Poster: "I Stand for Giggling While Jiggling. Joy is Healthy at Every Size"

That’s me!  Learn more about the Stand4Kids campaign here.  See all the other “I Stand” posters here.

BG=Book Group selection. REV=read to review. I’m in two book groups (and sometimes a third), so a lot of my reading is driven by that. These are numbered in chronological order, from January to December. I don’t read very fast, and I don’t read a lot of short books, so 20 books in a year is kinda good for me.

This year was more non-fiction heavy than most, not sure why.  Any year that involves Margaret Atwood tweeting a compliment to me (“That is a very cute knitted owl costume!”) is a very good literary year at my house.   (The costume was crocheted, but I’m not correcting Margaret Atwood.)

1. The Interior by Lisa See (mystery)
2. One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson (mystery) BG
3. The Ugly Laws by Sue Schweik (academic) REV
4. Just Kids by Patti Smith (memoir) BG
5. Poster Child by Emily Rapp (memoir) BG
6. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (popular science/history) BG
7. Born Twice by Giuseppe Pontiggia (novel) 
8. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (novel)
9. Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception across the Color Line by Martha Sandweiss (history)
10. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (novel)
11. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano (novel) BG
12. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (novel) BG
13. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (novel) BG
14. The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe (novel)
15. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (novel) BG
16. A Sense of the World by Jason Roberts (biography)
17. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (novel) BG
18. Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan (non-fiction) BG
19. The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett (novel)  BG
20. The Burning Book by Maggie Gee (novel)

Man standing with measuring ruler by Sumac Sorghum planted March 23, 1911; State Library and Archives of Florida, on Flickr Commons

I taught an art class at the middle school last week–about 45 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in the room.  The project required the kids to measure an inch in the middle of each edge of a six-inch square of paper.  The lesson involved guiding them on this–mark off 3 inches, now mark off half an inch on either side of that first tickmark.   Repeat on the other edges.

A surprising number of these Redondo Beach middle schoolers did not manage that task without help.

Some clearly had never measured with a ruler; some didn’t realize that centimeters aren’t inches; others didn’t know what an inch looked like, even relative to an eighth-inch.  Others did fine.  Now, all these kids pretty much went to the same four elementary schools, had the same math curriculum, etc.  So…. what’s up?

Here’s my theory:  I suspect a lot of the kids in that classroom had never measured anything by themselves, for a PURPOSE.  Never sewed a basic pillow, never sawed a plank, never cut paper squares for origami, never laid out a garden, never made a simple map to scale.  Some maybe never even measured a cup of rice or water for a recipe.  So they may have learned to use a ruler in a classroom several years ago, with worksheets and textbooks and posters, but they didn’t keep the knowledge because it didn’t mean anything to them.  The consequence for mismeasuring was a red X, not a soggy pancake, not a box shorter on one side, not an unwearable garment.

These kids who are constantly measured, tested and graded, never do any actual measuring for themselves.  How will that work out?  What are the consequences for the rest of us, if children don’t really learn how to measure an inch?  Well, I wouldn’t want any of them cutting my hair, for starters.  Laying the foundation for your house, maybe?

We were chalking at the Redondo Beach seawall this weekend, near Polly’s on the Pier, part of the Earth Month festivities an also a preview for the Chalk It Up event in two weeks. The Seawall is an amazing site for chalking! My shoulders and knees aren’t wrecked, nobody walked on the art in progress, and the surfaces are really smooth. There are 133 identical panels like this, lined up along the rocks, right on the ocean. We saw so many boats and pelicans, and even a sea lion swimming past. Parking and restaurants right nearby. Someone really needs to organize chalk events there more often.

Surreal Seascape

BG=Book Group selection.  REV=read to review. I’m in two book groups (and sometimes a third), so a lot of my reading is driven by that.  These are numbered in chronological order, from January to December.  I don’t read very fast, and I don’t read a lot of short books, so 24 books in a year is kinda good for me.

1. Beyond the Miracle Worker by Kim Nielsen REV
2. Translations of Beauty by Mia Yun
3. Sea of Red Poppies by Amitav Ghosh BG
4. My Sense of Silence by Lennard Davis BG
5. Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther BG
6. Love You To Pieces edited by Suzanne Kamata BG
7. Number9Dream by David Mitchell
8. Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton BG
9. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart BG
10. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese BG
11. Don’t Send Me Flowers When I’m Dead: Voices of Rural Elderly by Eva Salber
12. Atypical: A Memoir of Asperger’s in 20 and 1/3 Chapters by Jesse Saperstein BG
13. The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant
14. A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert BG
15. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
16. Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across America by Linda Lawrence Hunt
17. Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters BG
18. The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt BG
19. Lucky Girl by Mei-Ling Hopgood REV
20. The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber BG
21. Mr. Timothy by Louis Bayard
22. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger BG
23. The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
24. Cockeyed: A Memoir by Ryan Knighton

Also at Monday’s meeting, council members chose Dominic Rinaldi as the new Dunmore borough manager.
Rinaldi is not the Dunmore’s Fire Fighter’s Union President, who is also a Dominick Rinaldi.

Don’t know if either of them is the Dominic(k) Rinaldi I went to high school with.   Maybe, maybe not.

It’s done, or at least it’s as done as I’m going to make it. Wore fine on its first outing today.