Good reading: What are some cultural faux pas in New York? (Quora, via kottke.org). I especially like this warning: “Never ever ever EVER refer to the city as ‘the Big Apple.’”
Things to write in an autograph album:
Birds on the mountain,
Fish in the sea.
How you ever graduated
Is a mystery to me.
*
FUNEX
VFX
FUNEM
VFM
OKMNX
*
I love you, I love you,
I love you so well,
If I had a peanut
I’d give you the shell.
*
If I were a head of lettuce
I’d cut myself in two.
I’d give the leaves to all my friends
And save the heart for you.
*
Mary had a little lamb.
Her father shot it dead.
Now Mary carries that lamb to school
Between two hunks of bread.
*
Never B♯
Never B♭
Always B♮
*
Roses are red,
Pickles are green.
My face is a holler
But yours is a scream.
*
Some blank verse from a blank mind.
*
When sitting on a sofa
With your boyfriend by your side,
Beware of false kisses,
His mustache may be dyed.
*
Yours till soda pops.
From Yours Till Niagra Falls, compiled by Lillian Morrison (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1950). A library book-sale find.
From a ’sation, overheard while shopping:
“A hairdresser is high and mighty? [Then slowly, underlining every word.] A hairdresser or a barber is high and mighty?” [Laughs hysterically.]The gist of it: Don’t let him treat you like that.
It’s Banned Books Week:
Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.The ALA’s list of the ten most challenged titles in 2010 includes Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (“drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint”), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (“insensitivity, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit”), and Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson’s And Tango Makes Three (“homosexuality, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group”).
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read (America Library Association)
A somewhat misleadingly titled article on efforts to inculcate elements of good character in private- and charter-school students: What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? (New York Times). Those elements include what psychology professor Angela Duckworth calls “grit,” perseverance despite adversity. You can test your grit via her Grit Scale.
When I think of grit and its opposite, I think of students’ reactions to low grades on their first essays in freshman comp. Some students realize that they need to work much harder on their writing, and do so. Others simply drop the course.
A few related posts
Andrew Sullivan on self-esteem
Good advice from Rob Zseleczky
The inverse power of praise
John Holt on learning and difficulty
[Elaine and I each scored 4.4 of 5 on the Grit Scale. Scoring the test, as she points out, requires a bit of grit.]
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that the women of two villages on the Philippine island of Mindanao have brought an end to armed conflict between their villages by refusing sex with their husbands:
Women’s “sex strike” ends fighting in Mindanao villages (ABS-CBN News, via Boing Boing)
The technical term for this strategy: not cutting him off but Lysistratic nonaction. This post explains.
