Op-Ed

Coronavirus is a wish your heart makes

By on May 22, 2020   /   COVID-19, Op-Ed  

I have a confession to make.

I went on a series of job interviews, back in December and January. I told the interviewers that what I wanted most was a shorter commute and to be able to spend more time with my family. Now, my entire family is working and learning from home and my commute is a stroll down the hall in my bedroom slippers.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a superhero. I thought it would be cool to walk around town with a mask on. Now, people look at me funny if I’m not wearing a mask. And by washing my hands, staying six feet away from other people, and not leaving the house, I’m helping to save lives. Like Batman, without the gadgets.

I’ve often imagined what it would be like to be an astronaut. Stuck inside a confined space for weeks or months, only venturing outside the vessel for emergencies. Now I know a lot better what that’s like, down to the sensation of not always knowing which way is up.

I’ve often wondered how it would feel to make a YouTube video that looked as polished and professional as a late-night talk show. Now, with talk show hosts broadcasting from their attics, that goal is within reach.

When I was a kid, I used to watch a local PBS show called Zoom. I wanted to be on Zoom back then, and now I can honestly say that I’m on a Zoom broadcast five days a week.

It hasn’t been an entirely pleasant pandemic, but it has made a good half-dozen of my wishes come true. Off the top of my head, two entire magic lamps’ worth of ironic wishes!

I don’t mean to minimize the pandemic. Families around the world are dealing with tragic deaths, prolonged illness, lost jobs, failing businesses, and an uncertain future. It’s all too easy to fall into despair. Which is why, more than ever, we need to stay positive and keep our spirits up. More than ever, we need to look for any silver lining we can find.

Has the pandemic given you more time to read? More time to write? Some interesting experiences? A good excuse to pick up new skills? Game nights with your children? Time to try out some new recipes? Did you spend $19.99 to watch Scooby Doo and Blue Falcon team up against Dick Dastardly and Captain Caveman in a pay-per-view brawl on your own television? On a Saturday morning? With a big bowl of sugary breakfast cereal? Because I can totally recommend that.

And also, more than ever, we need stories. Whether you’re writing stories, reading stories, or placing stories in front of a reader in your life, know that you are doing your part to guide the world back into the light.

What is your wish come true? Leave your silver lining in the comments, and thanks again for all you do.

My Quarantine Thoughts:

From last month, which already seems like a decade ago.

My Quarantine Project, Mythology in Verse:

A poem each week. Well, at least one.

From Mythology in Verse.

My Latest Quarantine Meme:

Because, among their other duties, Artemis and Apollo were gods of plague.

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A B 😉: Emojis and the alphabet

By on October 14, 2019   /   Articles, Op-Ed  

Usually I blog about plot, character, and story, but my thought for today is on the more basic level of letters, sounds, and meanings.

My five-year-old knows phonics and lives in a word-saturated environment. This leads to such frustrations as trying to sound out “CVSPharmacy,” a word that, despite its appearance, begins with an “S” sound and has no “P,” “H,” or “hard C” sounds in it at all. This led her to the revelation that the letter “C” itself starts with an “S” sound, while the letter “S” starts with an “E” sound.

“’S’ should be spelled ‘see’ and ‘E’ should be spelled ‘ess!’”

I then explained that the letter “F” in “farm” is an unvoiced letter “V” that got its shape warped by hanging around with the letter “E,” while the letters “P” and “H” in “pharmacy” are filling in for a letter “Φ” that got left behind in Ancient Greece.

“English is dumb,” she concluded.

“Dumb with a ‘Silent B,’” I agreed. But what else would you expect from a language that developed on an island of Celts who got successively invaded by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Romans, Normans, and Vikings?

The five-year-old is drawn to letters, but she 😍😍😍 emojis. These symbols are colorful, fun, and offer no barriers to a five-year-old’s level of understanding–except perhaps for 💩, which too closely resembles chocolate soft-serve.

Emojis add emotion and emphasis to casual texts, can replace words or entire sentences, and have become a necessary part of functional literacy in the digital age. Importantly, emojis are more accessible and easier to decipher than the rule-breaking glyphs and phenomes of English.

When you think about it, it’s a wonder that anyone ever learns how to read and write in English. It seems almost inconceivable that anyone would opt to learn English as a second language, especially if their native language actually spells things the way they are pronounced.

English is infected with weird idioms and slang, exceptions that swallow every rule, words like sheep and deer that can be both singular and plural, people saying things “literally” when they really mean them “figuratively,” and armed camps that will fight to the death over the Oxford comma.

Emojis, in contrast, offer lower levels of drama:

🐑 = Singular

🐑🐑 = Plural

👍 = Using the Oxford comma

👎 = Deleting the Oxford comma

The traditionalist in me wouldn’t trade the challenge of English for all the emojis in the 🌎. The English toolbox of 26 letters can express every 💡 a human can have. No language is more versatile. Or, if another language’s word offers a nuanced shade of meaning that English doesn’t yet have, English will steal that word.

English wasn’t designed to be versatile and nuanced. English became versatile and nuanced after centuries of borrowing from other languages. Which makes it logical to assume that English will eventually begin incorporating emojis.

As English readers become more comfortable mixing text and symbols on their phones, will we start seeing 🔥 incorporated into more formal communications?

🤹 becoming an expected part of advertising?

⚖️ having a legal meaning in contracts?

❤️ becoming a common name?

How long before 🤣 and ☀️ are included in the dictionary?

Will there be a time when we start teaching emojis in school alongside the alphabet?

Will future Sesame Street episodes be brought to us by 🍉, 🐺, and by the number 7?

💬 your 💭💭in the comments 👇.

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Bookshelves

By on July 25, 2018   /   Articles, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, Op-Ed  

I wasn’t a very good reader as a kid. I struggled. But I loved books. The pages, the pictures, the covers, the smells all enticed the young me even as the words eluded me. I loved going to the library and walking down the aisles of shelves looking at the book spines and the volumes on display.

Eventually, I got the reading help I needed and those shelves became even more magical. I still visit the library and wander up and down the aisles looking at the books on the shelves. I still get the side-eye from librarians when they ask me if I need help. I also get the side-eye from kids in the children’s book section when I scour the bookshelves like an interloper in their world.

The Shelves

Books are magical things.

Bookshelves house that magic. Bookshelves arrange and display the magic, keeping it safe and accessible.

My son recently bought a house and moved out. I took over his old room as my office. My first real office! After the remodeling and painting, I moved in. Desk. Chairs. Rug. Bookshelves!

I can proudly say that I was able to move my book collection from the myriad of shelf spaces around the house to my new bookshelf setup. My wife even found an awesome little companion bookshelf at a garage sale to showcase the special books in my book collection.

Shelves of Power

All this shelf work got me thinking about how the books on our bookshelves say volumes about who we are as readers, writers, and human beings. 

What can our bookshelves tell us about ourselves? Do the contents reflect our personality? Our likes?

How about our goals and dreams?

Pause for a moment and look at the individual books on your bookshelf. Do they bring up a memory of a time or place? Did they teach you something new or how to do something better? 

I have books which have entertained me for years—books I’ve read half a dozen times and discovered something new each time. There are books on the shelf which remind me of family. Some titles I remember being on the limited bookshelf in the house where I grew up. There are the World Book encyclopedias and their companion yearbooks, circa 1971 thru 1987, my parents purchased for us six kids at a great financial sacrifice.

On my bookshelf, there are the books I read to my kids while they sat on my back on the bedroom floor and listened before falling asleep. There’s the complete hardback set of Harry Potter books, with the Goblet of Fire to Deathly Hallows books bought in the pre-dawn hours of their release days. Sports books, coaching books, writing books, classics, science texts, mentor texts, my growing Native American author section, etc. A seemingly random assortment of books in a myriad of subject matter, but books which reflect who I am and/or who I want to be.

  • Memories.
  • History.
  • Knowledge.

A whole life represented. A collection of hopes and dreams. Some of the threads woven into the fabric that has become my middle-grade-leaning writing voice. Each book on the shelf traveling in orbit through my personal universe.

How about your bookshelves?  Do they represent more of who you are or who you want to be? Or a nice mixture of both?

Library Shelves

Take a stroll down the aisle of your local library.

Can you get a picture of who your community is by the books shelved there? Is the personality of the community reflected in the titles on the shelves? Can you get a sense of place by walking the shelves of your local library?

If you have the good fortune to live near or have access to a college or university, have you ever visited its libraries?

From my experiences, I can honestly say they are marvelous places. The main library, the college-specific libraries, and the technical libraries, all work in concert to represent the institution and its mission. Liberal arts, engineering, medicine, agriculture, law, whatever the main focus of the institution is, it’s reflected on the shelves of its libraries.  

Furniture?

To lit-minded folks like us, a bookshelf is more than a mere piece of furniture. Much more.

Bookshelves house our life maps. They act as our compass for when we get lost. They’re our windows to the imagination. They contain magical doors to possibility and potential, knowledge and hope. As I sit here and look a the bookshelf I’ve put together, I’m reminded of the impact those books sitting on those shelves have on the formation of me as a human being. The sofa doesn’t do that. The rocking chair doesn’t. The end table is just an end table. A bookshelf just a piece of furniture? No way!

Please tell us about your favorite bookshelf. Share a photo or share what that particular bookshelf means to you. You can leave your bookshelf love in the comments below or on Twitter. Let’s have some fun with this and tweet your message to @mixedupfiles and hashtag it with #MUFbookshelf.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Read. Write. Repeat.

 

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