The first five people to respond to this post will get something handmade by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

* I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!

* What I create will be just for you.

* It'll be done within a year. No guarantees when, it will be a total surprise!

* You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be poetry. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!

* I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to repost this and play, too. We can all make stuff and make someone's day a little bit brighter!

(from carbonelle

 

An Apology of Sorts

 

I'm sorry that I ever cause you pain

with mad hours, mad messes, madness without end.

It is the only thing that keeps me sane.

 

You are the last of people I'd disdain

with slights and insults that I don't intend.

I'm sorry that I ever cause you pain.

 

Singledminded focus only reins

in impending chaos; comprehend--

It is the only thing that keeps me sane.

 

I wish, occasionally, I would refrain

from wounding you--you are my only friend.

I'm sorry that I ever cause you pain.

 

The watchful eye of all this hurricane:

a steady hand, a steady mind, ready to defend,

You are the only thing that keeps me sane

 

For reasons of your own you yet remain,

and though I don't repent, I still contend

I'm sorry that I ever caused you pain,

It is the only thing that keeps me sane.

 

“But in school ONE of our requirements in the teaching of reading is to teach the skills of reading. One of the goals of the reading assigned inside and outside of school is to get the students to stop and think about what they are reading (ask questions, make inferences, make connections, understand the author’s purpose and possible bias). As older readers, we do all of this naturally. Most younger readers have not made these skills automatic. They are just enjoying the story ...they simply cannot enjoy reading until they have been given the tools & strategies in which to do so.”

Does anybody really do this in the way described? I admit to making inferences and connections, and to coming to understand the author’s mind, but (absent heavy science or philosophy) not to “stopping and thinking” in order to do so. Does a mature reader really stop dead in the middle of a story to ask himself, “What do I think Sasha will do next? What would I do in her situation? How do I know this?” No, but educationists assume that requiring kids to artificially produce the kinds of synthesis that a mature reader produces organically will somehow jump-start the process. But ‘younger readers’ have become fluent ‘older readers’ for centuries without this kind of mental dissection. What kids who don’t comprehend are missing is not “tools & strategies”, but experience and context.

It’s as if we observed that children were unhealthy from sitting and eating junk food, and then instead of providing wholesome, delicious fresh food to nourish them and train their palates, and then sending them outside to run around, we gave them little doses of questionable processed foods and vitamins designed by experts, kept them inside, and then lectured them on incomprehensible “food pyramids” that change every few years. Oh, wait….

I read an article recently by a professor at an ivy-league who described decreasing ability in his students to understand a particular movie he showed every year. I wish I remember which film classic it was, but the point was that this movie hinged on understanding that the things characters said were not necessarily the things they were thinking, and ‘making connections’ between successive vignettes in order to grasp the overall point. Just the kind of ‘critical thinking’ that teachers hope to inculcate through their ‘reading strategies’. But what this professor found was that young adults were getting steadily worse at sussing out the characters’ true motivations, and failing to get the point of the movie at all. Were these well-educated students lacking in ‘tools & strategies’? No. Divorced from the past of their own culture more than any generation before them, and fed from infancy on a diet of obvious and spoon-fed storytelling, they lack common reference points for any thought produced before they were five years old, and have no experience in grappling with beautiful and sophisticated literature.

Sigh. I had rather have my daughter spend half an hour reading about Peter Rabbit’s “soporific lettuces” than filling out a vocabulary worksheet any night of the week.

There is nothing I could say that would add to the awesomeness of this.

In my continuing desire to let the world know What Works for Me (what, is this a productivity blog now?), I present to you You Need A Budget, affectionately known as YNAB. Link: www.youneedabudget.com/ynab-3/

Different from all other budgeting software/systems I've found, in that it concentrates less on what you already spent and more on what you've got left to spend. It doesn't require you to keep track of your spending for a month before you start, and for me the biggest deal--it allows for adjustments on the fly.

With other budgets, and unexpected expense or even an opportunity to stock up on something cheap would blow the budget. And that was it. You blew your budget this month. Better luck next month. YNAB has a built-in method for allowing for those curveballs life throws you and still keeping a budget that makjes sense and keeps you on track.

What's more, and AMAZING, is YNAB's user community. The forums are full of YNAB creators and experienced users who are, bless them, willing to stay with a newbie and talk him through any confusion until everything becomes clear. I've never seen customer support like this anywhere.

Jesse (YNAB's owner) is just about to roll out an eagerly awaited new version in time for Christmas. So if you're feeling the pinch, or at sea with your household finances, check out YNAB--and askk Santa to bring you a copy!

I seem to need a new organizing mojo about once a year to kick start myself. Some I keep just long enough to get going, some I keep for a year or so, and some I keep forever.

I found my latest mojo on Lifehacker. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of buzz about it, but I THINK THERE SHOULD BE.

It looks like a Google product, which I suppose means they'd like to get 'picked up', but also means it fits in my existing brainspace. Commands are intuitive drop, drag, and click stuff. It's not only fun to play with sizes and colors, but ease of alteration means you can change the visual 'importance' of projects as you go along, even dropping them in the adorable little jar if you don't need to see them right now.






Double-clicking a project brings you 'inside' where you can see your tasks/links.



You can drag items into and out of each other to create subcatagories, directly create new tasks under existing ones. Double-clicking the head task collapses a set of tasks or sub-tasks. Move tasks from one project to another by putting them in the jar and taking them out elsewhere.

Just go play with it . If you like it, make some buzz.

embedding disabled, please click through:

www.youtube.com/watch

May their children be many and their troubles be few.

There.

( Fixed it. )

If you use Twitter, set your location to Tehran & your time zone to GMT +3.30. Iranian security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut down Iranians' access to the internet. Cut & paste & pass it on.

If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Some of you are so fine, it just aches a little, just *here*.