A Common Place

Has anyone out there in blog land missed me or wondered where I've been?  Oh, please, tell me you've missed me!  Are you still there?  Well, there is a reason for this silence and...have I got stories for you--Heap big happenings here, my friends. I'd love to tell you all about them now but I can't. Tomorrow is Senior Thesis Class and its calling me.  So, stories will have to wait for a day or two.  I promise, I'll tell all. 
In the meantime, I'm going to share some of our commonplace quotes from the class I teach.  Each week our 4 students bring in at least 5 pithy quotes that interested them and that they've collected that week.  We compile them in our commonplace book after they are read aloud and discussed.  I'm always impressed with what they share. 
Here's a recent spate of them from Nathaniel.  Can you tell what and where his interests lie? 

See you soon--I promise!


Senior Thesis
February 10, 2010
A Common Place From February 10, 2010


 “A "jiffy" actually has a formal definition. More than one, in fact.
In electronics, a jiffy is the time between alternating current power cycles, 1/60 or 1/50 of a second in most countries. In astrophysics and quantum physics a jiffy is the time it takes for light to travel one fermi, which is the size of a nucleon.  In computing, a jiffy is the duration of one tick of the system timer interrupt. It is not an absolute time interval unit, since its duration depends on the clock interrupt frequency of the particular hardware platform.”~Jason Kottke, Be there in a jiffy, kottke.org, quoting Wikipedia, February 10, 2010


“It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.”~Aristotle, Rhetoric, I.1355b1


“And frightened people will resist any help you can give them, and they will blame you for the stress the change is causing. Scared people like to shoot the messenger. Duck. The worst kind of frightened person is one with power. Someone in a mob of other frightened people, someone with a gun, someone who is the CEO. When confronted with a scared CEO, time to run. Before someone can change, they have to learn, and before they learn, they have to cease being scared. One reason so many big ideas come from small organizations is that there is far less fear of change at the top. One mistake board members and shareholders make is that they reward the scared but hyperconfident CEO, instead of calling him on the carpet as he rages at change.”~Seth Godin, Frightened, clueless or uninformed?, Seth's Blog, February 8, 2010


“The truth is, I feel like yelling Stop quite a bit these days. Every time I hear about Twitter I want to yell Stop. The notion of sending and getting brief updates to and from dozens or thousands of people every few minutes is an image from information hell. I’m told that Twitter is a river into which I can
dip my cup whenever I want. But that supposes we’re all kneeling on the banks. In fact, if you’re at all like me, you’re trying to keep your footing out in midstream, with the water level always dangerously close to your nostrils. Twitter sounds less like sipping than drowning.”~George Packer, Stop the World, Interesting Times, The New Yorker

Run to "My Book House"

As a mother and now a grandmother I know it's never too soon to introduce your child or grandchild to the best the world has to offer in the way of books and art. (Okay, not a mother or grandmother yet? Stay with me here, unless you have absolutely no interest in children or books A-tal!) If you do, run--don't walk--to find your nearest collection of "My Book House" (unless, of course, you have your own personal frog who can carry you there).

C. S. Lewis said, "if a book is worth reading at 5 it should be worth reading at 50". That quote has inspired me to become a collector of children's books as well as all the other kinds of tomes the world has to offer. Starting a child out early loving the printed word and picture is a worthy task for any mother/grandmother. Giving them a desire for books--great books--is a goal which will equip them in their pursuit and love of learning for the rest of their life.

"My Book House" is a simply wonderful series of children's books that are copyrighted as far back as 1920 and were edited by Olive Beaupre Miller. She obviously had good taste. (The last sets were printed in 2000, but look for the older volumes. There are six to twelve volumes, depending on the year.)  Miller did her utmost to provide children with rich content not only in picture but in word as well.  Her choice of colors, authors, material and artists put her in a class of her own as an editor.

Her own words describe the value of the collection best:

In My BOOK HOUSE, I have tried to give children the best in literature, gathered from the greatest authors of the past and present, and from our rich heritage of old folk tales, told from generation to generation in every country in the world. But I have selected those stories with care. Avoiding those tales where evil traits of character, such as lying and cheating to gain one's ends, have been made to appear good, I have chosen only those where truly desirable qualities invite the child's admiration. I have tried also to grade all this material as wisely as possible, that the child might have the right story at the right age, and to put it forth so beautifully illustrated that it would be irresistable to him. Here, in these twelve volumes, adult and child can enter, hand-in-hand, a wonderful realm of imagination and beauty, portrayed in the best literary forms of verse and prose....

"The permanent value of My BOOK HOUSE arises from the fact that at the time of its inception, I had no pet theory of education to advance.... I was in search of fundamentals, simple fundamentals, which must remain eternally true. Chaos then existed and is, unfortunately, still permitted to exist, in the realm of reading for children. They were being given stories, ethically sound, all jumbled up with those where the ethical slant was bad, and stories for the older children were being read to the child when he was too young, overwhelming him with fright and confusion by presenting to him characters and situations far beyond his understanding at the moment. Out of this chaos I was trying to bring order, an order that could never be disturbed. So let me review a few basic principles, with which I emerged from my search and on which I built My BOOK HOUSE.

"First,--To be well equipped for life, to have ideas and the ability to express them, the child needs a broad background of familiarity with the best in literature.

"Second,--His stories and rhymes must be selected with care that he may absorb no distorted view of life and its actual values, but may grow up to be mentally clear about values and emotionally impelled to seek what is truly desirable and worthwhile in human living.

"Third,--The stories and rhymes selected must be graded to the child's understanding at different periods of his growth, graded as to vocabulary, as to subject matter and as to complexity of structure and plot.

"On those three simple fundamentals My BOOK HOUSE was built."

I've often told my children they will never be able to devour all the great books available, so why spend one moment on the mundane or unworthy trash that's out there? If true then, how much more so now?  So, what are you waiting for!  Hop on your frog NOW and find this amazing set of children's books! 

The End!