Good-Bye Seven

Happy Birthday SJ - Goodbye SevenRemember when your birthday was your favorite day of the year? You looked forward to it all year around. You wanted to be older.  You wanted to be bigger. You just wanted.

Today is SJ’s birthday. My youngest son is now 8-years old. He’s thrilled.

I’m not.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently. He and his wife have triplets. Their children are in 11th grade. Anyway, we were walking along, and I didn’t notice his children. Part of his response was, “Don’t worry. Some day you’ll be able to walk away or go out and not have to worry about your children.”

“I’m not in a rush,” I said.

In fact, I’m going to miss seven.

Continue reading

Why Can’t I Spell Receive?

RecieveSomething is amok. I can’t think of any other way to describe it. I can’t spell receive.

Yes, I know the ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ rule. Any person who makes it past third grade knows the rule. Not only do I know that rule, but I’m actually a good speller. Really.

Or at least I was. I’d like to blame spell check. Striving to be a good speller these days is almost as useful as learning Latin. It’s true. Think about it – spelling properly is passé when texting or on Twitter. Who has time for all those letters?  And even if you do actually care about spelling properly – you dinosaur you – there’s always the red squiggly line to indicate when you made an error. G-d bless computers. So, really maybe spelling is over rated.

Continue reading

Bringing Harry Potter to Life

Harry Potter book“A book is waiting to be read. When you open that book, you give it life. Let it live. It wants to live,” I often advised my students. Yes, I know books are inanimate, lifeless.  They are simply words on pages (or Kindles or Nooks or other e-readers, but that’s not the point) bound together. Lifeless.

But books don’t have to be lifeless.  They can lead you anywhere and to anything. Books can take us on journeys, teach us lessons, foster our imaginations, help us to appreciate others, and so much more.

Yes, books serve as our travel agents to anywhere and can leave us laughing, crying or both along the way.

But for a book to live, it needs to be opened.

Continue reading