Stick Horse Cowgirls

Did any of you see this heart-stopping YouTube video?  I first saw it on a news broadcast and only made it through the entire thing because the anchor said at the outset: “ Don’t worry—it all ends well.” I loved seeing this—how the little ducklings would scurry back to the guidance of their mother after their little group was scattered by the wind of passing traffic.  How she would wait on them to regroup before continuing her perilous path. It made me think back to one of my favorite childhood books: Make Way for Ducklings , by Robert McCloskey (1942 Caldecott Award.)  For those of you who don’t know this book, it is  about a family of ducks crossing a city street (with the help of the friendly traffic policeman) to get to the lake at the Boston Public  Gardens.  The book is famous enough to merit sculpture at the gardens to commemorate it. Another of my favorites was about Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel Marianne (by Virginia Burton, 1939.)...

I just finished a book recommended to me by my son called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.  Son gave it to me for two reasons: 1) He liked it; and 2) He knows I like the challenge of examining my own position on things and examining my beliefs.  I am just wondering:  Am I unusual in this preference?  Or are most of you out there like this? I ask because I have friends who distinctly do not like—even avoid—having their cherished beliefs challenged.  I actually relish it.  And I think it sometimes makes me look like a troublemaker. You need to know this about me: Just because I voice a proposition does not necessarily mean I subscribe to it.  If you ask me, I’ll tell you whether I am mulling over something that I’m just exploring or if I’m laying something on the table that I believe is a truth (getting rarer all the time, I’ll say, having learned in my old age that there are far fewer absolutes than I once thought). I just forget to distinguish...

Reading V’s recent post about our childhood sure stirred up memories.  She’s right.  Summer was divine.  While school was always enjoyable for me, summer was the zenith of the year.  We never went to school into June, and we did not return to school until the day after Labor Day, so we had a full three months off.  Summer had a whole different rhythm of life than the rest of the year.  Now that I am an adult, I don’t get to experience that change in beat (although V does, being a school employee). My passion for reading dates from my early childhood; I’ve been reading since before I went to school.  There came a time when I could not find anything in my school’s library to read because I had read everything that was of remote interest to me.  For sure, I had read all the books on horses, dogs and native Americans, both fiction and nonfiction.  When I was a child there was no such thing in our area as branch libraries.  The library d...