My Summer Reading: Americans’ Travels

 

If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe?  The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions.  ~Author Unknown

My current read is We Band of Angels : The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese because a few months ago I caught the replay of an interview in 1999 with the author, Elizabeth Norman and Brian Lamb. I haven’t gotten very far, but it is time well spent.  Good biographies can be like tourist guides of all the streets worth seeing in a grand city. They can also show me   back alleys I would not know to venture – Ms. Norman’s book is such a guide, introducing me to women and events about which I did not know.  More on this, later.

I am also reading David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris – another delightful guide to people, places and times, many of which were familiar, and several others whose lives historians and biographers heretofore ignored. 

Equally engaging were three recorded books to which we listened on our travels to Maryland and back to Texas – and I found some quotes about reading and books that sums up my impression of them:

·      What the Dog Saw :  A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.  ~Chinese Proverb

·      Ford County: Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.  ~Jessamyn West.

·      The Mayflower, (mentioned earlier.)  What the people want is very simple.  They want an America as good as its promise.  

~Barbara Jordan

How grateful I am for good books:

·      Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.  ~Charles W. Eliot

·      It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.  ~Oscar Wilde

·      The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.  ~Mark Twain, attributed

·     
No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.  ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Could the Food Network Improve Children’s Programming?

For over one year, the Food Network has stirred our grandchild’s imagination in astounding ways. She is a devoted fan of several cooks, quoting them frequently as she goes about her toy kitchen, raiding her mom’s kitchen for pots and spatulas, and rattling pots and pans. She knows a competition from a demonstration, and speaks confidently, using such words a cinnamon, vanilla extract and cumin. And she arises in the morning wondering what to cook for dinner, and her nap anxious to see what Sunny and “Contessa Barefoot ” have planned. The Food Network is a powerful education tool – perhaps stronger than PBS’ early learning line-up.

This morning we watched Super Why and a charming but complicated regimen of finding a word to solve a problem – it took thirty minutes; retelling  the fairy tale, “Jack in the Beanstalk. The PBS writers ignored the lessons in the fairytale, and inserted characters and situations to solve a mystery the writers invented to find one missing word. Our granddaughter never referred to the method or the message for the rest of the day.

We then watched cooking shows; throughout the day, she used words and imitated instructions the TV cooks modeled. She knew the drama on Iron Chef and wondered how much time was left in the competition. During bath time, the bubbles became her kitchen, the toys, her  tools and the memory of so many cooking lessons her recipes. For twenty minutes she explained what she was adding, how she mixing or stirring, and for whom she was preparing her meal.

In this little child’s life, the example of real people doing work they love has been a powerful motivator and great teacher. Giada, Bobby Flay, Paula Dean and Rachel Ray among others are engaging the heart and mind of a little child and if PBS educators are wise they might reconsider how they present what they present.