Lexical Light

Florida vs. UCLA & Dewey vs. Truman

Please join me, if you dare, for a glimpse at how my mind works. Be warned, it may be a bit confusing as I retrace the "connect the dots" picture in my head - with no guarantee of a cute picture at the end.

Here we go:

In the Kim Komando Daily News e-letter I read about Amazon.com jumping the gun on the NCAA Men's Tourney winner. Being the March Madness fan that I am, read the story, wondering if it will make any reference to the Dewey vs. Truman newspaper incident. 

When I googled Dewey vs. Truman, I found a CNN article, "The Rise of the Online Citizen" with an section titled Blogs: Democrats Answer to Talk Radio." Of course, that caught my eye & made me laugh that I ended up there.  Funnier was the last line of that section: "Blogs are a real force, they're not just for geeks anymore."

Connect the dots: Komando > NCAA tourney winner announced wrong > Dewey vs. Truman > blogs..the geek reference was a bonus.

 

15 Minutes w/Mr. Zinsser

I just spent 15 minutes learning about interviewing from William Zinsser. Thanks for your time, Mr. Zinsser.

Of course, it was via his book On Writing Well, but that’s the cool thing about books. It gives me access to people I would have never met. Even better – if it’s a book I own, I always have access to it. (Assuming I know where it is. Thanks to Flylady and my Dewey Decimaled bookshelves, the odds of that are fairly good these days.)

Now for Connect the Dots:

I’m doing an interview for an article in our church’s monthly magazine. It occurred to me I’ve never done an interview. Better find a book. I resisted the urge to look for a book at the library; wouldn’t be a good use of time. Surely there’s something I could find online. Poynter.org maybe? (Try to practice the “Use What’s There” principle.)

As I’m clearing a space on my desk for my new central calendar (HT: Flylady & TMIO) I find the book On Writing Well. (HT: Barbara Curtis)

“I wonder if there’s anything about interviews in there?” Sure enough, Chapter 11 is The Interview. Started reading it yesterday, but knew I need to UWT and get my questions written down.

Per TMIO & FL the timer was set for 30 minutes to get the questions done. Whadaya know, I’m done in 20 minutes and decide to use the other 10 to read Zinnser. It ends up being 15 minutes, but that’s okay. I got the chapter read and got the 1^st step of the project done.

“I think I’m gonna blog!” sprang to mind because I was so psyched about learning new skills in so many areas at the same time. “Light saber skills, levitation skills…you know, skills! Gosh!”

(That post took about 40 minutes w/linkage & posting. Good thing the kids aren't back home yet. It would've taken less time if I didn't have to tweak the format coming from Word to Typepad. See how the last line of my post is a different font...that's one of the tweaks. I just decided I'm not going to mess w/that on each post. Time!)

Enjoy the Lexical Linkage

One of my favorite things about blogs are the ability to link to other information. I use links often in my posts, sometimes a little too often. I like to use them as to add another level of wit, wisdom, knowledge, and opinion.  I'm particularly proud of my use of links in my last post. Take a look at them if you're so inclined. I cracked myself up.

Hearing Other Voices for 30 Days

This morning I read that Brian Bailey started a new category called Other Voices   First up is Evan Ervin  who challenges us to beware of tunnel vision.

Then this afternoon I saw a blurb on my yahoo home page about a Christian who will live in a large Muslim community for 30 Days.

Making connections....

That's Made of Corn?

My skirt is made of corn. So are the containers for my leftovers. They’re not really, but they could be. This article on my Yahoo home page caught my eye because it explores the possibilities of the USA becoming less dependent on oil because of corn. Go figure.

Not only is corn used to produce fabric and plastic, but less fossil fuel is used in that process than in the traditional manufacturing process for similar petroleum based products. "Anything you can make out of petroleum, I can make out of corn and soybeans," said Larry Johnson, director of the Center for Crops Utilization Research at Iowa State University. Cool. 

The article also caught my eye because it’s not the first time I’ve heard about this. Thanks to a Reading Rainbow episode* we saw a few months ago, even my kids know you can make fabric and plastic from corn. When I saw this news story today, I immediately thought of LeVar taking us to the factory where they turn corn into plastic. That’s one of the small joys in my life…making connections. I can’t wait to tell the kids.

*I couldn't find that episode info. I'll link it when I find it. Oh, the suspense. 

Terra Cotta Soldiers of China

How do you go from a good remake of a bad song to ancient civilizations? You create a blog so your discoveries and pinging thoughts have a place to land.

While making a time line card for Ninja Boy's latest read, I came across these amazing pictures of life size terracotta figures of ancient Chinese warriors and horses arranged in battle formations.

In 1974 Chinese peasants digging near Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum, found some pottery. This lead to the discovery of over 7.000 pottery soldiers, horses, chariots, and weapons.

Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 BC - 210 BC) was the 1st emperor of a united China. (Reminds me of the movie "Hero".) Which is why he changed his name from Ying Zheng to the name that means "first emperor of China".

His other big (literally) accomplishment was creating the forerunner of the Great Wall of China. Of course, he only created it in his mind. The literal creation being done at the hands of millions of workers.

(As usual, finding answers leads to more questions. If you want to learn more about the Chinese dynasties, follow the links.)

Connection note: The movie "Hero" (interesting movie site) is based on a myth taking place during the time prior to China's existence as China during the reign of a tyrannical reign of a king who wants to unify China. Love it- connecting the dots from a children's book to a subtitled movie. 

Anxiety & freedom...

Jollyblogger posted about "Information Paralysis" (Having so many choices for information you  can't  think. )  I took the opportunity to respond w/a comment about my previous post.

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” – Soren Kierkegaard

In my little world, the issue of freedom and anxiety seem to keep popping up:

The quote above is from the April 11, 2005 issue of Forbes. 

March 4, 2005 Nightline did a piece on “The Mommy Mystique” based on Judith Warner’s “Perfect Madness – Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety”. Many of the mom’s she spoke with were upper middle class moms who had the freedom of so many choices; they were overwhelmed with their lives. The mom who has to work 3 jobs to support her and her children doesn’t have the same anxiety.

What about the recent adult ADD commercials? I wonder how many people are truly ADD. Just yesterday I had to really FOCUS and remind myself to get the table clean for school without getting distracted by all the other jobs I needed to do, I’m not ADD. I just needed to train my brain. I know that some people truly are ADD. How many think they are ADD but are just overwhelmed with their freedom? (I just noticed that tv spots, but CNN did an article about it 2 years ago.)

Then there's me. (I keep popping up in my world!)

I have few external demands on my life, outside of the fact that I home school my four children. (Even that is done w/out many external demands…Texas lets parents educate their children with minimal restrictions.) So why do I experience “activity paralysis”? Why do I get so overwhelmed with the amount of things I need to do, should do and want to do that it makes me just want to nap. (No, I’m not depressed!) Personally, I just need to focus on my vision, use wisdom and pray.

How do we navigate our world of information, choices, and freedom?

It can be overwhelming. It requires understanding of your vision, wisdom and focus. Thankfully, God gives wisdom freely to those who ask. He also gives grace and mercy. (Whew!) It’s up to us to use them.

The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash

I want the kids to be "learners for life" so I teach them to find connections all the time. 

Today's Reading Rainbow, Episode 14: The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash, had a couple of connections on it. 

1. It opened w/a segment about unusual pets, showing several parrots.  The connection: Emily has been fascinated w/parrots since our church's Christmas drama that had a songbird character in it. Since then, we've watched a PBS special on parrots, read books from 2 different libraries, and had a parrot themed birthday party...complete w/homemade paper craft parrot.

2. The feature book was The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash.  The connection:  we got to see the illustrator, Steven Kellogg, in person at Aunt Sandy's school. Each of the kids got an autographed book, each a different title. Aaron caught the connection.

BTW, that book and the others in the series are funny, but you don't have to take my word for it.