Owner: Mental multivitamin URL:http://mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:14:56 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Mental multivitamin was established in October 2003 for readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. Regular features include "On the nightstand" and "The recommended daily allowance." Site statistics:Click here
Bah. Humbug. 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Unbelievable, I know, but true: I had somehow managed to make it through at least five holiday seasons without ever hearing Newsong's insipid "The Christmas Shoes." But, lo, suddenly there was with the 93.9 FM broadcast, the strains of overwrought sincerity, and then there were the Women M-mv, sobbing in the Target parking lot."Why is she dying?""Yeah, and if she's dying [*sniff*], why isn't he with her?""How does he know she's going to meet Jesus, anyway?""And what does this have to do with Christmas?"Hey, hey! I've got one: Why couldn't we get the dying mother some shoes prior to her imminent death, eh? Yeah, what about that, sappy songsters?Kids, get your mom the shoes she wants today. (Note to Family M-mv: See photo above.) Don't wait until she's no longer able to enjoy them. That's just a waste of time and money.And two buckets of Women M-mv tears. Read more:Humbug
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 "The Lesson"Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)This image is a common one; that is, I've seen it on several home education sites and blogs. I love that the mother-teacher has plump arms; I have plump arms, too, now. And I love how the daughter-students lean in close to look at the book. I'd like to imagine it's an art book or a bird book. The Misses M-mv and I sometimes sit in the library, leaning against each other to look. Together. Related and long asideRecently, in another forum, I read an article that appeared in the monthly newsletter published by a popular Christian homeschool curriculum provider. The article details the many changes one woman made after listening to teacher-training tapes available through said curriculum provider. These changes included rethinking her wardrobe ("I'm a professional teacher. I simply don t get paid monetarily. However, now I dress like one.) and adopting a longer school-day schedule ("We commence around 7:30 a.m. and end by 4:30 p.m. whether w Read more:Friday
, Fine Art
The recommended daily allowance 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Presented chapbook-style: The Chosen (Chaim Potok).p. 31My father had told me he didn't mind their beliefs. What annoyed him was their fanatic sense of righteousness, their absolute certainty that they and they alone had God's ear, and every other Jew was wrong, totally wrong, a sinner, a hypocrite, an apikoros, and doomed, therefore, to burn in hell.p. 71"Whenever I do or see something I don't understand, I like to think about it until I understand it." He talked very rapidly, and I could see he was tense. "I've thought about it a lot, but I still don't understand it. I want to talk to you about it. Okay?"p. 78No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate," my father said quietly. "That is the way the world is."p. 79"Ah," my father murmured. He was silent for a moment. Then he said quietly, "Reuven, listen to me. The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you remember the other?""Choose a friend," I said."Yes. You k Read more:allowance
From the archives: Defining creativity 1970-01-01 00:59:59 "Be creative."How many times did a teacher exhort you to "Be creative!" Never mind that classrooms and school (and their adult kin, cubicles and meetings) are often if not the death then the terminal illness of creativity. (Classrooms. Ah, the great equalizers. Talent and gifts are muted, mediocrity is celebrated, and no one is left behind. We are all above-average. Shhh. Don't tell anyone that today's above-average is yesterday's unacceptable.)"Be creative."When genuine creativity, which by its nature challenges the conventional wisdom, draws derison from classmates, bemusement from teachers? Indeed. One might as well say, "Become the scorn of the playground.""Be creative."What the teacher likely means is, "Add some color. Some pizazz. Use construction paper. Add some illustrations. Do something so that all of the projects (essays, etc.) don't look exactly the same.""Be creative.""But don't be different. Because how would I grade that?""Be creative."Yeah. Whatever. Who wants to w
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Camille Pissarro (French, 1830-1903)"Eragny, a Rainy Day in June" (1898)No, I still haven't exhausted the list of images we made when we visited the Art Institute in October. Miss M-mv(ii) -- the youngest, the one with the bob and the mischievous smile (for those who saw yesterday's (temporary) post) -- fancies the one above. She maintains that it reminds her of our house. Yes, the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie. I must be honest: We have many trees, and it can be quite vibrant and lush here, and, certainly, this is vastly different than our life in Chicago, but... well, this no estate.I guess, though, to my girls it is. It was they who wanted yards and birds and an old-fashioned swing. It is they who flit from yard to yard, discovery to discovery, bird to bug to bloom. Perhaps to them, this little house and its yards seem like a vast estate, resplendent with possibilities.That's a good thing, I imagine.They dream in color, too.Looking for holiday gift ideas? Consider Read more:Friday
, Fine Art
The Saturday Review of Books 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Semicolon hosts "The Saturday
Review of Books
." Consider participating this week.What I'm looking forward to today: Music lessons. You should hear my "Money Can't Buy Everything" (p. 54 in Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1, for those who are following my laborious but merry progress along the keyboard).Reading: Good Omens (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman). Yes, still. It was a looooong work-week, and I essentially set this aside last Sunday after family swim. I should be able to finish it this afternoon.Watching: Birds, this morning. Are you participating in Project FeederWatch?Working: Three thousand words before Monday morning.Looking for holiday gift ideas? Consider M-mv merchandise.Visit our bookshop.Use one of our Amazon links.Or just get that special someone the most perfect gift ever.
Have a shopping adventure! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Sipping chocolate. Chocolate-covered cherries. Toffee. Coffee. Waffles. Gingerbread houses. Mmmmmm.I first trip-tropped through a Trader Joe's in 1991. We lived in Southern California (where all things seem possible, and few things really are), and finding this funky, fun foodstore was a bright spot. (Aside: So was discovering Target. As I've said before, California was not one of my "happy places.") Fast forward to Chicago, circa 2001 (I think that was the year): A Trader Joe's! Right in my neighborhood! Whee!Since moving to the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie, Trader Joe's has become an expedition of sorts, but it's still worth the trip.I've been singing their praises for. ever. Do you remember the original M-mv image?Yeah, that's the now retired Trader Joe's French roast peeking from behind. And remember Chevalier Noir?So. Do you need a holiday pick-me-up? Get thee to a Trader Joe's, folks. Get thee to a Trader Joe's.Hey, and if you need to do any last-minute
From the archives: Let's go! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Mild insomnia.Spurts of wakefulness, not necessarily anxiety-filled, either. Just patches of a-few-minutes-too-long wakefulness in the midst of otherwise comfortable sleep.That's what I sometimes have.I had it last night.Which would have been fine if it hadn't been accompanied by a bold headache. Can't read with a headache, you see.Pah.We're "off" this week, in as much as a family that lives in home of book-lined walls can be said to be "off," that is. This "being off" coupled with the gray, wet days that are closing [the year] has (re)introduced us to the luxury of sleeping in, a luxury for which I was more than grateful this morning, given the headache and lost sleep.Then I remembered.Master M-mv, assistant coach and dedicated swimmer, is not quite as "off" as the Misses and I: He is due at the pool at 9:30 a.m.Pah.And pah again.I could hear the man-boy moving about. Sooosh. Fiber cereal in his favorite green bowl. Chik, chik, chik. Banana slices. Swup. Fridge closing as he puts
The recommended daily allowance 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within(Stephen Fry; yes, that Stephen Fry).From the foreword, in which Fry confesses that he writes poetry:Britain is a nation of hobbyists -- eccentric amateurs, talented part-timers, Pooterish potterers and dedicated autodidacts in every field of human endeavour. But poetry?[...]I believe poetry is a primal impulse within us all. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it. I believe our poetic impulse is blocked by the false belief that poetry might on one hand be academic and technical and on the other formless and random.___________________________Master M-mv and I borrowed this from the library this fall and enjoyed it so much that I added it to the Amazon wishlist. Well, I received another gift card to the bookstore that must not be named, and with that and a 30%-off coupon, I added Ode to the nightstand last night.Speaking of gifts, do you need to purchase any Read more:allowance
So. 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Our first apartment needed window treatments.We were freshly graduated and newly married... in other words, sort of poor. Okay. Poor. Not necessarily spaghetti-and-ketchup-packets-from-Arby's poor, but, well, just-out-of-college-and-newly-married poor. In other words, happy poor. We considered ourselves lucky, then, when we found lovely wooden blinds at Channel Lumber for a song in the clearance section. (The photo shows bamboo, I think, and ours were definitely slim wooden slats, but the design is similar... so there you go.)We hung our new blinds and went about the business of being newlyweds.If you know what I mean.In every room.Often.With reckless abandon.In front of our wooden blinds from Channel Lumber.Ahem.Fade to a large condo in another state, five years in the future. His company has relocated us, and we're decorating our new place. It has window trimmings, but they're not terribly attractive, and while the wooden blinds weren't as tony as the new digs seem to dictate, th
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Last year, Donna asked about her readers' favorite ornaments. I singled out the wallpaper angel Aunt M-mv sent many Christmases ago. And, having arrived at a Friday
without a particular piece of art in mind, I realize that this is as fine a piece of art (or craft) as any (particularly considering this gallery of the absurd).I'll return to more traditional galleries of art next week. Read more:Fine Art
The Saturday Review of Books 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Semicolon hosts "The Saturday
Review of Books
." Consider participating this week.What I'm looking forward to today: Music lessons. Last week, when I played "Money Can't Buy Everything" (p. 54 in Adult All-In-One Course: Lesson-Theory-Technic: Level 1, for those who are following my laborious but merry progress along the keyboard) cleanly, I was advised that I am now ready for Greates Hits, Level 1. Yay!Reading: King Dork (Frank Portman). How could anyone "Defending Holden" the way I do pass on this one?Watching: Birds, later this afternoon. Are you participating in Project FeederWatch?Working: Hah! I'm not working today! I'll be reading, snacking, and resting.Did you forget someone on your holiday gift list?Get him or her the most perfect gift ever.Sent by email, it will arrive lickety-split.
Links. Think. 1970-01-01 00:59:59 From "'You have to trust that the child will learn' 'Unschooling' movement leaves education choices up to kids" (Chicago Sun-Times, December 24, 2006):Not all unschoolers or home-schoolers have Abby's scores, but on another popular college admission test, the ACT, test-takers who identified themselves as home-schoolers have scored a notch above the national average for the last decade. This year, they averaged 22.4 on a 36-point scale compared with a national average of 21.2.From "Economics discovers its feelings" (The Economist, December 19, 2006):To clamber up the pecking order, some people slave away nights and weekends at the office. They gain in rank at the expense of their free time. But in making that sacrifice they also hurt anyone else who shares their aspirations: they too must give up their weekends to keep up. Mr Frank reckons that many people would like to work less, if only others slackened off also. But such bargains cannot be struck unilaterally. On the contrary, p
Merry Christmas! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I received such lovely and generous Christmas
gifts -- gifts that reminded me that the people who love me are also the people who know me. (Thank you, Mr. M-mv, Master M-mv, Miss M-mv(i), Miss M-mv(ii), and Aunt M-mv.) I won't single out any one gift right now, but I'd like to share with you a note that made me realize -- all over again -- how lucky I am.Dear Mom:Merry
Christmas!I love you very dearly.You are one of the most loved Christmas presents I have!Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year!Love,[Miss M-mv(ii)]That's about as good as it gets, no?
From the archives: Stream of consciousness 1970-01-01 00:59:59 An uncharacteristic entry from December 2004.The mid-twenties version of me recklessly spent $5 or $8 or even, once or twice, $12 on a bottle of shampoo. In the $5 to $9 range was a bottle of Aveda back in 1992. It smelled good. Very good. I will not forget how good because I left the bottle of pricey shampoo in my sister's shower caddy during a trip in August of that year. She shipped it back, but — inexplicably — the cap loosened enough to drip, drip, drip as it traveled from one coast to the other. Hmmm, this smells so good! I breathed, accepting the box from the mail carrier.And so it goes.And yesterday I stood in Target in front of the vast selection of Suave shampoo — the brand middle-aged autodidacts who wear the old coat to buy the new books favor — and thought, not for the first time, either, if only I could have the difference, bottle for bottle, between the shampoo I bought in the eighties and nineties and the shampoo I've been buying since becoming a mother of t Read more:Stream
Resistance is futile. (Or, Succumbing to the lure of the "Best of" post) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Several weeks ago, I rounded up some of my favorite titles for my store. Where's The Thirteenth Tale? someone wrote. Where's Why Do I Love These People? asked another. And Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading? And...? Well, I can only display nine titles in the store. The Thirteenth Tale would have been tenth or (eleventh... or thirteenth... heh, heh, heh). And when you read more than one hundred twenty-five books in a year, at least, oh, one hundred will fail to achieve "Best of" status, you know?Seriously, the titles in the store (plus the three named above) were among the best of my 2006 reading experiences. I hesitate to assign superlatives, but those twelve books reminded me why I love the reading life.Yes, I (re)read Shakespeare. And some excellent birding books. (Funny, though, how I often think about those not as reading so much as learning experiences; something utterly and profoundly different -- or apart -- from the reading life... I don't know how to explain it better.)Yes, I di Read more:Resistance
, futile
From the archives: Resolutions built to last 1970-01-01 00:59:59 And so New Year's Eve approaches.Let me appeal to your petulant elitist side (as opposed to your lurking egalitarian side), and entreat you to make no "promises to self" that involve measuring your food or rearranging your bedroom to accommodate a large, ugly treadmill or other torture device. If rooms must be arranged, let it be to make way for more bookshelves or a roll-top desk with countless cubbies. Nordic Track, indeed. What, bosh. Walk to the bookstore or the library if you need to tone and firm. But invite ugliness into your home? Bleah. Never.Avoid resolving to lose ten pounds, run two miles daily, and get up at 5 a.m. every day to accomplish it. These are resolutions built like Chevy Cavaliers and Nabisco Sugar Wafers (that is, not to last).Similarly, avoid the dangerous slip-slide into self-pity and -recrimination that can be the thirty-six hours before January 1. (Hint: The slip-slide usually begins when you reluctantly switch from seasonal music, and in a desperate bid to Read more:Resolutions
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957)"The Kiss" (1916)According to the Guggenheim Museum notes on the 2004 exhibition "Constantin Brancusi: The Essence of Things":[Brancusi] adopted the idea of the symbolic narrative and understood his works as forms of universal significance.This is immediately evident in The Kiss (1916). The embracing couple are schematic figures, acting as a sign of ideal union. The woman and man are almost, though not quite, indistinguishable. Like the medieval masons, he carved the block himself—hence his works are largely of a manageable scale—and believed that the completed sculpture emerged from a cooperation with the material. In the different versions of The Kiss, the original block of stone from which the figures are carved remains visible, encouraging concentration on the ideals embodied by the couple rather than their individual selves.Regular M-mv readers may recall that I featured Isamu Noguchi's "Miss Expanding Universe" in the 11.24.2006 "Fine Art
Frida Read more:Friday
The Saturday Review of Books 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Semicolon hosts "The Saturday
Review of Books
." Consider participating this week.Reading: Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir (Mary-Ann Tirone Smith). I received this review/promotional copy just before Christmas but didn't settle into it until Wednesday or Thursday of this week. This must be the year of the memoir for me. If you read my "best of" post, you know how many crept onto my list. It's not a genre that ordinarily attracts me; I guess I was just fortunate to read some exceptionally well done accounts, including (and, somehow, these didn't make it onto the list) Helene Hanff's wonderful books, two of which are treated in this chapbook entry.Girls, a blend of memoir and true crime, chronicles two seemingly unrelated stories: first, Smith's childhood as the daughter of Hartford, Connecticut "Working Stiffs" and as the sister of an autistic brother in a time when autistics were described as "crazy as a loon"; and second, a serial killer's development. The reader's suspicions abou
Fine Art Friday 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)"Crows in the Wheatfields, Auvers" (1890)Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else.________________________I feel such creative power in myself that I know for sure that the time will arrive when, so to speak, I shall regularly make something good every day. But very rarely a day passes that I do not make something, though it is not yet the real thing I want to make.________________________You do not know how paralysing that staring of a blank canvas is; it says to the painter, You can't do anything... Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the really passionate painter who is daring -- and who has once and for all broken that spell of "you cannot".A little more than three years ago, Letters of Vincent Van Gogh was an RDA. If you missed it Read more:Friday
, Fine Art
It's a shrew, right? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 But what sort? We found it on a prairie trail near Fox River in Northern Illinois? Seeking identification help.
Bookshop 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Well, thanks to a tip from S. (thank you again), I was able to add some more titles to the bookshop. Once in the shop, look in the lefthand corner for additional pages of books (and even DVDs). I've added a permanent link to the sidebar, too.Still writing like a fiend, so no "On the nightstand" entry yet, which is a durned shame, really, because my recent acquisitions -- a mighty tower of them -- would interest any booklover. Ah, well. I'll get to it. First, though, I've gotta make the doughnuts.
From the archives: "Hold on to a fast-fading formality" 1970-01-01 00:59:59 A few of you dear readers, thinkers, and autodidacts have written to let me know — in civilized but certain tones — that my affection for Newsweek bespeaks a certain, shall we say, shortcoming. You were too kind to define precisely what that shortcoming might be, but I suspect you were dancing perilously close to saying I should rely on better news sources.And I do, which should be apparent in the variety of links I provide here.But, yeah, I like Newsweek. Let's all get past that now, shall we?One of my favorite Newsweek features is the "My Turn" column [no apologies], and "Leave Your Hat On, But Lose the Jeans" from the December 15 issue was memorable in that, a month later, I'm still musing on the idea that "we have lost the glamour of a not-so-distant time" by favoring our jeans (overalls) and Birks over pumps and basic black. My first thought? It's hard to keep up with sneakered set when you're wearing 2.5-inch heels. My second thought? That uniforms, not unlike those in St
The recommended daily allowance 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Morris Berman's Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire is on my to-be-read pile for this evening, so I dragged this, way up from the early archives (10.31.2003).We cannot expect... to make a mythological allusion anymore, or use a foreign phrase, or refer to a famous historical event or literary character, and still be understood by more than a tiny handful of people. (Try this in virtually any group setting, and note the reaction. This is an excellent wake-up call as to what this culture is about, and how totally alien to it you are.)Oooh, and this gem:Our entire consciousness, our intellectual mental life, is being Starbuckized, condensed into a prefabricated designer look in a way that is reminiscent of that brilliant, terrible film, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (a great metaphor for our time.)Interested?Check out Morris Berman's The Twilight of American Culture. Like Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and Daniel Boorstein's The Image, Twilight is a book that Read more:allowance
Recommend Site To A Friend
