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tuesday, november 11th, marks veteran's day. most schools are closed in observance, so here's how to spend the day with your kids...

we are on our way to change (yay!), but the financial crisis still looms - kids and money go together like peanut butter and jelly.

welcome to "blog action day" where thousands of bloggers ban together, get a socially responsible topic and discuss it with their readers. think about the impact - how exciting to be a part of this movement that potentially will be read by 10 million people!?!?! the movement, not this blog, just to be clear.

in teaching gratitude, graciousness and giving back, it seems like a good idea to also read this book with our kids. the subtitle is "lessons for kids on money and abundance". fantastic and simple approach to talking about "you aren't the stuff you have" or in some cases, the stuff you DON'T have. no matter where we fall on the socioeconomic food chain, subtle (or not so subtle) reminders of gratefulness and priorities can't hurt.

as we start to think about returning to the normalcy of school and all that it brings (insert: sighs of relief), about now STAPLES, TARGET and CVS are stocked with back to school merch.

another idea for giving to charities on the web designed for kids (see "making your mark" on a previous post). 

another chance to show appreciation, this time toward people in real danger, risking their lives for our freedom.

ever heard of BIG SUNDAY? if you are new to it, it's big and fabulous and you will see why i love it. all over los angeles THIS sunday (may 4th), people from all walks of life will be helping. helping people, pets, the earth, frogs - what - ev - er!!!

tuesday, may 6th, is TEACHER APPRECIATION DAY. true, it sounds like another hallmark fabricated holiday only to forget about now and be bathed in guilt later, but this one speaks to me. 

just off the heels of earth day comes yet another opportunity to talk nature with your kids.

with lunches to pack, diapers to change and homework to correct we're supposed to celebrate ARBOR DAY???? the idea alone might push you over the edge? not to worry, it's bark is worse than it's bite.

some simple suggestions to help you see the forest for the trees;

plant a tree
hug a tree
lay on the grass and admire a tree
***sit and read a story (The Giving Tree?) under a tree
climb a tree
pick fruit off of a tree
just be together in the presence of a tree.


the lesson: reminding our kids that so much of what we need in our lives comes from trees; paper, wood and a little something we like to use quite often... oxygen. the birds, squirrels and thousands of other living beings need them for their homes. so, they pretty much deserve their own day.

***my favorite, it's a "kill two birds with one stone" activity.

here's a link for how to plant a tree from TREE PEOPLE.

here's a link for how to climb a tree.

in honor of easter and the story of the loaves and the fishes, let's spread the loaf, people. sure there are bunnies, eggs and cadbury chocolates to partake in, but this is a little bit less obvious. at SPREAD THE BREAD, kids are encouraged to bake a loaf of bread and wrap it up with notes of gratitude. this gift is then given to ANYONE your child feels deserves it; police officer, librarian, trash collector, coach - whomever!

there are thousands of bread recipes to be found online or you can go the "cliffnotes" version by picking up a frozen pre-made loaf in the freezer section of any market.

the lesson: it's so easy to show thanks and support to people who have earned it. when your child sees the intense impact a simple gesture can make, they might be motivated to act in a "giving" and "grateful" way more often. and really, that's the whole point, isn't it? or most of the point, anyway.

***added bonus: warm fresh bread out of your oven slathered in butter??? please, like you're not going to bake another one for yourselves?


here's a link to spread the bread for more details

here's a link for a simple bread recipe for kids

One of he most heartening things about staffing the NYRB table in the nosebleed stands of the AWP was the popularity of books that have been, to put it kindly, something less than popular.

Most notably, several people came over to us expressly to get a hold of David Jones's highly-allusive modernist prose-poem memoir of World War I, In Parenthesis.

Jones enlisted in the army at the age of 19

From W.S. Merwin's introduction:

As a “war book” In Parenthesis is incomparable. In his account of those months of stupefying discomfort, fatigue, and constant fear in the half-flooded winter trenches, and then of the mounting terror and chaos of the July assault on Mametz Wood, David Jones made intimate and inimitable use of sensual details of every kind, from sounds, sights, smells, and the racketing and shriek of shrapnel set against the constant roar of artillery, to snatches of songs overheard or remembered, reflections on pools of mud, the odors of winter fields of beets blown up by explosives, the way individual soldiers carried themselves at moments of stress or while waiting. All of these become part of the “nowness” that Jones said was indispensable to the visual arts. The resulting powerful and intense evocation, however, occurs in what seems like a vast echo chamber where the reverberations resound from the remote antiquity of military activities, and of the language and mythology of Britain, from Shakespeare’s Histories, in English, and from the poems, conflicts, and divinities of the more venerable traditions of Wales and the Welsh, and from the legacy, civil, political, and military, of the Roman occupation of the island, some remnant of which Arthur himself had fought to preserve.

Merwin mentions Jones's beliefs about the visual arts because Jones was as much an artist as he was a poet. He drew from an early age and studied under Walter Sickert. But perhaps the most important influence in life as an artist was fellow Catholic-covert Eric Gill. In the 1920s Jones lived with the Gill family, illustrating books and experimenting with different print making styles. He was even engaged to one of Gill's daughters for a time.

The illustration on the cover of In Parenthesis is a detail of a drawing of Jones's that belongs in the collection of the Tate Britain. He was also involved with the design and typesetting of the interior of In Parenthesis, of which the NYRB edition is a facsimile.

Languagehat on David Jones
Modernism's David Jones pages

The first US edition of Uncle included this handy explanation of British coins. It features such useful information as "a farthing is so small that it's only used nowadays by the dwarfs." We weren't able to insert it into our edition of Uncle, but I thought I'd share it anyway. If you don't know J.P. Martin's stories about a very rich elephant named Uncle, this will give you a small taste. And, if the illustrations look familiar, it's because they're by Quentin Blake, who illustrated most of Roald Dahl's books. Here he's integrated what looks like direct rubbings of the coins into his pen-and-ink art.

You might notice a few out-of-date features to this page. First, this complicated system of dividing up the pound was abandoned in 1971. Secondly, a pound is no longer worth about three dollars. And someone should tell Uncle's bookkeeper, Old Monkey, that one million pounds is sadly no longer the equivalent of "roughly three million dollars" either.

Here's the whole spread. Click for a larger image of it.