Wednesday's for Kids VI -- NEWSPAPERS NOT WORTH CRAP

Either a dreary duty of veterinarians or a desperate fatherly attempt to demonstrate the incalculable value of work to his kids, whenever I needed some extra cash and lawn-mowing wasn't sufficient or out of season (like in preparation for a family vacation or under the self-administered covetous pressure of the latest Lego Technic kit), I was summoned to the veterinary clinic to unfold newspapers destined to line the cages of sick and infirm house pets.  Surprisingly, I don't remember the nature of my salary for the job--surprising, because I remember acutely the value my dad placed upon my lawn-mowing prowess: a paltry four freaking bucks for buzzing down a half-acre lawn run amok with thousands of trees, shrubs, vines, flowers, fence posts, blueberry bushes, brick walkways, not to mention all the poop left by the dogs and the headless rodents or little prissy piles of entrails left by the cats.  Four dollars!  I think he paid us ("us" being my older sister and me--I don't remember any of the others ever doing this) by how thick the resulting pile of unfolded newsprint was, because paying us by the hour would've been just plain stupid--or generous, neither of which, at least back then, seemed appropriate descriptors for the old man (the latter I've since learned is very, very far from the truth).

The inherent problem with the job was the inevitable comics page for every other section or so of newspaper.  Dad would set us up in the hallway behind the examination and surgery rooms and the dispensary with a few big cardboard boxes full of newspapers donated by neighbors and clients.  The light was bad, the floor was hard, and if I'd been any older, either of these things would have bothered me.  But I was just a kid.  I liked being at the clinic.  I liked being close to my dad, and in such professional manner.  And I loved the comics!  Many of them I'd already read, since we received the local newspaper, The Times Reporter (out of Dover and New Philadelphia, Ohio, where the printed newspaper is most likely still safe), at home.  But some patrons donated old newspapers.  And these were the true treasures!  They were old, but they were new, if you know what I mean, because they contained the cartoon I hadn't read yet.

While I read all of the cartoons on each comics page, save Cathy, of course, there weren't many that I understood, and those that I could appreciate, I learned much later that I didn't really "get" back then.  I did have, of course, two favorites (Peanuts I found too dull, Family Circus too gooey, Marmaduke was okay, and I loved the pictures for Doonesbury, but didn't understand a word of it): unsurprisingly, I'm sure, Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side.  These brilliant cartoons were, and yet are, approachable by both kids and grownups, unlike most which pandered exclusively to one or the other.  Both of these, and long since the retirement of their artists, I still read; I have both of them on a bookshelf not fifteen feet from where I sit now, both in their complete, boxed, and gloriously bound anthologies.

For better or worse, my son doesn't car a lick about The Far Side, but he is captivated by Calvin and Hobbes.  He is still younger now than I was back when I unfolded newspapers for cash and pleasure, and I think he's still missing an important element of the discovery of these gems.  Thankfully he has a lot of time ahead of him, and what that time might hold makes me wonder what discoveries he'll make and how he'll come by them--and if he were to write a blog like this thirty years down the road, what stories would he tell?  

Maybe the Wii for Christmas was a mistake....

***

No matter the generation gap, Jacob's and my favorite C&H episodes align beautifully.  As I hunched over the old newspapers bound for the inevitable receipt of dog poop and cat vomit, squinting in the dim, I tensed with delight each time I scanned down to Calvin and Hobbes and saw, much more than just Calvin or his best friend, Spaceman Spiff.  So, too, does my son wiggle with delight at the sight of--

by Bill Waterson

***

(So I hope my title isn't too misleading.  When I say that newspapers aren't worth crap, I mean, well, that the crap isn't worthy of the newspapers and their noble contents.)

Wednesday's for Kids IV -- HIGH SCHOOL YEAR BOOKS

This is my high school yearbook, the annual Swirl of Dover High School, from 1994-95, the year I graduated (freshman through junior years are blessedly stored away at my parents' place two thousand miles away).  Amazing how embarrassing these pictures are despite the fact that I was without my clonky glasses, without the relatively new and totally pathetic pad of fat on my gut, and without the glistening bald spot at the crest of my scalp.  Aside from just the physical, I was more popular back then--had more friends, did more stuff, was altogether cooler (doesn't say much for me now!).  Yet despite the apparent descent my life's taken since my teens, I am pink with unease looking at these ridiculous pictures.  So, here, now, on The Wall, I show them to you not to confront my nerves or solicit sympathy or laughter, but to demonstrate, and here's why:

My kids love this crap!

And it's not just yearbooks.  Any old memorabilia--even receipts--seem to enthrall them, so long as they get the accompanying story.  This doesn't, I think, speak of nerdiness in my children, but of their interest in connecting with their parents' past.  I've got a sheaf of old newspaper articles, receipts, train tickets, fliers, and so on stuffed into a journal from my first year at BYU and my following two years in Italy, not to mention the scrap book my mom assembled from all the pictures I sent home during that time, and, once again, my kids love it.  All of it.

Look at it this way: what are the overall benefits of reading books with your kids (benefits to the kids, not you, I mean)?

1. increased literacy and fluency;
2. increased verbal and narrative skills;
3. improved relationships, reader-to-listener;
4. time away from the television;
5. relief from sibling rivalries;
6. bedtime tranquilizer;
7. general mood improvement, both listener and reader; and (did I forget any?)
8. maybe most importantly, the kids like it, which surely is why the previous seven even work at all.

So if these are the good that come from reading with your kids (and is there any bad?), maybe with slightly shifted results depending on the chosen book (Hamster Huey and Gooey Kablooie, Calvin's favorite bedtime story, from Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Waterson (though Waterson credits Mabel Syrup with the HHaGK authorship), is sure to boast fewer benefits than, say, The Sweet Pickles books I mentioned here a couple weeks ago (go ahead and argue the point)), and the fact that, at least for my kids, that final benefit is perhaps greater than with book about my wife and/or me than with any other book, why not suffer some minor embarrassment for their benefit?

After all, our comfort should have little if anything to do with their growth and pleasure, right? which, by the way, is a lesson I really need to do better at remembering, as I sit comfortably at my desk on a break from work far from kids and my poor wife who's sick and dealing with even sicker kids (darn flu season!).  What's a little pain in the back or neck?  What's a little time away from whatever it is that takes your time?  How important are your kids, after all?  But there is at least some minor remediation:

It was my father who discovered the available leverage to take full advantage of the labor potential of a full half dozen kids where regarded the otherwise slump of his physical comfort at story time: all six of us were obligated to take turns scratching his back while he read us our story; if we stopped, he stopped; the longer we scratched, the longer he read.  Good deal.  But he never showed us his old yearbooks, and even now I would LOVE to see those.

Jane Eyre I -- chapter 1: MELANCHOLY ISLES

Period Vocabulary

1. caviler: one who cavils--one who nitpicks, splits hairs, or argues
2. letter-press: a quality of printing, resulting in sort of the opposite of embossing; a quality of high-end, old publishing
3. bilious: since Bronte's not likely talking about the issue of bile from liver problems, she's more likely using "bilious" to indicate John's bad attitude and temper

Reading Questions and Notes

1. The weather as indicator of mood, tone, motif, etcetera is typical of Gothicism, of which Jane Eyre is a defining text.  The weather is, of course, generally considered--and especially out of Victorian England--as act of God.  What does Bronte indicate by aligning Jane with the weather and the surrounding family with this weather's opposite?  "Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day."
2. While I'm less interested in issues of Transcendentalism, at least at this point (the prefatory "notes" of my edition say it's at issue here), there are already indications of Romanticism: emphasis, even reliance, on human emotion rather than reason; the power and influence of nature and even the supernatural; advocacy of free thought.  What does Jane and the text demonstrate of Romanticism this early?
3. The passage from Bewick's is indicative of Jane, certainly already but likely increasingly so as we continue through her history.  How?
4. What is the "solitary church-yard"?  Where did it come from?  And the gallows?
5. Is John Reed not Dudley Dursley, from Harry Potter, or Mo, from Calvin and Hobbes?  Why is this the stereotype for bullies?
6. There's another issue of weather, taking the dreariness from another perspective: The elements of a storm surely don't dislike their nature and likely find pleasure in the tormenting of the landscape.  If Jane is the island, what is the storm?
7. Are all entirely against Jane?  I doubt the complicity of Eliza and Georgiana.  

by Bill Waterson