Tablet Reading – links for May 22

Tags

book list, decision making, food, health

photo of the week by miki kucevic

Americans traveling abroad are warned “Don’t drink the water,” but it appears that immigrants coming to the U.S. should be warned “Don’t eat the food.” Michael Pollan gives the best overview that I’ve read of a very important and often overlooked part of our health. Jen Fulwiler lays out six great questions to use when making decisions. A contemporary evangelical Christian take on the ten books everyone should read by the time they’re 25 (it seems I have some catching up to do). And a wonderful short film of “Little Red Riding Hood” – in French. (Both of my only-English-speaking-if-that children loved it.)

:: The Health Toll of Immigration (New York Times)

Becoming an American can be bad for your health.

A growing body of mortality research on immigrants has shown that the longer they live in this country, the worse their rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. And while their American-born children may have more money, they tend to live shorter lives than the parents.

The pattern goes against any notion that moving to America improves every aspect of life. It also demonstrates that at least in terms of health, worries about assimilation for the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants are mistaken. In fact, it is happening all too quickly.

“There’s something about life in the United States that is not conducive to good health across generations,” said Robert A. Hummer, a social demographer at the University of Texas at Austin.

:: Some of My Best Friends Are Germs (Michael Pollan, New York Times)

Our resident microbes work to keep pathogens from gaining a toehold by occupying potential niches or otherwise rendering the environment inhospitable to foreigners. The robustness of an individual’s gut community might explain why some people fall victim to food poisoning while others can blithely eat the same meal with no ill effects.

Our gut bacteria also play a role in the manufacture of substances like neurotransmitters (including serotonin); enzymes and vitamins (notably Bs and K) and other essential nutrients (including important amino acid and short-chain fatty acids); and a suite of other signaling molecules that talk to, and influence, the immune and the metabolic systems. Some of these compounds may play a role in regulating our stress levels and even temperament: when gut microbes from easygoing, adventurous mice are transplanted into the guts of anxious and timid mice, they become more adventurous. The expression “thinking with your gut” may contain a larger kernel of truth than we thought.

:: Six questions for conquering crazy-think and making good decisions (Conversion Diary)

Whenever I’ve started going down a path that introduced tension, resentment, or other bad vibes into the family, it’s always turned out to be the wrong decision. This isn’t to be confused with short-term sacrifices that may be difficult, like when Joe was studying for the CPA exam and it was super stressful at times but we were both ultimately on the same page about it; it’s more about choices that fundamentally put you at odds with your spouse or your kids. Over and over again, I’ve found that if a call you hear is really from God (and not just your own selfish desires doing their best imitation of the Holy Spirit), one sure sign is that it will ultimately end up strengthening your work in your primary vocation.

:: 10 Books Everyone Should Read by 25-ish (Relevant Magazine)

A good book changes us. The right words speak out what we have hidden in the deepest of places. A good book lifts our eyes beyond the ordinary and shifts our perspective. A phrase or a word picture or a story immediately lodges into our long-term memory, and somehow becomes our phrase, picture, story. But good words – they stick with us. A good book changes us.

This is the power of good words—they are perspective-shifting, heart-understanding, life-changing. So what’s a must-read good book in the midst of the millions of options? Here we humbly offer our top ten books (with our own subtitles) that can change your life by age 25.

:: Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (Olive Us)

It’s a familiar story, so you should be able to follow along (and we know you’ll love the visuals no matter what). If you are interested, we have also posted the text in English and French here. It is based on a version Grandpa Blair tells. (We think this might be the most enjoyable way to study French).

Tablet Reading – links for May 15

Tags

Facebook, social media

photo of the week by anitab0000

The Internet, social media, and Facebook – one person’s year without the Internet, reflections by another on the good side of social media. But – in another link – not if you’re multitasking. Especially if you think you can multitask. The power of little things like compliments and excuses. A literary review that had me laughing harder than anything I’ve read in a long time. And a fun short-film overview of the history of typography.

:: I’m still here: Back online after a year without the Internet (The Verge via Becoming Minimalist)

It’s hard to say exactly what changed. I guess those first months felt so good because I felt the absence of the pressures of the internet. My freedom felt tangible. But when I stopped seeing my life in the context of “I don’t use the internet,” the offline existence became mundane, and the worst sides of myself began to emerge.

I would stay at home for days at a time. My phone would die, and nobody could get ahold of me. At some point my parents would get fed up with wondering if I was alive, and send my sister over to my apartment to check on me. On the internet it was easy to assure people I was alive and sane, easy to collaborate with my coworkers, easy to be a relevant part of society.

So much ink has been spilled deriding the false concept of a “Facebook friend,” but I can tell you that a “Facebook friend” is better than nothing.

:: How Social Media Made Me a Better Person (Relevant Magazine)

Facebook helps us love other people better. We are able to keep in touch with many more people. Yes, critics will say, “But how deep are those relationships? Aha! Got you!”

At the very least, social media creates a wealth of small talk relationships that can dip down into deeper topics more quickly. I know when people are really sick, when there are major life changes, or when someone goes radio-silent for a while, I can pop them a message, ring them up on the ol’ landline, or even drop by those who are in my zip code. And when we do interact more personally and directly, I can leap over the chit-chat and get to the heart of the matter.

:: You’ll Never Learn! Students can’t resist multitasking, and it’s impairing their memory. (Slate.com)

David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan who’s studied the effects of divided attention on learning, takes a firm line on the brain’s ability to multitask: “Under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. It can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they don’t compete with each other for the same mental resources. An example would be folding laundry and listening to the weather report on the radio. That’s fine. But listening to a lecture while texting, or doing homework and being on Facebook—each of these tasks is very demanding, and each of them uses the same area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.”

Young people think they can perform two challenging tasks at once, Meyer acknowledges, but “they are deluded,” he declares. It’s difficult for anyone to properly evaluate how well his or her own mental processes are operating, he points out, because most of these processes are unconscious. And, Meyer adds, “there’s nothing magical about the brains of so-called ‘digital natives’ that keeps them from suffering the inefficiencies of multitasking. They may like to do it, they may even be addicted to it, but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s far better to focus on one task from start to finish.”

:: Compliments from Random Women (DailyLife.com.au via Design Mom)

It’s funny, what a compliment can do.

I wouldn’t describe myself as starved for attention, or particularly insecure. Most of the time, I’m not walking around hoping against hope that strangers will flatter me in passing. I can get through my day just fine without even a single kind remark from a person on the subway. But just a few consecutive compliments have the power to make me abruptly happy. And for some reason, they mean even more when they’re coming from other women.

I was thinking about this in the cab on my way to the work thing. I’m not sure what makes compliments from other women feel particularly meaningful. Maybe men are simply more likely to dish them out to the women they randomly encounter, so when women do it, it feels special. Maybe the compliments from men almost always have an ulterior motive-y whiff about them. Women’s compliments can feel more earnest. Maybe I just care what other women think in some quiet, deep-seated, socially ingrained way that I don’t know how to parse or unpack.

What I am sure of is that compliments, though often brief, insignificant-seeming moments, make a difference.

:: The Making Excuses Game (Catholic All Year)

I teach my children to make excuses for bad behavior, and I don’t even require that the excuses be particularly believable.  It’s fine if they are, but sometimes the most outlandish excuses are the most fun.

And before you figure I’ve finally gone off the parenting deep end, let me clarify that The Making Excuses Game involves making excuses for other people only.

:: Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown (The Telegraph)

Renowned author Dan Brown hated the critics. Ever since he had become one of the world’s top renowned authors they had made fun of him. They had mocked bestselling book The Da Vinci Code, successful novel Digital Fortress, popular tome Deception Point, money-spinning volume Angels & Demons and chart-topping work of narrative fiction The Lost Symbol.

The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology. They said his prose was swamped in a sea of mixed metaphors. For some reason they found something funny in sentences such as “His eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.” They even say my books are packed with banal and superfluous description, thought the 5ft 9in man. He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket.

:: The History of Typography – Animated Short (Forrest Media)

7 quick takes – library books

Tags

7 quick takes, mommy memoir, parenting, picture books, Prayer

::1::

The city where we’re living right now is trying to bribe us – well, me – to stay here f.o.r.e.v.e.r. Boy, do they have me pegged. When I swung into the library last Saturday for a quick book drop-off and oh, okay, I’ll check out some more even though we are the Very Last People in the library and the librarians are all counting the minutes until Part II of their cruelly divided weekend can begin, one of the librarians came up to me and said, “By the way, they’ve just raised the borrowing limit from 25 books . . . to 100 books.” She watched the stunned look on my face and added, “I’ve been telling everyone who I know keeps their card close to the limit just to see the reactions.” (Make that two cards – M(4yo) has one in her name, too . . . let’s just say that she’s not the one watching the occasional PG-13 movie that shows up on it.)

::2::

The only thing more ridiculous than carrying on a conversation via IM or texting with someone in the same room when there’s no need for silence or privacy is Skyping with someone in the same room anytime. As my husband and I just did.

::3::

One of the parts of growing up is realizing that the cool superhero-inspired inside-joke Skype handle that you gave yourself back in your carefree pre-kids days might not be the best option for professional conversations. Fortunately, Skype seems to be aware of this phenomenon and you don’t even have to come up with a new e-mail address to add a new handle for business purposes. Nice. After you set the new one up, though, you will want to make sure that it comes up correctly when someone else tries to find you, so it’s handy if your wife – er, someone – is there to do a search with her account for your new Skype name. And then, of course, you have to Skype with each other. To the great delight of the 18mo, who was on his Daddy’s lap, and the 4yo, who was giggling her head off with Mommy. All in the same room. But we did have our backs to each other because our desks are in opposite corners, even if we could hear each other at least as well not over our computer speakers.

::4::

My library book pick of the week – French Twist: An American Mom’s Experiment in Parisian Parenting by Catherine Crawford. I’m enjoying the recent “French parenting” trend (see Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman; her spin-off, Bébé Day by Day: 100 Keys to French Parenting; and French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon). I’m enjoying the trend chiefly because it basically confirms the way a) my husband and I were raised and b) we’re raising our kids. (Except for the minor detail of the amazing French food . . .) Daddy and Mommy are in charge; boundaries (which means being comfortable saying – and meaning – “no”) help kids feel safe and taken care of and maintains household sanity; snacks are an exception; dinner is made at home and eaten together, the same basic meal for everyone; adults are not just tall playmates, nor are responsible for having something fun (or organized) scheduled for every moment of the day – independent free play is a Very Good Thing.

So, for me, the books are a combination of “You were doing what before?”; the cozy adult recognition that my parents were right all along; and the relief that I no longer have to feel guilty for not having my children’s day divided into Enriching Activities or for not carrying snacks in my purse (which aren’t missed, for the record). 

::5::

Let me clarify that there are still plenty of ways in which I am not a “French parent” (or even an American “French parent”). It would be easy to get the impression from the French parenting books that their approach and, say, the attachment-parenting approach are mutually exclusive. (And, frankly, the extremes of each are mutually exclusive.) But so far things seem to be going well with our Brooklyn-meets-Paris, extended-breastfeeding, parents are parents and kids are kids approach.

::6::

My children’s library book pick of the week is Queenie Farmer Had Fifteen Daughters by Ann Campbell, in honor of Mother’s Day – and in honor of my mother. Now, my father is still happily married to (and living with) my mother – he did not disappear a la Mr. Farmer in a futile search for missing cows. But the baking, crafting, creative love for her fifteen daughters (and fifty assorted grandchildren) that Queenie Farmer displays reminded me immediately of my own Mom and her baking, crafting, creative love for her three daughters (and assorted grandchildren). Gorgeous dresses (Christmas, Easter, prom, bridesmaid’s . . .); baptismal gowns; our special birthday desserts (my daughter is already plotting baking time with Grandma for my birthday this summer); and the many favorite photos of my children that were taken by their photographer Grandma. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of my Mom’s creative talents. Thank you, Mom! Happy Mother’s Day!

::7::

Finally, this is Day 1 of the Pentecost Novena, or the nine days of prayer between the Ascension and Pentecost. The Pentecost Novena was the original novena; the idea of a novena has since become to pray a prayer or set of prayers daily on the nine days leading up to a feast. There aren’t particular prayers set by the Catholic Church for the Pentecost novena. There are short options (the “Come, Holy Spirit” prayer, for instance) and Very Long options (the Novena of the Seven Gifts, for instance). I happen to like this Pentecost Novena, which is somewhere in-between.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen over at Conversion Diary!

Tablet Reading – links for May 8

Tags

Catholic social teaching, gender, motherhood, parenting

photo of the week by Andreas Krappweis

As Mother’s Day approaches on Sunday (note!): Two takes on a world in which sex, gender, and reproduction are no longer assumed to have any relation. One presenting the risks of a made-to-order approach to baby-making and the response of Catholic social teaching. And one with a sexless, genderless approach to teaching kids about how babies are made . . . to order . . . in a world in which this commodification is increasingly a new norm. More gently, two of my favorite older posts for moms of little ones and those who care for them. And a sweet video reminder of the things that kids really appreciate about their moms.

:: Parents as Stewards: Rejecting the Commodification of Reproduction (CatholicMoralTheology.com)

Children simply don’t stick to the plan. They require nerve-wracking trips to the ER. They have trouble in school. They fall ill, sometimes in ways that reshape their parents’ lives. They turn up, late-night, at the police station. They pair off and marry in ways their parents find desperately foolish. Decades later, they suddenly need assistance in ways no one could have predicted.

Happily, Catholic moral theology offers a vision that makes sense of this reality. These children, it would remind us, are persons, possessing absolute innate dignity. They are not commodities to be acquired for the benefit they provide. They can never be reduced to an expression of others’ choices, not even the choices of those who play a part in their conception.

If this basic claim of personhood could be convincingly argued, it would accomplish a great deal. Not all instances of seeing children as fulfillment-of-adult-decisions-and-desires are as sharply articulated as the one described in the essay linked above, but such instances are everywhere. 

:: “A Truly Inclusive Way to Answer ‘Where Do Babies Come From?’” (The Atlantic)

What Makes a Baby is, as you’d probably suspect from the title, a picture book intended to teach young children about where they come from. In other words, it’s an origin story. And, like most origin stories, it’s not just descriptive, but proscriptive. [sic] A story about where we’re from tells us where we are—and where we should be going.

This is not precisely author Cory Silverberg’s intent—or at least, it’s not something he dwells on in the downloadable reader’s guide. Instead, he explains, the book “invites the adult reader to share with a child the unique story of how that particular child came to be in the world, in their community, and in their family.” The book is deliberately and insistently inclusive—which means that it does not presume a “normal” one-fertile-mommy-one-fertile-daddy household. Indeed, the book doesn’t even mention the word “mommy” or “daddy”.

Instead, What Makes a Baby explains that “Not all bodies have eggs in them. Some do, and some do not;” and that “Not all bodies have sperm in them. Some do, and some do not.” Similarly, sex isn’t so much tip-toed around as it is relegated to one unspecified option among many. “When grown ups want to make a baby they need to get an egg from one body and sperm from another body. They also need a place where a baby can grow.”

• The publisher’s page, with a book trailer.
• More of the same. “The Duck Who Shared Her Eggs: How Children’s Books Approach Modern Reproduction” (The Atlantic)

:: 100 Ways to Encourage a New Mom (Lisa-Jo Baker, February 2012)

• Ask her which baby items she still needs – get her those instead of the cute clothes you have your eye on
• Assure her you understand that while she might know that she’s walking on holy ground, that doesn’t mean she won’t still feel irritated how often that ground is strewn with cracker crumbs and yesterday’s socks
• Admit motherhood is one of the hardest things you’ve ever done
• Go ahead and quote that goodie-but-oldie, “It’s not brave if you’re not scared.” {Thank you, Ben Affleck}
• Warn her everyone will have an opinion on how she mothers but at the end of the day, hers is the only one that matters
• Assure her motherhood is not graded; some days just surviving is victory enough

:: The Tunnel of Parenthood (One More Soul, August 2011)

It was as if a huge weight was lifted from me, and I was filled with hope. “It’s going to get better? Really?” I didn’t know it at the time, but Tom and I were in the “Tunnel of Parenthood: The First Five Years.” Now that we have emerged from the Tunnel, I have grown more and more convinced that those were indeed the hardest years.

It’s not the mere fact of having children under the age of five in the home that makes it the Tunnel; it’s going through the parenting of children under five for the first time. The very young child’s stages of development are rapid-fire and, when you’ve never experienced them before, are at times baffling. It all slows down after age five. Meaning, the differences between a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old are vast compared to the differences between a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old. It is a literal whirlwind from zero to five.

More than that, in the first few years, parents are “on duty” all the time in a very physical way. It can be plain exhausting when the little ones are getting all of their needs met by Mom and Dad, and those needs are immediate and primal.

:: Thank You, Mom – Mother’s Day Tribute (Care.com)

Tablet Reading – links for May 1

Tags

food, gender, inventing, parenting, pop anthropology

photo of the week by Makio Kusahara

Links about the exploration and pursuit of the new. Raising a kid who doesn’t fear new foods (a link to an entertaining post about a book that I enjoyed); the voices of two inventors – one still alive and one long dead; practical advice on having and pursuing great ideas; the invention of . . . a pronoun (and a new take on gender – I never said that all new things were necessarily improvements . . .). And a humorous video spin-off of a commercial for an invention of the future present.

:: Hungry Monkey (Design Mom)

Given to me by my stepmother (my sole inspiration and role-model when it comes to all things food and whose great wedding present of a curated cookbook collection you read about here) this past weekend at my baby shower, Hungry Monkey is sub-titled “A Food-Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater.” I accepted the present greedily, like a recovering addict would take to their formerly beloved drug, because all through this pregnancy, I’ve eaten like a stereotypical four year old. I like things that are white and yellow. I want nothing to do with green. Chicken fingers and plain white cupcakes with plain white frosting (or Funfetti, if we’re feeling really adventurous) have constituted their own food groups.

As someone who has lived her whole adult life on spicy curry soups, brussels sprouts tossed with mustard and capers, and Ethiopian injera, this has been moderately terrifying on a good day and depression-making on the worst. Is this kid so picky I can’t even tolerate any decent food pregnant? Are we going to be resigned to dinners of plain cheese pizza and pasta-with-butter-no-sauce for the next 18 years and eight weeks?

Is it okay to start crying now?

:: Steadicam Inventor Joins the Inventors Hall of Fame (NPR)

BROWN: Well, the prime – the way I see it, the prime inventing act is identifying something you really want which is missing. You know, we gloss over what’s missing, we take for granted what’s missing.

CONAN: Well, a lot of us who are inspired by invention really want a whole lot of money.

BROWN: Well, a whole lot of money is an auxiliary phenomenon to inventing. If you’re a good inventor, you get a whole lot of money. I guess theoretically that’s the idea. But you know what, a good life, a great career, a good marriage in effect are inventions because there is something that you want which may or may not presently exist or may only partially exist. What you have already may need improving or it may not exist at all, you know. So I think you have to broaden the definition; it isn’t just gadgets and gizmos and machines and processes. It’s whatever you want and the finding of it, the getting of it could be considered an invention, you know?

I’d love to encourage people, particularly kids, to think of their lives in those terms, you know, and incidentally, by the way, to think of stuff they want personally as accessible. I’m a big fan of personal inventing. My house is full of one of a kind gadgets that might not be worth even patenting or selling, but are very satisfying to own, you know?

:: For the First Time Ever, You Can Now Hear What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like (The Atlantic)

“Did Bell speak with a Scottish burr? What was the pitch and depth of the voice with which he loved to belt out ballads and music hall songs?” Bell biographer Charlotte Gray asks in Smithsonian. He had lived in England, Canada, the eastern United States. He summered in Nova Scotia where people spoke Gaelic. How did all these influences combine in his speech?

And now Gray has her answer. The Smithsonian has released audio recovered from a wax and cardboard disc dated April 15, 1885. In it, you can clearly hear the inventor speak the words: “Hear my voice – Alexander Graham Bell.”

:: How Entrepreneurs Come Up With Great Ideas (Wall Street Journal)

How did everybody else get inspiration to strike—and how can we work the same magic?

To find out, we turned to the experts—the startup mentors who discuss launching businesses at our Accelerators blog, as well as other investors, advisers and professors who have seen and heard countless success stories, and entrepreneurs who have written success stories of their own. They saw inspiration coming from all sorts of sources—everyday puzzles, driving passions and the subconscious mind.

Here’s what they had to say.

:: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen (Slate.com)

Ironically, in the effort to free Swedish children from so-called normative behavior, gender-neutral proponents are also subjecting them to a whole set of new rules and new norms as certain forms of play become taboo, language becomes regulated, and children’s interactions and attitudes are closely observed by teachers. One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys “gender-coded” them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys. Another preschool removed “free playtime” from its schedule because, as a pedagogue at the school put it, when children play freely “stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed to bullying.” And so every detail of children’s interactions gets micromanaged by concerned adults, who end up problematizing minute aspects of children’s lives, from how they form friendships to what games they play and what songs they sing.

:: ADmented Reality – Google Glasses Remixed with Google Ads (Rebellious Pixels via the creators project)

When I saw Google had somehow forgotten to include any ads in their Project Glass promotional video I just couldn’t resist fixing that little oversight for them. So less then 24 hours after Google released their video I remixed and uploaded my own slightly more realistic version of the augmented reality glasses – now featuring contextual Google Ads for your life!

7 quick takes – holy water and easy readers edition

Tags

7 quick takes, catholic church, education, Prayer, Rome

::1::

The Resident Theologian and I spent our first (school-) year  of married life in a cottage-y little townhouse in the beach town of Santa Marinella (featured in pics 1, 2, and 5 of this post of Mama needs coffee. [Thanks, Jenny, for the trip down memory lane!]) Santa Marinella attracts a lot of student family ex-pats because, as a beach town, it has a lot of rental properties available during the school year that are either used by their Italian owners or rented out for three times the school-year rent during the blazing Italian summers. We loved our drafty little nest, our landlords were wonderful, and though I’d had to leave all of our wedding presents in storage (read: my long-suffering parents’ basement) in the States, I feathered our nest through the year with comfort-making things like an IKEA tension-rod-mounted shower curtain, a pot lid (lots of pots, no lids when we moved in), bigger drinking glasses, and even a stick blender that a friend of ours gave us because she never used it (hello, spinach hummus!). And at some point that year, we had our first little home blessed by Fr. Luke Buckles, OP (so wonderful to run into him in this post over at Catholic All Year – if only I could run into him in person again now!).

::2::

At the end of those two semesters, we’d figured out that we’d be back in the fall for one more semester, so we packed up books and a few personal things that we didn’t want to cart back to the States for just the summer and we stashed them (with our landlords’ blessing) in a crawl space in our rental. We knew our landlords were renting the place to vacationers over the summer, and we were rather familiar with the habits of summer renters (our landlords’ sheets and an antique linen bedspread had walked off the summer before we first moved in). We were expecting some . . . attrition . . . and had an IKEA run planned for soon after our return to fill in any gaps.

::3::

But the night we re-entered our home after a summer away . . . Well, the box of stuff we’d left was intact, still sitting in the crawl space. But our sheets, blankets, shower curtain and tension rod, stick blender, pot lid, drinking glasses, and even our collection of spices – along with other things – had been taken during the summer. I was six months pregnant with our daughter, expecting to give birth before we returned to the States, and I felt like a mother bird whose nest had been torn open and plundered. Our home had been a place of peace and comfort when we’d left. Not now. I wasn’t prepared for the feelings of insecurity and violation. Or the darkness of the anger and frustration. But from somewhere in the middle of the black cloud that I was wrestling with as I tried to fall asleep that night, I remembered the bottle of holy water that had been in our crawl space box of stuff. I went downstairs, dug it out, blessed myself, and then sprinkled it around our house, in every room. And the evil left, and peace returned, and I slept. That’s not to say that the hurt and the anger completely disappeared then – they didn’t, and took some time to heal (finding the 1-euro yellow spray bottle that I’d gotten in Florence and discovered hadn’t been taken helped) - but the sticky ugliness of that black cloud, and the feelings of exposure and violation and peace-less-ness left that night with the holy water.

::4::

And this was what I remembered last Saturday, when the kids and I were in foul moods all day. Pretty much our worst ever collective day – but one that we, as a family, had been building up to for a few days. (The Resident Theologian was out at an event on this particular evening, due back sometime after the kids were in bed.) Right before getting dinner together, I really wasn’t sure how I was going to make it until the kids were in bed. So Many Tears. So Much Drama. And a black storm cloud over my head, too. SO Frustrated – and then in the middle of my mental storm, remembered our bottle of holy water. Got it out, silently blessed each of the kids & myself with it, dashed a bunch around the house… Placebo effect? Not so fast – I didn’t say anything about what I was doing to either of the kids, who’ve never seen me do this before – but their moods changed (even in different rooms). And mine definitely did. (And the Resident Theologian made sure to bless himself with some as soon as I told him about it, which was pretty much as soon as he walked in the door that evening.) Neither of us has any idea what was going on except for lots of evil flying around the country that week (Boston bombing, Gosnell trial, etc.), but the tears and drama left our family that evening after a good dousing with holy water. Thank You, Jesus. Love, me.

::5::

Now for an entirely different topic. Easy readers. I naively thought that a Level 1 easy reader would be a book containing only words that may be easily sounded out by one who knows the most basic consonant and vowel sounds. Ideally, two and three-letter words with no blends or diphthongs, focusing on the short vowel sounds. Hat, bed, pig, jog, fun. English has lots of these words. I was wrong. So dreadfully, dreadfully wrong. Easy readers (with the sole exception of the mind-numbing BOB books) are just books with short sentences and relatively short “familiar words.” No matter if there’s not a chance that the new reader could sound out any of these words by herself. She’ll get them by osmosis…er…worksheets…er…by hearing endless repetitions of “sound it out” from her parent or teacher. When. She. Can’t. Because sounding them out requires knowing too many rules all at once.

::6::

So, like the Little Red Hen, I am going to do it myself. I already fired off one story (with a plot! and dialogue!) containing only two and three letter words, no blends or diphthongs (except limited use of the word “the”) before lunch one day a couple weeks ago.

::7::

Pictures are a bit more of a hurdle. But we will figure something out.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen over at Conversion Diary. (She’s back!)

Tablet Reading – links for April 24

Tags

book list, Downton Abbey, food, Prayer

photo of the week by Florin Garoi

Some links on food, some good food blogs, a post on prayer, some book list links, and a Downton Abbey (parody) fix. Bon appétit!

:: Want to Forage in Your City? There’s a Map for That (NPR via Nourished Kitchen)

Avid foragers Caleb Philips and Ethan Welty launched an interactive map last month that identifies more than a half-million locations across the globe where fruits and veggies are free for the taking. The project, dubbed “Falling Fruit,” pinpoints all sorts of tasty trees in public parks, lining city streets and even hanging over fences from the U.K. to New Zealand.

The map looks like a typical Google map. Foraging locations are pinned with dots. Zoom in and click on one, and up pops a box with a description of what tree or bush you can find there. The description often includes information on the best season to pluck the produce, the quality and yield of the plant, a link to the species profile on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website, and any additional advice on accessing the spot.

:: Are Happy Gut Bacteria Key to Weight Loss?  (Mother Jones)

The very qualities that improve palatability and lengthen shelf life—high sugar content, fats that resist turning rancid, and a lack of organic complexity—make refined foods toxic to your key microbes. Biologically simple, processed foods may cultivate a toxic microbial community, not unlike the algal blooms that result in oceanic “dead zones.”

In fact, scientists really do observe a dead zone of sorts when they peer into the obese microbiota. Microbes naturally form communities. In obese people, not only are anti-inflammatory microbes relatively scarce, diversity in general is depleted, and community structure degraded. Microbes that, in ecological parlance, we might call weedy species—the rats and cockroaches of your inner world—scurry around unimpeded. What’s the lesson? Junk food may produce a kind of microbial anarchy. Opportunists flourish as the greater structure collapses. Cooperative members get pushed aside. And you, who both contain and depend on the entire ecosystem, pay the price.

:: The 2013 Best Food Blog Awards (Saveur via Simple Mom)

In Saveur’s ongoing mission to chronicle a world of authentic cuisine, we find what we’re looking for more and more in one place: online. Of the tens of thousands of nominations that came in this year—blogs great and small, visual and textual, humorous and profound, technical and amateur, exuberant and austere—we found not just great writing, great photography, and a great commitment to the importance of food to storytelling and community-building, but also some blogs that truly spoke to us. We’re thrilled to shine a light on the sixty-eight unique blogs that are finalists in the fourth annual Saveur Best Food Blog Awards—and even more delighted to announce the winners in each category. Congratulations to all!

:: The Time I Almost Stopped Praying… And Then God Showed Off (FOCUS.org via New Advent)

I took those thoughts home with me and spent the next several months grappling with them. I began to get specific and did my best to be bold in my asking, “I want another child Lord! Bless us again!” And the more I prayed the more I began to have peace, but not peace that made me feel confident that my prayers would be answered, rather peace with “any answer.” My heart’s desires began to change and so did my request. I no longer just wanted another child, I wanted God’s Will for the growth of our family. My heart began to conform with the heart of my Father, I started to want only what He wanted, all because I started to really tell Him deep down what I wanted. I had found the grace to be open to His grace and was ready to accept His plan for our family, whatever it might be.

:: Some updates, and five amazing books to make you feel better about your crazy life (Conversion Diary)

As I bounce along this rocky road of health recovery and adjusting to having 50 or six or however many kids there are in this house now, I continue to find books to be a huge stress reliever. In particular, I love true stories of people who have gone on wild adventures and lived to tell about it. Maybe it’s because I am the least outdoorsy person in the world, but any time I read of people staying strong while being tested to their physical limits, it always fills me with amazement at the indomitability of the human spirit…and makes me really, really, really glad to be sitting in my house, no matter what kind of craziness happens to be playing out in my own life at the time. For those of you who could use a little escapism right now, here are a few books I recommend for this purpose.

:: Twitterature – April 2013 Edition  (Modern Mrs Darcy)

This is the place to find short, casual reviews of what people have been reading lately.

:: Watch Downton Abbey Resurrect Matthew in Musical Parody Performed by Broadway Stars (Vanity Fair)

The long wait until Downton Abbey’s fourth season seems less bleak today thanks to a musical parody that has found its way to the Internet. Directed and co-written by John Walton West and featuring music and lyrics by Jason Michael Snow, the production, filmed at Studio 54 in New York, depicts the cast and creator of the costume drama as they develop a musical episode à la Greys Anatomy or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The result features one thrilling tea-centric duet between Carson and Mrs. Hughes, a gloomy mourning number by Mary, and a hen-fest parlor-room sequence featuring the Dowager Countess and Martha Levinson.

Tablet Reading – links for April 18

Tags

bioethics, Catholic theology, relationships

photo of the week by bernadg

My mental title for this is “Tablet Reading – the Feverish Dreams edition.” Thoroughly appropriate considering that our family is in week two of a battle with the flu or something like it (one member recovered, one close, one still under, and one unscathed). Thoroughly appropriate also considering that the links themselves seem like products of feverish dreams. “Mostly Dead” moves from being a Princess Bride joke to having some real-life relevance. Someone is seriously suggesting that we open wide marriage to any number of people of any gender – because, of course, “the definition of marriage is plastic.” (Note: if you stretch a thing – anything – too far, it breaks.) Scott Hahn writing about the sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist as a part of evangelization (nothing unusual so far) – in America Magazine, the Jesuit periodical. Let’s just say this is a first. (For the magazine. A very hopeful sort of first.) Finally, a video about washcloths in space. Watch it and you’ll see why it made my Feverish Dreams links post.

:: Sam Parnia – the man who could bring you back from the dead  (The Observer)

“It is my belief,” he says, “that anyone who dies of a cause that is reversible should not really die any more. That is: every heart attack victim should no longer die. I have to be careful when I state that because people will say, ‘My husband has died recently and you are saying that need not have happened’. But the fact is heart attacks themselves are quite easily managed. If you can manage the process of death properly then you go in, take out the clot, put a stent in, the heart will function in most cases. And the same with infections, pneumonia or whatever. People who don’t respond to antibiotics in time, we could keep them there for a while longer [after they had died] until they did respond.”

Parnia’s belief is backed up by his experience at the margin of life and death in intensive care units for the past two decades – he did his training at Guy’s and St Thomas’ in London – and particularly in the past five years or so when most of the advances in resuscitation have occurred. Those advances – most notably the drastic cooling of the corpse to slow neuronal deterioration and the monitoring and maintenance of oxygen levels to the brain – have not yet become accepted possibilities in the medical profession. Parnia is on a mission to change that.

:: Legalize Polygamy! No. I am not kidding.  (Slate.com)

The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less “correct” than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority—a tiny minority, in fact—freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us. So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States—and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.

:: Mass Evangelization  (Scott Hahn in America Magazine)

What was it, I asked Chris, that transformed Jesus’ execution into a sacrifice? He was dumbstruck. I told him that for many years I could not answer that question. But St. Paul and the church fathers led me to the answer.

The transformative moment was Jesus’ offering of his body and blood at the Last Supper. Jesus spoke of that offering in sacrificial terms, commanding his apostles to keep it in perpetuity as his memorial: “Do this in remembrance of me.” He called it “the new covenant” (or “new testament”) in his blood (Mt 26:28), echoing Moses’ words as he ratified the Old Law with a sacrifice (Ex 24:8). The apostles, too, looked upon his memorial in sacrificial terms: “For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:7).

Holy Thursday is what transformed Good Friday from an execution into a sacrifice, and Easter Sunday is what transformed the sacrifice into a sacrament. Christ’s body was raised in glory, so it is now communicable to the faithful. Indeed, it is the same sacrifice he offered by instituting the Eucharist and then dying on Calvary, only now his sacred humanity is deified and deifying. It is the high-priestly sacrifice that he offers in heaven and on earth.

:: If You Try to Wring Out a Washcloth in Space, You Will Fail  (TheAtlantic.com)

Water, in space, will not flow. It will not cascade, or drip, or fill a cup. Instead, unimpeded by gravity, water tends to collect in floating blobs that are works of beauty and science at the same time.

Tablet Reading – April 10

Tags

book list, food, Prayer, relationships

photo of the week by Anita Berghoef

Three links about relationships – with friends and family, God, and your significant other (-to-be). A book list. And another good reason to do your own cooking.

:: How Not to Say the Wrong Thing (Los Angeles Times)

Susan has since developed a simple technique to help people avoid this mistake. It works for all kinds of crises: medical, legal, financial, romantic, even existential. She calls it the Ring Theory.

Draw a circle. This is the center ring. In it, put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma. For Katie’s aneurysm, that’s Katie. Now draw a larger circle around the first one. In that ring put the name of the person next closest to the trauma. In the case of Katie’s aneurysm, that was Katie’s husband, Pat. Repeat the process as many times as you need to. In each larger ring put the next closest people. Parents and children before more distant relatives. Intimate friends in smaller rings, less intimate friends in larger ones. When you are done you have a Kvetching Order. One of Susan’s patients found it useful to tape it to her refrigerator.

Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, “Life is unfair” and “Why me?” That’s the one payoff for being in the center ring.

Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings.

:: I Didn’t Do Anything (Simcha Fisher)

I hadn’t been doing anything, and this is where it landed me.  Sick, hurt, angry, half paralyzed, and looking around for someone else to blame.

Most Catholics will agree that praying does all sorts of wonderful things for us.  But have you ever thought about what happens to us when we don’t pray?  We don’t just maintain some sort of neutral spiritual state until we begin praying again, believe me.  A little neglect leads to a little degeneration, and the next thing you know, you’re a whimpering heap on the table, wishing and hoping for the knife to come and put you out of your misery.  Even though you didn’t do anything.

:: Is Pornography Cheating? (JackieandBobby.com)

Yes.

Oh, sorry…I guess I need to write more. Well, I guess I can explain it a little better.

Girls can usually see this issue for what it is. We guys, on the other hand, rationalize, make excuses, or are just simply too addicted to our lust to admit what is staring at us from the computer screen.

Pornography is cheating on your family, cheating on your spouse, and ultimately cheating on yourself.

I really believe that pornography is the “silent killer” of our generation, stripping men (and a growing population of women) of their vitality and potency to become the men they’re called to be.

:: 7 Books I Read Over and Over Again (Modern Mrs Darcy)

I’ll re-read a book for one of two reasons: because I love it, or because I need it. This list features a healthy mix of both.

:: The Sugar Hiding in Everyday Foods (via Mark Bittman)

We’ve written about the dangers of sugar many times, and we know that sodas are chock full of it. But what about everyday foods? Today we bring you an excellent video by Buzzfeed revealing the astonishing amount of sugar in foods we don’t associate with being necessarily sugary. What do you think has more sugar: baked beans or Monster Energy Drink? You’d be surprised.

Tablet Reading – April 3

Tags

education, food, pop psychology

photo of the week by A. Laczek

This week’s links – on love, homeschooling, the benefits of being a giver, and another reason to say yes to butter.

:: A Special Vocation: To Show People How to Love  (CatholicMoralTheology.com)

But how can a disabled person show us how to love in a way that only a disabled person can? Because the Cross of Christ is sweet and is of a higher order. Christ’s resurrection from the Cross proclaims that the love he offers us, the love that we, in our turn, are to show others, is the REAL reason he endured the Cross in the first place. Our stony hearts are transformed into this Christ-like love, and thereby empowered to change hatred into love, only through the Cross. And no one shares in the Cross more intimately than the disabled. And so the disabled become our models and our inspiration. Yes, I give much to my son, Dominic. But he gives me more, WAY more. I help him stand and walk, but he shows me how to love. I feed him, but he shows me how to love. I bring him to physical therapy, but he shows me how to love. I stretch his muscles and joke around with him, but he shows me how to love. I lift him in and out of his chair, I wheel him all over the place, but he shows me how to love. I give up my time, so much time, for him, but he shows me how to love.

:: 18 Reasons Why Doctors and Lawyers Homeschool Their Children  (ChildrensMD)

I’m going public today with a secret I’ve kept for a year—my husband and I are homeschooling our children. I never dreamed we would become homeschoolers.  I wanted my kids integrated and socialized. I wanted their eyes opened to the realities of the world. I wanted the values we taught at home put to the test in the real world.  But necessity drove me to consider homeschooling for my 2^nd and 4^th graders, and so I timidly attended a home school parent meeting last spring.  Surprisingly it was full of doctors, lawyers, former public school teachers, and other professionals.  These were not the stay-at-home-moms in long skirts that I expected. The face of homeschooling is changing. 

:: Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead? (New York Times Magazine)

Grant’s book, incorporating several decades of social-science research on reciprocity, divides the world into three categories: givers, matchers and takers. Givers give without expectation of immediate gain; they never seem too busy to help, share credit actively and mentor generously. Matchers go through life with a master chit list in mind, giving when they can see how they will get something of equal value back and to people who they think can help them. And takers seek to come out ahead in every exchange; they manage up and are defensive about their turf. Most people surveyed fall into the matcher category — but givers, Grant says, are overrepresented at both ends of the spectrum of success: they are the doormats who go nowhere or burn out, and they are the stars whose giving motivates them or distinguishes them as leaders. Much of Grant’s book sets out to establish the difference between the givers who are exploited and those who end up as models of achievement. The most successful givers, Grant explains, are those who rate high in concern for others but also in self-interest. And they are strategic in their giving — they give to other givers and matchers, so that their work has the maximum desired effect; they are cautious about giving to takers; they give in ways that reinforce their social ties; and they consolidate their giving into chunks, so that the impact is intense enough to be gratifying.

:: Let Them Eat Fat: In Praise of Fatty Food (Wall Street Journal, via Perfect Health Diet)

Paradoxically, the most conclusive argument for eating sumptuously delicious fatty foods can be found in Michael Moss’s well-intentioned but scarifying new book, Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, where he uses the telling phrase “sensory-specific satiety point.” As Mr. Moss defines it, this is “the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more.” 

Whoa! This is big. The author, however, misses the far-reaching implications. He focuses on bashing the use of the “sensory-specific satiety” concept by the evil processed-food industry, which goes to great lengths to get you to overeat fatty fried junk by purposely avoiding the “sensory-specific satiety” point that stops the craving. 

In other words, sensory satiety is our friend. Voilà! The foods that best hit that sweet spot and “overwhelm the brain” with pleasure are high-quality fatty foods. They discourage us from overeating. A modest serving of short ribs or Peking duck will be both deeply pleasurable and self-limiting. As the brain swoons into insensate delight, you won’t have to gorge a still-craving cortex with mediocre sensations.

:: We Are Never Eating Bad Together – Abigail Stauffer

The song, “We are Never Ever Eating Bad Together” is a take-off on Taylor Swift’s breakup song “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” and features lyrics like “we could eat all kinds of ancient grains instead of wheat.”