Lift Up Your Hearts!

I once read that a child should learn "at the rate determined by her own happy hunger." (I believe the quotation is from John Ciardi, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.) It is delightful to observe Jonathan’s voracious appetite. (More)

Great-Grandma Landeen came for lunch yesterday, and Jonathan had fun playing trains with her, and reading the new books that she brought him. I had been worried about an "elderly lady" slipping on the train track pieces that covered most of the family room floor, but she nimbly navigated them and without hesitation sat down on the floor to play!

On Friday Jonathan and Heather had accompanied us the park for our regular running date. While Dad-o ran, the rest of us walked around the trail. Sometimes Jonathan is enthusiastic about running, and we thought he might enjoy it here, but he was not in the mood. In fact, he wanted to be carried from the beginning. With encouragement, he walked about 0.7 miles before I gave him a piggy back ride the rest of the distance to the playground. (More)

Jonathan is not accustomed to having to leave the house before 7 a.m. for church, but he managed to be only one of the Seven Dwarves—Sleepy but not Grumpy. He had no comment on Father Tom’s sermon, having chosen that time to be out of the room, but happily received his blessing at the altar rail during the Eucharist. (More)

Having learned that it is now possible to ride along the bike trail from our neighborhood to the bridge over I-4, Heather wanted to make the journey. We have only two bicycles, and no bike seat nor bike trailer for Jonathan to ride in, and no helmet for him to wear. So he was sadly disappointed, because when he heard the words, “bike ride,” he became very excited: “Jonathan go bike ride!” (More)

Jonathan has several pictures of Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass windows that he likes to look at, so we were excited to give him the opportunity to see the real windows at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in nearby Winter Park. Much to our disappointment, many of his favorites were unavailable, being prepared for a special exhibition in New York. So he was unable to see Girl Picking Gourds, one of his favorites, and see the transformation of Butterfly Window between transmitted and reflected light at the push of a button. However, not all of "his" windows were missing, and his eyes lit up when he encountered Young Woman at a Fountain. He delighted, also, in "Tombment!" (The Entombment) particularly since that exhibit featured several studies leading up to the finished window. (More)

One of the joys I remember from Heather and Janet’s childhood is hearing them quote back and forth to each other sections of dialogue from plays and movies, from The Pirates of Penzance to Henry V. Jonathan has started already. No, he’s not quite ready for Gilbert and Sullivan, let alone Shakespeare, but his conversations are replete with quotations from his favorite books, particularly Dr. Seuss. “no, Pat, no sit on that!” “hop on pop, stop!” (Hop on Pop), “in a box, wif a fox” (Green Eggs and Ham), “boom, boom Mister Brown makes thunder”) (Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?), “bread and milk and blackberries for supper” (Peter Rabbit), and many others I can’t identify. Since coming to Florida he has increased his repertoire, having discovered The Cat in the Hat on our bookshelves. That is his favorite story request now, and we are already hearing “up, up, up, fish!” “look at me, look at me now,” "have to know how," and more.

Yesterday we also went to the neighborhood playground, Heather and I walking, and Jonathan sometimes pulling, mostly riding in, the little red wagon which had last seen service on Independence Day as the water wagon for the Greater Geneva Grande Award Marching Band. (More)

The pool continues to be a big draw here, with Jonathan swimming as much and as often as he can convince someone to swim with him. Ah, the delight in having time and opportunity to observe the learning process! Since the YMCA has regrettably abandonned the wonderful Infant Swim and Gym program that we enjoyed, Jonathan is not as competent in the water as his mother and aunt were at 22 months of age. But he is taking full advantage of this opportunity to narrow that gap. (More)

Jon has graciously lent us Heather and Jonathan for a week! They arrived yesterday. I met them as they were descending the escalator; Jonathan saw me and shouted, “Grandma!” quickly followed by “Dad-o?” We reassured him that he would see Dad-o after we drove home. On the way he announced, “Aunt Jan't 'Pan!” He knows we’re associated with Aunt Janet, but he can’t see her this trip because she’s in Japan. (More)

One of Janet's classes was discussing the causative have, such as "I had my hair cut" and "I had my bike stolen." She noted that the latter can make it sound as if the person caused his bike to be stolen, though that is not the way it is normally used. That set me thinking. To me,

I'm glad I learned English as a child, when accepting such subtleties was still easy! Any comments, grammar experts? (More)

It began when I said to Porter, "I'm riding to the post office; do you want to join me?"

The post office is less than two miles from home, so as part of our effort to make our gasoline supply last as long as possible, I had decided to go by bicycle to mail an important package. Porter was happy to come, but suggested we continue on and see how far we could get on the nearby bike trail. Bear in mind that our bicycles had seen but little use for a long time. Intrepid or foolish, we filled our water bottles, figured out how to work our new helmets, and took off.

For those to whom this has meaning: we crossed over the I-4 bridge! And went a bit further, to one of our churches, then turned toward home. I'd like to tell you how exhausted I was when I finally glided into our driveway, and how every muscle in my legs was throbbing...but Janet climbed Mt. Fuji this weekend and I'm sure after I read her report I'll feel a little silly...and a lot wimpy.

It was a lot of fun, though.

It was a triathlon, in an out of shape, over 50 sort of way.

We still haven't been able to fill up the cars since the gas panic Wednesday night. Not that we tried very hard, but the one station we pulled into on our way home from choir rehearsal Thursday night was out of gas. (It's not that our choir meets two nights per week; we sing with two churches.) So instead of driving to the park for our thrice-weekly run, on Friday we rode our bicycles.

1. Ride to the park.
2. Run (or walk/run in my case)
3. Ride home.
4. Jump in the pool.

Works for me. (More)

The terrifying power of panic to disrupt and destroy was best illustrated this week in Iraq, where the stampede provoked by rumor of a suicide bomber killed and injured innocent people in numbers exceeding the wildest expectations of any individual with a bomb in his backpack.

As a far-off planet reflects the fiery sun, panic made its power known here on Wednesday, also. Driving to choir rehearsal on Wednesday night, we could have filled our gas tank easily at any of a number of stations along the way, for the price of $2.69/gallon. On the way home it was a different story. While we had been happily singing, word began to spread that Florida was running out of gasoline. The Orange County School District cancelled all non-essential bus service (sports, field trips) and announced that even with the cutbacks parents might have to begin driving their children to school in another week. This was enough to convince half of Central Florida that they needed to buy gasoline, NOW. Those calm, quiet gas stations we had passed earlier in the evening now had lines of waiting cars that stretched for blocks, and police officers on site to keep order. Prices had jumped at least 10 cents per gallon. A few stations had no lines—because they had run out of fuel.

We chose not to join the snaking lines, trusting that our 3/4 full gas tank would see us through until the situation stabilized. During hurricane season, the recommendation is that you don't let your gas tank get below half full. Maybe that's a good idea year 'round, because it wasn't Florida's disaster that caused this shortage.

Even before Hurricane Katrina, when we were paying around $2.55 for a gallon of gasoline, the adjustments made necessary by the increased price fueled many a news story. From the tone of the reports, one would think we were in a crisis of terrible proportions, but their content was encouraging. People now had to think twice, it was said, before making a trip by car. They were combinging trips, carpooling, using public transportation, walking, and riding bikes. All of which looks like good news to me.

News reporters, it seems, are most enthusiastic when reporting bad news, and love to expand problems into disasters. I don't believe you can call our fuel problems a crisis, even post-Katrina, any more than I believe we have an obesity crisis, although most Americans are undeniably overfed and underexercised.

Nonetheless, I will use the media's terms and make the encouraging prediction that if we don't interfere with the process too much, the energy crisis may go a long way toward curing the obesity crisis.