![SNAP-SPELLING-F[1]](http://stevecotler.com/tales/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/SNAP-SPELLING-F1.jpg)
Little Johnny can read well long before he can spell well. Should you be worried? Should you send him to a tutor?
Problem-solving technique can be deductive/analytical or inductive/synthetic. Stated another way, an approach can be convergent or divergent.
For every youngster striving for literacy, learning to read and spell requires both convergent and divergent Continue reading “A Siyuntist’s Perspective”
My daughter recently put her 13-year-old cat down. Her post about it was heartfelt and touching. Today Lee Geiger, a chum from my Wall Street days, wrote about saying farewell to his dog. I reprint his goodbye below.
This is not a good day. The Fat Guy is driving me to the vet. At least he brought treats. The Pretty Blonde brought tissues. She’s got tears in her eyes. I wonder what for?
I feel old. My hips are killing me. I can barely stand up and walk anymore. My nose is shot. I can’t smell any difference between the kitchen and the backyard. Glaucoma’s nearly blinded me, and I haven’t heard anything since the last Super Bowl. At least The Pretty Blonde Continue reading “Dog Gone”
Treswick was a big cat, a bad cat. He was, his owners averred, tres wicked.
It was 1967. I was a first-year graduate student living in Peabody Terrace, the married students’ housing, a walking bridge across the river from Harvard Business School. These were tall, narrow buildings, four units to a floor, all sharing a long narrow balcony that looked east over the Charles River toward Boston. We had the uppermost balcony, a twentieth-floor apartment. When the weather was warm, all four apartments might be open to the balcony, on which rested only two heavy chairs, the frequent strong winds making predictable patio furniture a hazard to ground dwellers.
Treswick lived two apartments away and often walked the parapets, pacing the railing, three feet down on one side, 200 on the other. One evening, Continue reading “A House Cat Murdered My Wife…That’s My Story”
Movies have previews. Why not books?
Yesterday, the Avon Books division of HarperCollins Publishers released a short promo video for Julia Quinn‘s soon-to-be-released novel, What Happens in London. The promo is so professionally done, I would probably have commented on it even if best-selling novelist Quinn (her last book hit #1 on The New York Times list) were not my daughter.
Ms. Quinn wrote the script. The young actress is Talia Gottlieb, a college senior who grew up in Kenya, the child of international aid workers. Ms. Gottlieb, who auditioned for the part at Ms. Quinn’s suggestion, beat out the other performers based upon her obvious-to-all-who-watch talents…not because she happens to be Ms. Quinn’s second cousin, once removed and my first cousin, twice removed. (Confusing, huh? For a consanguinity chart, click here.)
[youtube QztQ5-VKsYM nolink]
For more about the how and who of the promo, click here.
My brother Doug writes about his afternoon with my four-year-old grandson:
When Ethan and I walked outside, we had no specific plans. We knew only that the sun was shining, the spring birds were singing. It was warm and we were going to explore the backyard. There were so many possibilities. But once he saw the hose happily gurgling water into the pool, I knew immediately what the next 15 minutes would hold. Continue reading “A Boy, a Swimming Pool, and the Laws of Universe”
James Michener‘s short story collection, Tales of the South Pacific, a bestselling Pulitzer Prize winner in 1948, was eclipsed a year later by South Pacific, the blockbuster Richard Rodgers–Oscar Hammerstein musical that includes some of the most memorable songs written for the stage. One song, “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,” includes this verse:
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught
The converse is also true: you have to be carefully taught to be color-blind. Witness this exchange between one of my daughters and her almost-four-year-old son:
Continue reading “Un-Racism: You Have to Be Carefully Taught”