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Our cat is fascinated with doors. If one is closed, she sits staring at it or dig under it until it is opened. She may not see the room within as worthy of a visit once she can enter, but she wants the opportunity nonetheless. For us bipeds, what is it about open doors that stirs our curiosity? Who can walk down a hall of doors where most are closed and not peek inside the ones ajar? A hotel, office, hospital – wherever we are, we must look! What do we expect to find inside?

Don’t tell me you walk on focused with your eyes straight forward. I won’t believe you. I know you slow your pace slightly to get as much of a look as possible as you approach. Isn’t it awkward when you turn your head as you are walking past and end up looking face to face with someone whose expression is always, “why is this person staring at me?”

Uhhh, you left the door open!

When you were a kid, did you think of doors as some sort of portal with endless possibilities? Every door was a wardrobe that could take you to Narnia. Bugs Bunny cemented that feeling with the recurrent theme of being chased down a hall by coming and going through random doors completely out of time and sequence. The heart-shaped monster was my favorite chaser.

I heard a commotion in our den and opened the door of our bedroom recently to investigate. It was not a magic portal, but I did learn a lesson. One should always make sure they are fully dressed when exploring what may be beyond closed doors. That became a door one daughter wishes had remained closed and a memory her visitor wishes he could erase.

As I see it, there are a number of potential doors.

• Closed doors that should remain closed
• Closed doors that need to be opened
• Locked doors with no hope of admittance
• Locked doors to which we have the key
• Doors sealed for our protection
• Doors sealed for the protection of those inside
• Open doors that we should enter
• Open doors we should pass by

The list goes on, but you get my point. Life is a series of one door after another. When one comes to a life door, he or she should decide on the best and worse case scenarios before passing under the threshold. Count the cost, as it were. I currently find myself standing in front of an open door and I have yet to decide how great the cost of entry. It seems attractive, but I find myself somewhat intimidated by its potential. What I lack is discernment about this particular door, thus all of my musing about doors in general. And so, I sit at the frame and pray, think, and wonder what could be inside. It is daunting, but I remember James 1:5

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

I need wisdom. Either that or a heart-shaped monster to chase me in or away.

Math is on my mind lately as I wrap up the Parallelogram series. (Yes, Dear Readers, Book 4 is coming! There are just so many words.) I, like my main character Audie in the series, enjoy quantum physics but do not enjoy the math. Or, to put it less charitably, cannot do the math.

But I can’t help wondering if I would have had a completely different attitude toward math in school if I’d had a teacher like this. Or at least seen a demonstration like this. Because there’s no doubt Arthur Benjamin makes math FUN. (Although no matter how fun it is, I still think there’s no way mere mortals could do what he does.)

Enjoy!

I’m reading two great books right now by Jean Houston: The Possible Human : A Course in Enhancing Your Physical, Mental, and Creative Abilities and A Passion for the Possible: A Guide to Realizing Your True Potential.

The premise of both is this: We’ve heard all our lives that we’re only using a tiny fraction of our brains, but then . . . we just accept that and move on. Why not instead retrain ourselves to use more of the hidden brain? Why not make the effort to access more of our potential in thought and behavior?

The thing I love about her books is she doesn’t make it hard. You don’t have to go to some boot camp of personality reconditioning where you sort out all your problems and your flaws and then sweat your way through getting rid of them.

Jean Houston’s books are relaxing. Her mental and visualization exercises are some of the best I’ve ever read and tried. I’ve turned other people onto her books, and they agree: it’s all so easy. And fun and (here’s that word again) relaxing. I’m into any self-improvement that makes me feel like I’ve been at a mental spa for half an hour, or even for five minutes. And some of her exercises take that little time.

One of my favorite visualization exercises of hers is walking up to a giant oak door that has a sign above it saying Room of the Skill. Deciding what skill you’d like to learn in there, then entering and feeling it in the air all around you. Maybe you’d like to learn to play the violin. You enter and violinness is already sealed into that room, and it starts seeping into your pores and you breathe it in and it sticks to your hair and it soaks into your bones.

There are other parts of the visualization that are important to gaining the skill–and I urge you to read the books to really get the full power of them–but I really love just that opening image of It’s already here. You’re already getting it. You don’t have to wait.

I’ve mentioned before my experiments in getting over my fears by just postponing when I want to feel them. The Jean Houston books open up another way of becoming what she calls The Possible Human. And what we’ll call The Possible You.

Let’s say you believe you have certain personality and physical traits: you’re shy. You’re not good at sports. You get angry easily. You’re a slob. You overeat. Whatever it is, I’m sure you could make up a list of four or five things right now with no effort.

What if you just decided Not anymore? And what if you also decided that there didn’t have to be any steps in between now and that next thing. You could just stop what you were doing before and start doing the new thing right now, right away, just decide.

Years ago I read a story in some Norman Vincent Peale book about a salesman who was having a really hard time. He couldn’t meet his sales goals, he felt awkward and ineffective around people–he was, in short, a failure.

And he got tired of that. Got tired of constantly having to stress over his paycheck and his bills, got tired of feeling so inadequate at a job where he actually meant to do well.

So one night he came home from another unsuccessful day on the road and decided That’s it. Enough. He peeled off his unsuccessful suit and took a bath. And decided during that bath that when he stepped out, he was a new man.

He threw away the old suit. Went out and bought a new, successful one (not expensive, just new. Different). And without waiting to go through some 9-step program of becoming a successful salesman, he just was one. He decided. He started behaving the way a successful salesman already does. No explanation to people who saw the change, no need to announce it to the world, just Do. Go. Be him.

By the end of the year he was the top salesman in the region. It looked like magic, but it was really just change. Deciding and then changing–right away.

I’ve done that, too. There was a time in my life when I got really tired of feeling shy. It was making me feel bad in social situations and even just stepping out my door into the world. I didn’t like it. It was a bad habit I’d picked up somewhere in my childhood, and I’d acted like it was just the way things were for the next however many years.

But one day I just told myself, “I’m not shy anymore.” And then in every single situation from then on, I made all my decisions based on that new law. I’d smile at people. Be friendly. Laugh when I felt like it. Little moments all day long, every day, when I let myself be different than I had been for years and years.

And what was key to pulling that off was I didn’t feel the need to explain the change to anyone. I got to skip all the steps of changing a little bit one day, a little bit more the next. I was like that salesman taking a bath and coming out a new person.

If anyone did ask me about the difference, I’d just say, “I’m not shy anymore” and move on. People don’t really need more explanation than that. They’re usually too busy thinking about their own lives.

I’ve also done the experiment with physical skills like athletic pursuits. Instead of telling myself “This is hard! It’s going to take a long time to learn this,” I’ve practiced just already being good at it. Letting it come easily instead of going through the performance of pretending to myself it’s difficult.

So much of what we do when we hold ourselves back really is performance. It’s theater. We’re so comfortable in our role of being shy, awkward, bad at math, a bad cook, bad at sports, ugly, scared (fill in your own blank) we just keep playing that part without ever realizing it’s only a part.

But if instead you start picturing The Possible You, the one who looks a certain way, is confident, has awesome skills, is friendly and happy (fill in your own blank), and then you just go ahead and begin being that version of you, right now, no middle steps, no announcements to the world–isn’t that a much better way of evolving into the next stage of you right now? Isn’t it time? Why do you have to wait?

In a way, it’s reverse-engineering your life. You think about how you’d like to be when you’re 80 or 60 or 19 or even a week from now, and rather than just hope you’ll turn out that way, you go ahead and become that right now. Skip all the time and skip all the steps.

The only steps you really do need to take are behaving the way that version of you behaves. Every moment of every day. And that includes reading the books that person reads, spending time with the people that person loves to be around, maybe taking the classes that person takes to learn the skills he or she loves to have.

And it means changing the things you hear yourself say. Because your ears are hearing it and your brain is taking it in. When you make a new choice and hear yourself say, even if it’s in a whisper just to you, “That’s right, because I’m not shy anymore,” it solidifies that new Possible You that you’ve become. Not “are” becoming, but “have become.” Because you already did that the moment you decided.

Why have I written this entire essay? For a couple of reasons: I’m not shy anymore. I love sharing my experiments and experiences with others. I’m completely confident writing in public and letting other people see my work.

I wasn’t always that way. But then I decided.

Spring is almost here, and that sense of spring - rebirth, renewal - has me thinking about making new vows for my writing career. It seems like every time I establish a goal, something unexpected happens and I end up off track.

That's why my first - and perhaps my only - vow is to get thee to a writer's conference ASAP. My only problem: the writer's guild workshop I want to attend is the same weekend as my state's press association convention. Since I'm the managing editor of a weekly newspaper, I feel like that should be the choice I make. Yet, our state's writer's guild is hosting some big name freelance and fiction writers who I have read (translate: adored and devoured every word) for years.

What's a writer to do?

No matter which conference I end up attending, I have three reasons why I am ready:

1. Expand my horizons. I'm a freelancer by design and enjoy the newspaper and magazine business. Still, I've written two plays and I am intrigued with flash fiction. Attending a conference, especially one with a variety of classes, will let me investigate other types of writing that I may not have considered. 
2. Practical, hands-on experience. One conference I'm contemplating offers direct instruction instead of roundtable discussions. I like the idea of being given certain elements that I can twist and stretch to create a new piece. I'm considering it an experiment, of sorts, where I can try out the latest, greatest technology and decide if it will streamline my writing process.
3. Opportunities to listen. One of the main reasons I'm excited about one of these conferences in particular is because several authors are reading their work. There's something intimate about an author sharing his or her creation, hearing the rhythm and intonation they give each word and sentence. It makes me think about phrasing and structure and how they cram so much information and power into a single word or section.

Quick! What’s behind you right now? Did you peek over to see desks, the wallpaper, students, books, or toys? Were those objects there even before you looked at them? Are they there now, even though you’re reading this instead of seeing them? As strange as it sounds, some scientists believe that nothing exists definitely until someone measures it, such as you did with your eyes and ears. These scientists work in a field of science called Quantum Mechanics.

In the early 1900s, smarty-pants scientists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg studied, experimented and argued over the question of what light was made of. Light was very mysterious to scientists at the time, because in some experiments it acted like a wave, similar to the invisible radio and magnetic waves all around us. In other experiments though, light acted like a particle, a solid object like a Pop Tart, a textbook, a penny, a skyscraper… Anything that’s in one place and that weighs something is a particle. It didn’t seem to make sense for something to be an invisible wave and a solid particle at the same time, but in test after test, light was both! You might think it was time for these scientists to turn in their labcoats and get new jobs… this was too hard to figure out! Instead of giving up though, the scientists continued experimenting and studying the subject until they found a solution: light is a wave until it gets observed, then it becomes a solid particle!

This was huge news for scientists. If light acts like this, then other solid objects may not be so solid after all too. The scientists studying Quantum Mechanics presented this thought-provoking possibility: that that the world is actually a wave of possibilities until we observe it, then it becomes the solid place we can feel, touch, taste and smell. It’s a bit like hiding trash under your bed: if you can’t see it, it’s not there!

I just finished The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean.  Not a story book at all.  HOWEVER, Kean tells the stories of how dozens of scientists, explorers, and other learned folks - to say nothing of isolated Scandinavian villagers and good old Neanderthal - contributed to what we know about DNA, the building block of our very selves.

If Kean had given his readers, "Just the facts, Ma'am," as Joe Friday was wont to say, I would never have finished the book.  The science is daunting - all those A's and C's and G's and T's and mitochondria and mtDNA and messenger RNA and, please, please DON'T ask me what these things are (I sort of know but I will bungle it, I'm sure).  But the stories, the life histories, the theories, the mangled logic, the loves, the victories and failures...the embarrassments and personalities - even the insane experiments - add them all together and you have a page turner.  Man, that Sam Kean can sure tell a good story.

And after we find out everything that is now known about DNA, Kean tells us stories of how scientists hope to use what they have learned.  DNA is awesome.  We, this world, all living things - totally awesome and scary and thrilling and wow....  Read the book.

Storytelling is a most effective way to get humans to swallow facts and remember them.  There is an organization dedicated to helping educators teach through storytelling.  Good Stories for Good Learning is made up of storytellers and educators who have seen how their personal stories have made the subjects they were teaching become real to their students.  Adding stories, your own or folktales or riddle tales or other people's stories, brings life to learning.  Try it.

There are studies that have shown how the brain reacts to stories differently than to lectures, and there are studies that have proven that students remember the stories they hear - and the facts attached to the stories - longer than those facts without stories.  (And, yes, I promise to share links to some of those studies soon but I am already a DAY LATE with this post, OK?  You can trust me.  Honest.)

So the next time you want to make a point, or help someone remember a fact, or teach something to someone, do what Sam Kean did in his book and what effective teachers are doing in classrooms all over the place - AND what humans have been doing since language began.  Tell a story.

Oh woe, is the blog sadly left aside as life swirled around me. Yes I had a wonderful tour for “Isabella Girl on the Go.” Someday I am sure to tell you all about it, with pictures, but sadly it is in line behind telling you all about BFNBT #2 that was completed last year.

End result = Girl on the Go was warmly received, I reconfirmed my ham- status in schools across the United States, and Girl on the Go was on the NY Times Bestselling list.

Been working furiously on Isabella book for next year (details to follow).

Kids have all passed with mostly flying colors and we are in “…relax, it’s the first week of summer vacation” mode.

But I am working, really, because I am preparing for a talk in Walnut Creek this weekend!

Yup, that’s right, I will be giving away the secret to my success. Or something like that.

Related posts:

1. School’s Out for Summer (Summer)
2. Thank a teacher
3. My head might actually spin off my body

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Freefotouk

• Talk about changes they've undergone in the past. List the positives of change along with the negatives. 

• Think about what they've learned from favorite teachers. Remind them that when you move from teacher to teacher, you carry them all with you -- you never really leave a favorite teacher behind.

• Be patient. Give the new teacher a chance. 

• Be an independent learner. (For our children, this might mean reinforcing the importance of the learning they do on their own at home after school and on weekends and holidays. For me, it has meant abandoning the water aerobics class in favor of my own self-styled hour of water exercise. It feels good to swim laps again, and to decide for myself what arm, leg, and core exercises I'll do and for how long.)

• Ask for their input as we establish routines and norms and make the classroom ours. 

• Have them tell me the things they loved about teachers in the past...not that I could make any promises that I would be just like them, but so that we can explore my similarities and differences to their former teachers. 

• Be gentle as I guide them in their learning so that I don't completely contradict or disregard what another teacher taught them, but rather show them how learning is layered, and how the new learning they do with me will be added to, but will not replace their previous learning.

5 Stars   An elephant never forgets, or does he?  Elefante is a young elephant who forgets to tie his shoes and then falls down, having tripped over those laces he forgot to tie.  He forgets to clean up his toys and put them where they belong.  His sister tripped over the mess Elefante left [...]

Hey! I’m Mingo Mung Bean the speediest sprout in Seed City! Mung Beans are ready to eat in just 3 days, let me share with you some of the hows and whys of sprouting beans and seeds.

You can make your own sprouting jar with a jam jar conversion kit – a piece of net and a rubber band.  The book The Mighty Messenger starring me, Mingo Mung comes with Mung Beans, the jam jar conversion kit, instructions and a recipe.

This is what mung beans look like when they are ready to eat, shiny white skin like my face, curly bits like my hair and green shells.

Sprouting with Mingo Mung

So you sprouted your little pack of mung beans, how did you like them? Did you pop them in to your mouth as soon as they were ready? Or did you choose some delicious ingredients to mix them with in a stir fry? However you ate your mung beans, they aren’t the only things you can sprout, have a look in your store cupboard and see what else might sprout.

What else can you sprout?

I asked Shena to take a look in her kitchen cupboard, this is what she found…

Lentils sprout really easily and have a great flavour. You can also try peas and other beans like aduki, you may discover more mung beans, chick peas too. Have a go! Some beans can’t be eaten raw, kidney and black eye beans. If you are unsure as to whether a seed or bean can be eaten raw have a look here. Let us know what you sprout.

If you can not find anything in your store cupboard visit Secret Seed Society Shop there are variety packs of beans and seeds and gadgets so you can sprout for all the family.

Why should you sprout beans and seeds?

Inside every bean and seed is the secret to life. A seed contains so much goodness that it can grow into a whole plant, so seeds are very nutritious. The magic of seeds is that all that nutrition is locked away and preserved. Once you you sprout a seed you unlock it and your body can access that goodness easily and without the farting that beans that aren’t sprouted are famous for! Yes, no farting!

Little Star Books is a little eBook publishing venture I have embarked upon with celebrated children's book author and editor, Moira Butterfield. We are just publishing to Amazon's Kindle at the moment. Our first two titles are now live. (In fact one of them is downloadable for free right now (April 2nd and 3rd))

The two titles are: My Happy Bookand My Busy Book

Or if you are in the UK: My Happy Book and My Busy Book

Don’t pass this up guys! It’s easy and fun, and you could win your own personal elibrary. Starting now through December 31, check out our facebook page and post on our wall.  All you have to do is write your favorite thing about reading or the holidays.  And hey, you could “Like” us while you’re at it!

For example my favorite thing about Christmas is the hot Russian tea at my hometown tree farm, and the smell of my favorite Christmas tree candle. 

If you are in the holiday spirit to share your favorite thing about the holidays, or your favorite thing about reading, do it now while you still have a chance to win! We will be giving out 5 free personal elibraries between now and the end of December.

With one click, these eBooks read aloud to the children and page-flip from the beginning of a story to the end. Put a child in front of this eLibrary, and they will “play” for hours on end reading and listening to wonderful, award-winning picture books. We encourage parents to take this excitement and discuss the “For Creative Minds” section at the end of each ebook with their child. Each book homepage also has 40-60 pages of cross-curricular Teaching Activities plus 3 Interactive Reading Comprehension and Math Quizzes.

And since I’m in such a holiday spirit, I can’t help but share the recipe to the best hot winter drink EVER!

• 1 cup of instant tea
• 2 cups of tang
• 1 tsp of cloves
• 1 package of Wylers lemonade mix
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar (or less depending on taste)

Directions: Mix all of this together and keep it in a tightly sealed jar. Use 2 heaping teaspoons for one cup of tea.

And Wha Lah! There you have it…the best winter drink of all time!

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