The other day, Evie was very, very upset at me. I can’t remember what she was mad about, but she decided to show her displeasure in the form of a picture (after all, it’s worth a thousand words). I saw her working on it before she gave it to me, furiously scribbling with clenched teeth and fire in her eyes. But even that mad, she just couldn’t resist adding little hearts and butterflies:
Evie recently won a book in a drawing at the library. The pickings were pretty unappealing (mostly character books, or I should say advertisements for television shows disguised as books), but I didn’t want to sway her opinion, so I let her pick whatever she wanted. It was her prize after all. She ended up picking a “ready to read level 1” book, and I was relatively happy with that. Very appropriate, and better than most of the choices.
She was pretty excited about it, and started looking at it as soon as we got back to the car. “Daddy, what does c-h-r-y-s-a-l-i-s spell?”
Seriously? You call that “ready to read level 1”?
The first name you encounter is in the book is Eigen. Eigen?? There’s also a Nia. In fact, there are so many kids introduced in the book, Evie couldn’t even keep all the characters straight. Isn’t repetition a better way to teach a kid to read? I understand wanting to display diversity in a kids’ book, but lets focus on teaching them about one thing at a time. I’ll pick a “ready to learn about diversity level 1” book if that’s what i want.
One of the kids is named Michael, which is at least a common name, but that isn’t good for a beginning to read book either; Michael is not a name you can sound out. I don’t think it’s a good time to explain that Michael is a special case where ch doesn’t make it’s usual “ch” sound. They could have at least gone with “Mike”.
Say, here’s an idea, how about limiting it to two characters with simple names? Lets say Dick and Jane. You can sound those out easy enough, and then the two of them could do all kinds of easy-to-read things, like “run”.
You’d think that writing a “ready to read level 1” book would be about the easiest thing in the world. Maybe it’s harder than it looks?
A short walk from our house lives the “single largest musical instrument ever built”. I guess it’s one of those things that’s too close to home, so you never appreciate it.
It was the last weekend of their summer concert series, and Sara said we should go check it out. I have to admit, I was a little reluctant. It just sort of seemed like a big to do, packing a picnic lunch and climbing all those stairs, not to mention that the kids were in particularly bad moods that day. All that just to see some bells?
I have to say, I totally had to eat my words.
Hiking up to the tiny little “performance room” to see the bells played was totally worth carrying Oliver up the 271 steps it took to get there. Seeing it played really was amazing. The tour guide said that the Carillon Bells were a “percussion instrument” and that was absolutely correct. I imagined someone playing a simple keyboard, but in actuality there are little mechanical wooden levers that must be struck. In order to play, you are literally striking the bells, and the harder you hit the levers, the louder the note.
The carillonist, James Fackenthal, did an amazing job, pounding away the 100 tons of bronze at an absolutely frantic pace, fists and sweat flying. I can’t really describe what is like seeing such an interesting and masterful performance in such an intimate room, high above the city of Chicago, for the price of $3. (that’s $3 total for all of us)
Even the kids enjoyed it, especially Oliver. At first we were sitting in front of the control console, and Oliver kept leaning around back to sneak peeks at Mr. Fackenthal playing. Evie enjoyed it, but after a few songs she was ready to move on. I think Oliver would have stayed and watched the entire concert.
Afterwards, we hiked up a few more stairs to the very top of the bell tower for some amazing views, before going back down to the bottom and listening to the rest of the concert from the ground. Even that seemed intimate, since the immense Rockefeller Chapel dwarfed the picnickers spread out in the grass below.
For anybody in the neighborhood, make sure you make it up to the top to see the performance at least once. Highly recommended.
I used to wash my car. Nothing fanatical, but just every once in a while I would give it the old once over. I always felt vaguely anxious about needing a car wash, because I never really knew exactly how often I was supposed to be doing it. It sure seemed like my dad was always washing the car growing up. On the other hand, it never seemed to make much of a difference, so I didn’t completely see the point (unless I needed it to rain, har har har!)
As the years went by, I went longer and longer in between car washes, until eventually I just stopped washing the car altogether. It has now been at least 10 years since I’ve washed my car. And here’s the thing: nobody noticed.
Seriously!
I don’t have any rust, and my car doesn’t look any dirtier than anybody else’s car. In fact, the reason this came up was because my car was parked next to my mom’s which had been recently washed, and they looked almost identical as far as the dirt was concerned. You wouldn’t have been able to guess which one had been washed last week, and which one hadn’t been washed for 10 years.
I’m sure at some point I’ll get rust, etc. on my car, but then I would say, “Well, the car is 12 years old, what do you expect?” My car has not sustained any more deterioration than anybody else’s. In fact, it might have sustained less. We were talking about this at work, and other people said, “but I wash mine all the time and the tailpipe already rusted off!” Maybe my dirt actually protects my car!
So here’s the question, to wash or not to wash? If there’s no noticeable difference, why do the work? Is there something I haven’t thought about?
I have an announcement to make.
In my spare time, I have been secretly writing and trying to sell professional-level short fiction. (Specifically speculative fiction, which includes fantasy, science fiction, and horror.) At first I (very, very) naively believed that this would be a snap. Even though I tried to tell myself it wasn’t so, I still secretly thought I was a hot-shot natural who would type up a story or two and then the acceptances would start rolling in.
3 1/2 years and 132 rejections later, my eyes have been opened.
Writing a story that an editor wants to publish is a lot harder than I ever imagined. Even just getting down on paper the story you imagine in your head is a lot harder than I ever imagined. Furthermore, that’s not even the hard part; the hard part is finding time to keep writing when the rejections, dishes, and laundry are piling up, and you have two small kids who need 110% of your effort, to say nothing of a full time job.
Way back at the beginning, I decided to keep my fiction writing a secret “until such time that I feel this whole idea is not foolish. Or, until I decide that it is completely foolish and we can all have a good laugh about it.”
Well, I can finally say it is the former rather than the latter. I am pleased to announce that my story, “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation” will appear in the September issue of Redstone Science Fiction!
It feels so good to finally have a win (even if the score is 132 to 1) that I am “coming out of the closet” so to speak with my illicit, night-time fiction writing. Momentarily I will unlock the “Writing” category and all the posts contained therein. If you feel the need to go back and read them, please remember that 3 1/2 years ago I was more or less a clueless idiot when it came to professional writing. (I’m sure that in another 3 1/2 years I will look back at this post and consider my current self more or less a clueless idiot when it comes to professional writing.)
So there it is. You can be sure I will link to the story when it goes live on their website, and from here on out, any other information about my writing.
The first of many!
Shane Halbach 