i saw you running through my playground

maura @ 9:38 pm

Last week on my walk to work I listened to a podcast interview with Alison Pugh, a sociologist who just wrote the book Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children and Consumer Culture. She spent three years observing kids and interviewing parents of varying socioeconomic statuses in Oakland, CA. The results of her study suggest that kids want what their peers have much more than what consumer marketing tells them to want (though advertising does still influence their consumer desires).

She found that often the most desired toys are electronic and that most kids tended to have these toys, regardless of their family’s income level. One interesting finding is that affluent parents were much more likely to buy items viewed as basic or necessary toys (bikes, blocks, etc.) in addition to the coveted electronic toys. Poor parents tended to buy only the items that carried the most social weight so, for example, they wouldn’t have a bike but they would have a Wii. And, many affluent parents eschewed electronic toys altogether, though they bought plenty of other toys for their kids.

Two things that my brain’s been chewing on ever since:

1. This pattern totally fits with what I’ve observed in my (and Gus’s) lives and interactions with his peers and their parents. And I find it so interesting when compared to James Paul Gee’s thesis from What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. He concluded that video games can teach kids lots of good stuff (reading, problem-solving, critical thinking, etc.) in ways that make them eager and excited to learn. But he cautioned that poor kids aren’t getting the same opportunities to experience the benefits of video games as are more affluent kids. According to Pugh’s work, most kids do have video game systems, regardless of their family’s income level. So that’s good.

2. About halfway through listening to the podcast I thought to myself, “well, that’s totally obvious.” Which was the same reaction that Jonathan had when I told him about the interview later on. And then I realized OMG, we are the studied! I’m the target population, so of COURSE it seems obvious to me – I live it. I’ve been getting reading and thinking about anthropology lots lately (and, w/my new research project, even doing some), and it was a weird feeling to realize that I was on the other side of the table, ethnographically speaking.

Sounds like a cool book — I definitely plan to read it.

here’s your future: it’s gonna rain

maura @ 9:39 pm

I’ve been mentally blogging all day in discrete paragraphs rather than sustained narrative, so I’m going to kick it list-style here tonight:

1. After multiple recommendations I finally got my hands on some Thermals records. And they are awesome! Good for listening to while cleaning the stacks of papers off your desk, arranging the fall workshop schedule, and doing the dishes. Since it has rained here for a million billion jillion days straight, the line that’s the title of this post seems particularly apt.

2. Seriously, it has rained for a million billion jillion days straight. I mean, I used to dig in Ireland, I know from rain. I finally bought some big tall boots, but this is still getting pretty old. No rain today but the forecast for the weekend looks ominous, bah.

3. Last week we went to the curriculum share at Gus’s school to see all the fantastic work they’ve done all year. I am completely in awe of his teacher: she took those 27 kids on a ton of field trips all over the city (they studied a lot of architecture this year), including walks over the Brooklyn, Manhattan AND Williamsburg bridges (not all in the same day). Among the work Gus showed us was a book he made entitled “All Kinds of Awesome Poems By Gus.” Which makes me giggle every time I think of it.

4. I finally cleared a whole bunch of random old photos off my phone recently. Here are two:

This is from a crazy place with tons of inflatable stuff to climb on called Bounce U that we went to with friends earlier this year. Gus had a blast, predictably.

There’s a fun public art project all along a street near my work for which lots of people knitted cozies for the parking meters! It’s amazing, very Doctor Seussian. I took this photo right after the cozies were installed — they look much more droopy now that they’ve been rained on for a month. You can get a better look in the nice Flickr photostream and there’s also more info in the Times.

¿se siente mal? podemus ayudarle

maura @ 12:56 pm

Woah, long time gone here. I’ve been busy — got pulled in on a big project @ work, fun but time-intensive. And then there was the sick, oh yes, the sick. Gus had the stomach flu, then I had the stomach flu, then Gus had the stomach flu again. Good times.

I’ve missed you, blag! It’s weird, I’ve really felt pangs of longing lately for some time, any time, to write. That’s positive, right? that I really want to write these days, so much so that I’m frustrated when I can’t.

Good thing, too, because I got my bloggy wish. What girl doesn’t need 3 blogs, I ask you? (I don’t want the trackbacks so I’m not going to link them — y’all can cut-n-paste ’em if you’d like.) You can find me blagging 1-2x/month about library stuff on the Association of College and Research Libraries’ blog at acrlog.org. And I made myself a blog on the CUNY Academic Commons (another project I’ve worked on this year) for general higher education and instructional technology thoughts as well as stuff specific to the CUNYverse. That one’s at msmale.commons.gc.cuny.edu.

Last week I had a meeting in Manhattan. I do love my current (walkable!) commute, but it’s fun to have the chance to ride the subway over the bridge sometimes, too. There’s always something new to see — like last spring when I kept thinking, “what the heck are they building on that pier?” and it turned out to be a waterfall.

Right now there’s this cool underground art between the DeKalb Ave stop and the Manhattan Bridge. Brightly colored images are painted on the walls and when the train goes by and you look out the window the supporting tunnel girders make it look like one of those old timey spinning wheel animation things. The internets remind me that’s a zoetrope (thank you Wikipedia!).

(Ooh, it’s called Masstransiscope, see article + video in the Times here!)

Also when I ride the subway I remember that I really want to learn Spanish. It’s so tantalizing to read all of the Spanish signs and almost understand them. Someday there’ll be time, right? I suppose I could give up some blagtime, but I think I’m more attached to blags for now. Sorry, Spanish!

cause the days change at night

maura @ 10:38 pm

Woah, has it really been 2 weeks since my last post? Time flies when there’s teaching teaching teaching and then bam, Spring Break. Now the teaching is over (though Spring Break isn’t quite yet) and I’m a little sad, just like last semester. Curious, it is (see Yoda reference below).

Thanks to the spring non-secular holidays, Gus’s Spring Break was extra-long this year, so we hightailed it to Our Nation’s Capital for a few days to reprise our vacation 2 yrs ago. We even stayed at the same hotel! It was nice to be sort of familiar with everything. And we finally figured out the metro. Such a weird system, with the whole pay when you exit thing and how 2 people can’t use the same card and the fares are different between locations. Duh!

The trip was pretty fun. We did a few new things: Lincoln Memorial, which I found so moving (realized I had never been there), Vietnam War Memorial (ditto), pedal boats in the Tidal Basin to ogle the Jefferson Memorial (tho someone w/short legs was a pedal slacker), and the Museum of American History (which had been closed 2 yrs ago). Gus was tired + crabby for the latter so we let him play his DS while Jonathan ogled Julia Child’s kitchen and I grooved on Within These Walls, a reconstructed historic house with info about 6 families that lived there from the late 18th-mid-20th c. Go, historic house nerds!

We also hit a few of our old faves from last time. The cafeteria of the National Museum of the American Indian has dee-licious food (mmm, fry bread. and fiddlehead ferns!). Maybe one of these days we will have time to visit the rest of the museum, too. And it’s right next door to the Air + Space Museum, which you may have heard is the most visited museum IN THE WORLD, a fact which I could not help myself from mentioning about a jillion times as we slowly swam through the ridiculous crowds of people inside.

Gus reeeeeeally wanted to see the planetarium movie about black holes, so we did. It was narrated by Liam Neeson and I spent the first part of the show feeling really bad for him. But then his voice got all spooky and he told us that many galaxies have black holes at their centers and Gus said “does our galaxy have a black hole?” and I said “uhhhmmm…” and Liam said “there is even a black hole at the center of our own galaxy!” and Gus grabbed my arm so tight it hurt. So Liam Neeson, I am sorry for your loss, but thank you very much for freaking out my child. Stupid black holes.

After that we had to get ice cream, even though it was 50 degrees and raining, because we wanted to drag Gus to the Hirshhorn to see some modern art, which we <3 and he despises (“I hate art!”). The pin book wasn’t on display, but we stumbled (literally, as we had to piggyback Mr. Crabby + Scared of Black Holes throughout the museum) upon a great exhibit of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois’s work. My most favorite of her pieces were the little rooms made up of wire cages or spirals formed by wooden doors joined together with cool furniture and other weird stuff inside, sometimes only visible through a window or via a mirror. Red room (child) was the neatest, with spools of thread and wax hands. Creepy.

Gus was mostly happy just to swim in the hotel pool, eat Frosted Flakes at the free hotel breakfast and watch cable (he discovered Clone Wars on the Cartoon Network — see, there’s the Yoda reference!). It was kind of weird to see real TV (esp. Fox News at breakfast, ugh), but it’s good to experience it every so often if only so we have the chance to engage in what passes for media literacy education in our house. When loud obnoxious kid commercials come on (like a horrible one for a card game called, appropriately enough, Chaotic), Jonathan and I mock it loudly and whine to Gus to buy it for us. He’s also started reading advertising claims to us (from all media): “Mom, is this really the best yogurt you’ve ever tasted?” which is hilarious.

Also one night in a totally hilarious, Bart Simpson moment, Gus called Jonathan “farty fart mcweiner butt.” And we completely blew it by laughing until we cried. Oh well.

i strap on my ear goggles and i’m ready to go

maura @ 9:04 pm

1. My son, the poet

Recently for homework Gus had to choose a fruit, eat it, and write a few descriptive sentences about it in his homework notebook. Here’s what he wrote:

Shiny as a ruby pond, this fruit holds the stars.
Once bitten, it clangs as a ruby, oozing a texture of sweet, ripe juice.

Can you guess what fruit he was eating?*

2. My son, the rapper

I have a new computer! If you want to be amazed by advances in computing technology I highly recommend waiting nearly 7 yrs between machines. This one is very, very fast.

One night last week Jonathan asked me to test out Mac MAME on the new machine. You know, the app that plays all of those old ROMs from video games of the ’80s. Scrolling through the list I picked Burger Time (somewhat at random: there was a whole mess of Atari sports games and this was the first thing my eye caught after them). I played for a few minutes, then Gus came in and was instantly enthralled. It’s kind of a classic dumb ’80s game, but also it’s quite amusing to walk the little chef guy over the patties while the hot dogs and eggs chase him.

Gus wanted to play next, so we set him up and away he went. He’s apparently internalized Jonathan’s constant, low-level, semi-silly rhyming,** because in the midst of playing he busted out with this rap:

Eggs and hot dogs, on my tail
I think I want some, ginger ale

There may have been more to it, but I was laughing too hard to remember.

* raspberries, of course!

** I should talk — the other day I came up with a rap about IRB. Maybe I will share it someday (after I get IRB approval for my research project, of course!).

let’s defend the things we say

maura @ 10:41 pm

Last night I deep-ended on researching day camps for Gus for this summer. After all, it is almost March, time to get on the ball! Because I am a bad parent have a life I did not stand in line at the crack of dawn last month to try to get him into the science camp that he loved but that is way too popular for its own good. But a fellow parent’s camp query earlier this week has sent me searching for options for this year of the crazy long summer (TEN weeks! Because Labor Day is so late and school doesn’t start til after! Aiieee!!!).

And I’m coming up short. All of the camps I’ve found are either:

a. too much semi-structured arts & craftsy schoolyard gamesy hanging out time
b. too much time on a bus going from place to place (this is less of an issue for us than for some parents, but I do see the dilemma)
c. too focused on one thing, which is usually sports (and only sports esp. will not work for Gus)
d. too expensive, too schedule-inflexible, too far away, etc. etc. etc.

All of this has got me thinking of my ideal summer camp for Gus. Why can’t there be lots of different activities, so that kids can try new stuff? Why can’t there be some nerdy stuff that involves science and nature? Why can’t there be a balance of physical and mental activities? (And at this point it occurred to me that I am kind of talking about Gus’s school, although I do think camp should be more physical and less mental than school.)

SO. Here’s my camp wishlist. Think of it as the mauraweb! summer camp, not coming soon to a city near you!

8:30-9:00am: drop-off (conveniently located less than a 15 minute walk from our apt)

9:00-9:45am: on alternate days: arts & crafts, music (pick any instrument you want, even drums [Gus’s choice] or french horn [mine]), drama (kids who don’t want to act can sing in the chorus or paint scenery)

9:45-10:30am: something sporty: karate, tumbling, fencing, trampoline, tennis, rock climbing (these are the things I think Gus might like; your kid can do something else if you want!)

10:30-11:15am: swimming

11:15am-noon: change clothes, lunch

noon-12:45pm: drawing & writing, computers (programming, “educational” games)

12:45-1:30pm: something sciencey (experiments), naturey (dissecting stuff) or historical (reconstructing past stuff)

1:30-2:15pm: something somewhat less sporty like horseback riding or archery or croquet or lawn bowling or horseshoes

2:15-3:00pm: maybe a choice between more swimming (recreational, while the morning is instructional?) and playground

3:00-3:45pm: snack, games, reading, pickup

This day is probably not possible, esp. since I’ve left no time for the children to transition from one activity to the next. And children are known for their easygoing transitions (snort).

i’ll write you a postcard i’ll send you the news

maura @ 9:38 pm

It’s the last day of January, so it’s time to get those Groundhog’s Day Eve resolutions in. What’s that you say? You’ve never heard of Groundhog’s Day Eve resolutions?!! You must be one of those organized do-gooder types that make New Year’s resolutions, harrumph.

Yeah, so I couldn’t get it together to do the resolutions thing in January. I mean, I made them, but I didn’t really stick to them. So in the spirit of Bill Murray I am giving myself another chance. And I’m posting them here, too, so I will a) remember them, and b) feel some small amount of public shame when I think about slacking on them. Let’s see if it works.

1. Be more realistic.
Kind of an overarching goal. I tend to make a huge list of things that no human could possibly accomplish within the unreasonable timeframe I’ve set, then get mad at myself for not finishing them. Watch me practice this resolution with the very list of resolutions I’m creating!

2. Get control of my infostreams.
I’ve had marginal success with this one, actually. I moved all my feeds into google reader, and I’ve been able to get most of the NY Times scanned each morning (tho sometimes the Science Times has to wait til after work). But there are 126 unread items in my google reader right now so obviously this one still needs work.

3. Start meditating again.
For some reason that I can’t quite fathom I stopped meditating about a year ago. Which was dumb, because it helped me sleep better and was great for dealing with stress, too. So I need to get back to that.

4. Floss in the mornings (as well as at night).
This is a little thing that always feels like a big thing but really is the right thing so I should just do it!

5. Find some sort of volunteery thing to do with Gus.
There was an article in the Times about family volunteering a couple of years ago. It’s been on my mind for a while, and I think this is the year to do it.

6. Carve out more time for reading + writing.
Blag, journal + even maybe some other casual writing (maybe even about libraries). And try to start making a dent in my 100+ book reading list.

Okay, in the spirit of #1 it’s probably time to stop now. We have a movie to finish before I have to meditate!

i dropped the ice pick

maura @ 11:57 am

Last Monday both Gus + I were off school/work for MLK Day, so we headed up to the Met to meet a friend of mine + her kids. Arms & Armor, mummies and chicken nuggets in a taxi-shaped box: what could be better for a snowy Monday? We spent a long time hanging out at the Temple of Dendur. It was late in the day so everyone was kind of tired, and the snow was falling in that slow magical way (in which it almost seems to be snowing up), so we sat down and gawked for a while.

There’s a small sphinx sculpture right next to the reconstructed temple, and it didn’t take long for Gus + my friend’s son to start asking questions about it. What is it? Why is it half-person half-lion? And so on. I made the mistake of mentioning something about the Riddle of the Sphinx* and suddenly that was all they could think of. What was the riddle? What happened to people who couldn’t answer? Why did the Sphinx ask a riddle? What was the answer?

After a few minutes of trying to pull the half-remembered shreds of my 9th-grade Bible, Myth and Epic class out of my head it became clear that the kids weren’t going to give it up. Usually when I don’t know the answer to something I tell Gus that we will look it up on the interwebs later, but then I remembered that I have the whole internets in my pocket. Iphone to the rescue! I fired up the Wikipedia entry for the Sphinx and suddenly all of their questions were answered (especially the gory ones).

(EDITED TO ADD [can’t believe I forgot to mention this!]:) So apparently this incident convinced Gus that the answer to every question is always available via the iphone. The next morning he asked me how many gallons of water a swimming pool holds, and when I answered that I didn’t know he came back with, “look it up in your phone, Mommy!”

I feel like I’ve done a lot of incidental evangelizing for the iphone lately, esp. the ubiquitous interwebs and the ability to carry lots of books around features. All of which is making me think that I need to read Rainbows End again. If only the iphone could extend time, I’d be all set.

* Q: What goes on 4 legs in the morning, 2 legs at noon, and 3 legs in the evening?
A: (Hu)man(s) — we crawl as babies, walk as adults, and need canes when we’re elderly.

paper chase is on

maura @ 9:11 pm

Happy New Year, interwebs!

We here at mauraweb! are back from our holiday adventures, which were busy but quite fun. We kicked it Santa-style at home in Brooklyn on Christmas morning, then met up with Grandma and Grandpa and hopped on a plane Xmas evening bound for the UK. We spent the next several days in London riding the tube + double-decker buses, tramping around castles, catching a glimpse of the Rosetta Stone (which is much smaller than I thought it would be), and hanging out at an awesome playground. Gus + his grandparents also went up in the London Eye and to see a play: a modern-yet-Grimm’s Cinderella. Tasty treats were had by all: meat pies, fish + chips and ale at various pubs, noodles from Wagamama, cookies + cakes + sausages + rashers (not all at the same time!) from Tesco.

Gus had a good time on his first foray to a foreign land, though in some respects we wonder how different it seemed to him. After all, we were in a city, going to museums + playgrounds, riding public transportation — lots of things we do here. Of course, here it’s not all Mary Poppins flats + chimneys when we look out the windows, nor are there palaces in the parks. While walking by Kensington Palace we were talking about what happens if a baby or kid is next in line for the throne. And he said: “Wait! I have a question: wouldn’t the children make foolish decisions?” Which still makes me giggle.

But enough about my Xmas vacation, I know you’re all wondering how my interwebs vacation went. We’d thought we’d have wifi in the flat but then we didn’t and for some reason my phone had no service the whole time, so it ended up being more of an enforced than voluntary break. And it was pleasantly refreshing! I did glance at my email once or twice, just to be sure our neighbor wasn’t trying to contact us with catsitting issues, but that was it.

The unplugging was nice, actually. Took me back to those pre-cellphone days of traveling with only the Lonely Planet to guide you. We had the TV for weather + news (mostly the sad Gaza news, made closer by the fact that the Israeli embassy was close to our flat and the site of protesters many days). I didn’t feel particularly deprived, either, though the same may not be said for all members of our party.

I’m letting myself ignore everything that happened on my various infostreams while I was gone, too, which has been quite a relief as I spend these last few vacation days trying to kick the jet lag (and the head cold that came back with a vengeance while we were away) and get ready to head back to work on Monday. This week I’ll be trying to start fresh and come up with a reasonable plan for keeping up that doesn’t take too much time or make me feel bad if I drop behind. I’m thinking that setting aside a certain amount of time (30-60 min/day or so) and using a three-tiered system (must read, good to read, leisure read) may be the way to go. We’ll see how it works.

let me try to pull you free

maura @ 9:28 pm

Interwebs! I’ve missed you, with your daily forced blag of months past. How the heck are ya? I’m still pretty busy. I keep thinking things will slow down any day now, then things pop up. Such is the downward slide til the end of the year. I’m chewing over a big post deconstructing what has of late become my dread of the Christmas season (complete with highfalutin’ references to anthropological essays!), but don’t have the gumption for it tonight. And maybe dread is too strong a word, anyway. Something like annoyance + unease + fatigue + nostalgia is probably better. Is there a word for that?

I was going to do “what we’re reading,” but I have not had time to read much of anything lately, either for fun or for work (my infostreams are neglected + unruly, sigh). Gus, on the other hand, has been a reading fiend. Apparently the trick is to tell him he can read before bed — it makes him think we’re letting him stay up later (which of course we are not).

I am not at all a reading snob when it comes to kids books. Honestly, he can read whatever Star Wars Spongebob Lego Captain Underpants Pokemon crap he wants to, as long as he’s reading. I do, however, prefer to reserve the ca$h money for purchasing books that he’s likely to read more than once (and that will take him longer than an hour to read, too). These are the suggested house rules for everyone, actually.

So we hauled off to the library one recent weekend morning and picked up a pile of paperbacks for him. While scanning the shelves I found a craptastic series called Beast Quest. You know the kind — there are 8 bazillion books in the series and they’ve all been published in the past year and their names are all formatted like so: <Crazy Fake Mythological-sounding Name> the <Weather/Elemental Attribute or Scary Thing> <Kind of Beast>. Plus cheesy cover art.

Well, he ripped through Zepha the Monster Squid in like 2 days, and similarly Tartok the Ice Beast (who is, apparently, a girl, I’ll have you know). These were middle books in the series so I requested the first 3 from the library. But then I started to feel bad that he’d have to wait for them, and yesterday was his birthday, so I headed out on my lunch hour on Monday + bought them for him.

And I have to say, they do work like magic. He’s been most excited about his new Nintendo DS, but he did pick up Ferno the Fire Dragon (Beast Quest book 1) today. I probably have about a week, tops, to order up books 4 through 8 bazillion from the library, so I’d better get on that.