and government spending. I was amazed at how much useful information is packed into this fun book which could be used to teach a valuable mini-course on finance to kids.

Happy Earth Day! Happy Reading!

photo coutesy:  http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/

Happy Earth Day, fellow Earthlings!

Walk gently, observe joyfully,

Live responsibly and respectfully!

And a special Thank You to Home Depot for the free pine seedling!

LEAVINGS 

byWendell Berry 

I remember this author from way back in the 70s when he wrote for Rodale Press, the Organic Gardening folks. This is a small book of poetry that I really enjoyed because the poems were easy to read and understand. His themes are nature, conservation, and outrage against what modern man has done to the environment. 

THE REDISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA 

by Barry Lopez 

This is a very short book, took about an hour to read, deeply thoughtful, and powerful. It's only 51 pages but the thoughts that he packed into those pages...wow. The book is about about how the Spaniards exploited the New World, from Columbus's time onward, and how we continue to exploit it to this day. Well worth anyone's time to read and contemplate. Highly Recommended.

TEACHING A STONE TO TALK 

byAnnie Dillard 

©1982 Whether she’s in the Arctic, camping along an Ecuadorian rain-forest river, or exploring the Galapagos, Annie Dillard shows us nature in its most colorful detail. Sometimes surprising, always fresh, her writing is exquisite.

THE BEGINNING NATURALIST: Weekly Encounters with the Natural World

by Gale Lawrence 

© 1979 I consider myself an amateur naturalist, but I’m not a beginner. I’ve been blessed to be able to live in the middle of nature for most of my life, and it’s given me a special joy and appreciation that can’t be measured. I still read everything I can get my hands on about the natural world around us, and I always learn something new.          This is an excellent book for people just starting to explore the great outdoors. There are 52 short and easy essays that introduce so many things you could encounter on a walk, if you just keep your eyes open and look around you: plants (some edible), small mammals, frogs, snakes, spiders, beavers, tent caterpillars, birds and so much more.
          Once a person starts exploring the world of nature, a very natural concern about its preservation usually follows. I think everyone would benefit from stepping out of their homes and offices and seeing what they can discover in a part of our lives that is too often overlooked.

THE BEGINNING AND THE END and Other Poems 
by Robinson Jeffers
©1963 These poems, written near the end of Jeffers’ life, were collected from handwritten manuscripts by his sons after his death in 1962 at the age of 75.
          Jeffers lived most of his life at Tor House, a stone house he built by hand for his wife and twin sons on the coast at Carmel, California. He would write poetry during the morning and work on the house in the afternoon. He was a nature poet, and a poet of peace. He was particularly worried about the future, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and how mankind was ravaging the natural world. I like poems that make sense and read well out loud, and his do.

CLABBERED DIRT, SWEET GRASS 
by Gary Paulsen
©1992 A look at old-time farming (with horses) through the seasons, the beauty of Paulsen’s writing is enhanced by the colorful and expressive paintings by his wife, Ruth.

New World (dis)Order

 

A YEAR WITHOUT MADE IN CHINA
by Sara Bongiorni
          ©2007 On January 1, 2005 the author and her family embarked on a New Year’s resolution to boycott things made in China for the coming year. This decision was made after noticing that so many of their Christmas gifts were Chinese imports. With a light, humorous, easy-to-read style, she reports her experiences as she struggles with her husband and small children to keep the boycott going for an entire year.
          The book definitely serves its purpose. It clearly proves Bongiorni’s point that it’s nearly impossible to avoid purchasing items “Made in China,” since that seems to be the country of origin for almost every item we purchase any more.
          I didn't like this book for many reasons. Her motivation for the boycott, as she explained it to her small son, was simplistic and naive: “We like China, but it’s a very big place, with lots of factories and we want to give other countries a chance to sell things to us.” (What about all the American jobs that have been lost to outsourcing to other countries besides China???)
          The author’s 12-month boycott contained so many loopholes, it was ridiculous. I kept thinking, why bother? For example, they could accept gifts from other people that were made in China. So when the wife-mother couldn’t find a non-Chinese inflatable swimming pool for her husband and son, she suggested that her sister-in-law get a Chinese one for her husband’s birthday. Also, items made in Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong were ok, because they weren’t made in China. Or were they? She had a hard time figuring out what was Chinese and what wasn’t.
          This couple's parenting style was annoyingly overindulgent. Half the book was about the stress of finding enough cool, non-Chinese toys to satisfy their children's ever-changing demands. I think the author could have made better use of her time learning how to do without every little toy, gizmo and gadget that came on the market. These people could qualify as the poster family for the out-of-control consumerism that has driven jobs out of our country to places where people live and work in poverty, just because we gotta have it and it better be cheap!
          In writing a "humorous" book about a very serious issue, Bongiorni trivializes the plight of the unemployed or under-employed American worker. She never really ponders how we happen to find ourselves in this increasingly hopeless situation. Her book calls attention to the problem, but offers no explanations or answers. Because of China's dominance of the global economy, and the fact that our government and big business have sold us out to them, we have abandoned American factories, closed stores blighting every American community, millions of Americans without employment, losing the homes they worked all their lives for. This seems to be our fate and our future, and sadly, we never saw it coming.

WHEN CHINA RULES THE WORLD: The End of the Western World & the Birth of a New Global Order 
by Martin Jacques
          ©2009 One day last month, I came across this book while surfing the news channels. Fareed Zakaria was recommending it, and the title caught my attention. It’s been apparent to me for the past 15 years that we were headed in this direction, but I knew so little about the issue.
          This ponderous book is like reading college textbooks for Chinese history, economics and political science all rolled into one. It’s packed full of data, facts, figures, charts, graphs, percentages, GDPs, etc., everything heavily annotated --- and it’s taken me 4 weeks to trudge through it all.
          As I was reading it, I came to realize how little most of us know about China and the Chinese people. I learned a lot, but probably only scratched the surface in my understanding of our global situation. I think it’ll be worth a reread in a couple months.

BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED
by Aldous Huxley
          © 1958 I find it very interesting that Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931 with America in mind. On an earlier trip to the United States, he had been disgusted by America’s rampant consumerism, newly-emerging youth culture, and sexual permissiveness, hallmarks of the Roaring 20s. The United States had been experiencing a manufacturing boom, science and technology were rapidly expanding, and truly, a “brave new world” was arriving on the scene.
          His dystopian novel Brave New World “predicts” what the world of the future might look like if things continued on as they were in the early part of the 20th century. The story is set six centuries in the future, in a totalitarian World State whose amusement-addicted citizenry is kept docile and perfectly content by various forms of entertainment, methodical conditioning, and a drug called soma.
In 1958, Huxley published this non-fiction “look back” at his classic to see how far we’d come in 27 years. He admits here that “the prophecies made in 1931 are coming true much sooner than I thought they would.”
          The novel Brave New World was written before the rise of Adolf Hitler to supreme power in Germany. In 1958, Huxley writes a very interesting essay on the terrifyingly effective mind control methods Hitler used to manipulate the German people. He also ponders the widespread use of drugs back then, both prescription and illegal recreational ones, that people relied on to help them get through their unhappy, hectic lives.
          The book actually stunned me, as the things that Huxley explained were already happening in the 27 years between his novel and his commentary --- those things are also happening (times 10, times 20, times 100?) in today’s modern world. Our own amusement-addicted citizens have been kept clueless about the controlling role Big Business and Big Government have played in our lives, starting with the Baby Boomers.
          We grew up being daily brainwashed by the advertisements on TV, which convinced us to desire all the things we didn’t need, probably didn’t even want, and definitely couldn’t afford as we let buy-now-pay-later take over our lives. New and improved, we were fed a steady stream of products pouring forth from the factories, and we over-consumed because we could --- we had JOBS back then.
Huxley’s fear was that people would become so comfortable and so self-centered, they wouldn’t see their enslavement coming, because they would docilely go along with the program as long as their desires were being fulfilled.
          This book, Brave New World Revisited, could very well be Huxley’s most important work, if people would only take the time to read it. I especially encourage those who are presently reading, or who have already read the original BNW, to follow-up with Huxley’s 1958 commentary on the book as a harbinger of things yet to come --- events in the real world that are unfolding at this very moment.. It can be read, for free, on-line at

http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/index.html

 ALSO RECOMMENDED:

THE NEW WORLD ORDER (1939) by H. G. Wells
and
THE NEW WORLD ORDER (1991) by Pat Robertson
Fascinating contrast --- two sides of a hot-button political topic, the POVs of a socialist from the distant past and a Christian 50 years later.