rosie discovers the mic

4 of 52

Kevin Roose, who graduated last spring from Brown University, spent a semester of his sophomore year as a student at Liberty University, the school born of the late Jerry Falwell's vision to train "champions for Christ." Roose goes "undercover," pretending to be a fundamentalist Christian himself, and dives into just about every aspect of the Christian life he is introduced to at Liberty, joining Bible studies, prayer groups, and mission trips; practicing abstinence, singing in the church choir, and studying young earth Creationism.

Acting like an anthropologist, Roose records his personal narrative like a journalist, but he also writes with refreshing candor and openness. I laughed out loud reading his book; I felt embarrassed by the Christian fundamentalists he met, and I felt impressed by the Christian fundamentalists he met. All in all, it's an engaging portrait of evangelical fundamentalist college culture without being bitter, mocking, or condescending. I recommend it!

happy birthday rosemary!

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

January

rosie eats chocolate pie

documented beautifully here.

bathtime

I don't mean to brag

but look at my kid's hair!

my one year old

While I was in Arkansas, Mom and I went through a box of dresses and nightgowns that she had saved from my childhood. I brought several of them back to Seattle with me, even though they are mostly for ages 3-6.

Today as I was unpacking, I found one dress that I thought might already be too small for Rosie, so I decided that she should try it on.
It was so cute that I just kept taking pictures. As parents are wont to do.



The unpacking continued, and I found a photo album that Grandma gave me. It's full of pictures of me that she collected during my first six years or so. Lo and behold, I found myself in the very same dress Rosie was trying on.

Me, at age one

And Rosie, who turns one in six days

You sure can see her dad in her, but I think there's a little resemblance to me too.

3 of 52

Home. Home Sunday night at 10. Yakisoba for lunch, sunshine, walk to Scarecrow. Two coffees and one nap. About 20% unpacked. Tired, physically and emotionally. But home.

I barely finished Nurtureshock, my 3 of 52, before I had to leave Little Rock.



I'd heard of this book on NPR, I guess, and had wanted to read it for a while. The authors compile tons of research about children (infants through teenagers) which they, as parents and writers, found "shocking" and counter-intuitive. Not all of it was counterintuitive or new to me, but a great deal of it was, and as a parent and an educator, I did find all of it to be interesting.

One of my favorite research chapters was the chapter on the importance of sleep. One section of the chapter showed how strongly a child's capacity for memory is affected by the amount of sleep the child gets. Even more interesting, though, is what they found about emotional memory:

Perhaps the most fascinating, the emotional context of a memory affects where it gets processed. Negative stimuli get processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories gets processed by the hippocampus. Sleep deprivation hits the hippocampus harder than the amygdala. The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories, yet recall gloomy ones just fine.

In on experiment by Walker, sleep-deprived college students tried to memorize a list of words. They could remember 81% of the words with a negative connotation, like "cancer." But they could remember only 31% of the words with a positive or neutral connotation, like "sunshine" or "basket".

And with that, GOODNIGHT.

wedding day

rehearsals for departure

little rock shots

in a dress from her Aunt Katie

 

Before John left for Tulsa

 

Before Jimmy left for Jonesboro

 

2 of 52

Remembering how much I'd liked The Tipping Point a few years ago, I stole this book off my brother Jimmy's shelf. It was interesting and engaging.

cheek to cheek!

Jacob Slaton took some great family pics for us the week before Christmas.

Here are a couple of my favorites.

Babies

April 16, 2010. I can't wait to see this movie.

books and movies

We Walker and Peterson and Lepine sibs went to the movies on Christmas day (was that Christmas day?). We compromised (as some wanted "Up in the Air" and others wanted "Avatar") with Sherlock Holmes, but when we arrived it was already sold out and our only option left was Avatar.

Gene Edward Veith says exactly what Jack and I said about the movie, after seeing it:

"But this {anti-war} political theme, along with the radical environmentalism and pantheistic religiosity, is not what makes this a bad movie. It is possible to portray liberalism, environmentalism, and pantheism with subtlety, complexity, and creativity. Avatar, on the contrary, is stereotyped, cliched, predictable, preachy, sappy, and (ironically) one-dimensional. The characters are superficial, the dialogue is laughable, and there is absolutely no irony, wit, or self-awareness.

Visually, though, the movie is fun to watch. The cinematography, the computer effects, the editing, and the visual spectacle are impressive."

Just how cliched was it? This cliched.

Jack and I did, later, see "Up in the Air". It was a good movie. I wouldn't say it's "everything Hollywood has forgotten how to do," but I enjoyed it, and the acting was stellar.

My sister and her husband have resolved to do 52 in 52 this year. It seems like a good idea. But I laughed when she suggested it, because I can easily read 52 books in a year, many of them slightly embarrassing for an English teacher to admit to. Ah well. My first, read in the car from Georgia to Arkansas on January 1, was Agatha Christie's "At Bertram's Hotel," and it was a satisfying little mystery.


I do hereby resolve that not all my 52 will be mystery novels and parenting books. But a lot of them just might be :-)

catwalk

While there's plenty to be said about our holiday time with both sides of the family, I thought it most pressing to share this gem of a photo.

 

The tiptoes, the pouty lip. This is one girl who knows how to work an audience and play to the camera.

But what were we (or the photographers) thinking with the whole grecian pedestal? Oh my.