It’s true what they say about the ageing process speeding up at a certain stage. This picture was only taken last Tuesday!
childhood
Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming
“Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children’s books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It’s tosh. It’s snobbery and it’s foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn’t hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.”
“GDSP 10 – Directed by electronicalrattlebag “
reblogging of-saudade:
“GDSP 10 – Directed by electronicalrattlebag
Take a picture of yourself with an important thing.
You could tell us what the thing is, and why it is important to you.
You could tell us how it smells, feels, tastes, sounds, if these are applicable.”
“I found this quite hard because I couldn’t decide what ‘important’ meant to me. I attach strange sentimentality to all things; objects, songs, films, places. This is the Tea House.
“The Tea House has been with me for over 20 years. It’s a tin that came filled with cheap English toffees that I got for Christmas when I was six years old. I don’t remember who gave it to me, probably one of my distant aunts. After the toffees were eaten, my mother used it to hold herbal tea bags; peppermint to sooth my frequent stomachaches, chamomile to help me sleep, some awful lemon concoction that she made me drink when I had glandular fever for most of the year I was thirteen.
“I didn’t think to take it with me when I ran away from home, but a few weeks later it arrived in the garbage bag of remaining belongings that my mother unceremoniously dumped at the front door whilst I was still at school, a few stray bags of tea fluttering inside. For a while I kept money in it, then cigarettes, drugs, things to spite my mother, but it just felt wrong, and it became the Tea House again.
“The Tea House is ‘important’ because it is a tiny pocket of warmth, care and affection from my childhood. It smells like Earl Grey, is cold to the touch, clangs like a broken bell when you drop it, and its contents taste delicious.”
You all know about GDSP, right?
I set number 10, you can see the other submissions (also amazing, insightful, beautiful) for that prompt here.
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- (reblogged from of-saudade)
Make Your Kid A Writer
“Let her be bored. Let her have long afternoons with absolutely nothing to do. Limit her TV-watching time and her internet-playing time and take away her cell phone. Give her a whole summer of lazy mornings and dreamy afternoons. Make sure she has a library card and a comfy corner where she can curl up with a book.
Give her a notebook and five bucks so she can pick out a great pen. Insist she spend time with the family. It’s even better if this time is spent in another state, a cabin in the woods, a cottage on the lake, far from her friends and people her own age. Give her some tedious chores to do. Make her mow the lawn, do the dishes by hand, paint the garage. Make her go on long walks with you and tell her you just want to listen to the sounds of the neighborhood.
Let her be lonely. Let her believe that no one in the world truly understands her. Give her the freedom to fall in love with the wrong person, to lose her heart, to have it smashed and abused and broken. Occasionally be too busy to listen, be distracted by other things, have your nose in a great book, be gone with your own friends. Let her have secrets”
via kateoplis
Paul Greer 