Music to Learn By

It's been 35 years since my eighth grade English class, but I still remember the following little ditty we were required to memorize:

Am, is, are, was, were
Be, being, been
Have, has, had
Do, does, did
Shall, will
Should, would
May, might, must
Can, could.

Our teacher, the much loved, much feared, master of the eighth grade advanced English classroom, would bang out the beat with the flat of his hand on a metal filing cabinet while we all recited these "helping" or "auxiliary" verbs.  We memorized poetry in his class as well, but I only remember the first few stanzas of "The Highwayman" (which we recited with hand motions to signify where the French cocked-hat and bunch of lace were located) and "Paul Revere's Ride," while I've retained this list of words and likely will remember it until I die.

My mother became a substitute teacher at my junior high school when I went to college, and once when I was home visiting she decided it would be funny if I came over to the school and recited "Am Is Are Was Were" for my former teacher.  I humored her, and I was glad I did.  He truly seemed touched that one of his students had retained this tidbit of knowledge for what was then only about ten years after leaving his class. 

If only he were still alive today to witness the conversation on Facebook among many of my former classmates, all of whom,
amazingly, still remember this verse 35 years later.

Although this little poem wasn't set to music, the almost magical way in which we all managed to remember it got me to thinking about the value of lyrical repetition in the experience of learning.  It can't be accidental that one of the first songs we learn as English speakers in America is the ABC song.  My three year old can sing it, even though he can't identify all the letters in the alphabet yet.  When we read an ABC book together, I try to show him how he can propel himself from a letter he recognizes to the next one he doesn't by singing the song.  (An aside:  I'm still amused by the musical identity of ABC, Twinkle, Twinkle, and Baa Baa Black Sheep, which a childless, gay male friend of mine pointed out to me about ten years ago.  If I'd been a mom by then I would doubtless not have missed the connection, since Sesame Street has put all three of them together in the "Alpha Baa Baa Twinkle Song," a preschool favorite.)  As an adult, I took a beginning Hebrew class and my instructor taught us a Hebrew equivalent of the ABC song.  It appears that other alphabets have been set to music as well.  Here's a Russian alphabet song, a Chinese one, an Arabic one, a Thai one, a Japanese one, a Hindi one, a Greek one and even a Yiddish one (sung by a guy in a Spiderman costume and a ushanka -- take that, Debbie Friedman!).

Though I can't say they're part of my repertoire, I found a number of songs on the Internet designed to help remember long lists, such as all the states in the United States, the US Presidents, and the books of the Christian Bible.   And though I'm thinking Tom Lehrer had humor rather than pedagogy in mind when he wrote The Elements, it's out there now on school sites and chemistry blogs for the hard core. 

The success of such songs has not been lost on the business of education.  I found a site for a business devoted to peddling geography lists set to music.  Their slogan:  "You never forget what you sing."  I have to agree -- though the tunes have to be catchy, the lyrics clever, and the main ideas distillable into memorable bites.  I'm not so sure the geography list songs do any of this, though to be fair I haven't listened to anything more than the short samples at the site. I also wonder how successful some of these other  "long list" songs really are at aiding memorization.  Though I only remember "The Highwayman" through "plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair" I remember the whole of "Jabborwocky," another poem we learned in eighth grade English which was (1) much shorter than the others we had to memorize, and (2) the subject of a song in the Disney film, Alice in Wonderland, by means of which I'd already learned the first and last stanzas (which are identical) when I was about seven through repetitive listening to the soundtrack album.  It had a catchy, clever tune in addition to being short.

Catchy and clever songs with focused sound bites definitely stick with.  Potentially forever.  To this day, if I'm called upon to write the word "encyclopedia" I hear Jiminy Cricket singing "Ennn - Cyclopedia, E-N-C-Y-C-L-O-P-E-D-I-A" in my head; it's how I learned to spell the word in the first place.  I'll never forget the Twelve Tribes of Israel, thanks to the "Jacob and Sons" song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat or the Girl Scout Laws in effect when I was scouting, thanks to a song that I can only find a Girl Guides version of on the web (it was sung to the tune of something that is some college somewhere's school song; my mother knew which one, but I wasn't able to find out which as I'm sadly remiss when it comes to searching for tunes by googling).

Then there are the songs that are more conceptual, like the old School House Rock titles.  "Conjunction Junction," in case you don't remember or hadn't guessed, teaches the grammatical function of conjunctions, and "I'm Just a Bill" teaches how a bill becomes a federal law in the United States.  It's a testament to these songs that at least the choruses stuck with me, and so did the general idea of the chatty parts, even though I didn't have a recording of them and so couldn't listen to them repeatedly.

But the songs I'll remember forever and that I really learned from -- I mean, sitting-in-a-test-singing-to-myself-to-remember-how-to-answer learned from -- are in a class by themselves.  These are from the late 1950s/early 1960s recordings known as the Singing Science Records, which I just can't say enough good things about.

I inherited these records from the three girls who lived across the street (I had all the titles except Experiment Songs, the weakest of the bunch; though at one point one of the girls asked for Space Songs back so now, forty years later, I only have four on vinyl).  I was delighted to find that someone has preserved these long-out-of-print gems on the web.  It saved me the trouble of having to digitize these treasures among children's educational records myself, so my kids could listen to them in the car.  These records were in no small part responsible for one of my earliest ambitions (as an eight-to-12 year old) to be a meteorologist, and the knowledge I gained from repeatedly playing them until I feared I'd wear the grooves out served me well in every introductory science class I ever took.

I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it's true.  I'll never know which was more instrumental in getting me As:  the basic knowledge from the songs, or the fact that having the basic knowledge from the songs already, I could focus my efforts on learning more advanced concepts.  These songs cover pretty sophisticated topics for their target elementary school audience.  Weather Songs, for example, is worth the price of admission just for the three songs, "The Water Cycle Song," "How Clouds are Formed" and "Stratus and Cumulus," which build upon each other nicely and together explain and help kids identify the basic cloud formations through catchy, very sticky, tunes, and lyrics that hone in on fundamental concepts and use rudimentary scientific terminology to convey them.

I could easily identify by name stratus, cumulus, cirrus, and nimbus clouds and their variants (e.g. strato-cumulus, cumulo-nimus, cirro-stratus) by the time I was around nine, largely because of these songs.  Years later, in college, I took an introductory physical geography course taught by a climatologist.  You guessed it:  we had to know the nomenclature of cloud formations, and I'd already known it and committed it to long term memory through the medium of music years before. 

Though as Jef's site indicates, these records are very "atomic age" in their orientation, the basic science hasn't changed a whole hell of a lot.  Sure, there have been advances in physics and other sciences since these songs were written.  But though I'm no expert, I'd guess the basic physics concepts in "Kinetic and Potential Energy" (which I sang to myself during a test in junior high science to help answer some of the questions), "Jets" and "What is Chemical Energy" are just as valid today as they were then.  Perhaps, were the Singing Science Records to be recorded today, we'd have songs about string theory, too.

Indeed, some of the material is surprisingly timely.  If you want to teach a kid about why global warming is happening, there's a song called "What Does the Glass of a Greenhouse Do" that will accomplish just that (though you'll need to fill in a few blanks after "warm up the earth on cold, cold days").  The messages of the Nature Songs and More Nature Songs albums are decidedly ecological.  I teared up the other day while listening to "The Conservation Song," and it's exhortation to "study conservation, and practice conservation, there's no doubt that it will keep our nation strong" -- it made me realize that this message has been around for my entire lifetime (and before) and we're still, as a nation, struggling with this fundamental truth.

  
Another song that never fails to make me tear up is "The Balance of Nature," and its message that the natural world hangs in a delicate balance that can all too easily be upset ("the balance of nature should be understood; if the balance of nature is ever unbalanced, whatever will happen will not be good").  This is an excellent jumping off point for discussion of rainforests, which were, interestingly, part of my older son's pre-K curriculum.  It also aids discussion of the ecological impact of natural disasters, and as well helping to discuss some of the things that puzzle and terrify young kids.  Like, "why are there bugs?"  And, "why do the bugs have to get eaten by birds?"  Or, "Why do lions eat zebras?"  For the next part, "I don't want the zebras to die," you'll need to improvise a bit.

Nature Songs' "What is an Insect?" teaches that insects all have six legs, antennae, and three parts to their bodies.  "What is a Mammal?" does the same for the mammalian world with a drumbeat that gets the warm-blooded among us ready to pound along :  "Why anyone can tell you what a mammal is, anyone who understands:  they're warm blooded, have hair on their bodies, and suckle their young from mammary glands."  Good for the multiple choice quizzes to come down the road, and entertaining to have your grade schooler sing to uptight dinner guests to see who snickers at the mammary glands line.  Though now that I'm a parent rather than an adult with a memory of being called upon to perform this song to an assembled dinner table crowd as a child, the snickering could simply be because of the undeniable cuteness factor that comes with small children using big words -- particularly those that they obviously understand.

Though my kids are a lot younger than I was when I first started listening to these records, I've already found opportunities to introduce them and make them relevant.  "What is an Animal" and "What are the Parts of a Tree" have already come in useful, as the newly-minted kindergartener is currently studying trees and plants in school.

When I think about the use of meter and rhyme with or without melody for educational purposes, the Singing Science Records will always be the gold standard.  You can still find copies occasionally, at alibris.com or on ebay, so keep looking.  I commend them to you, with love, and with more than a little awe for the lasting role they played in my educational life.

**Morgana**

Morgie's Ten Weight Loss Truths

I have been a normal weight for most of my life thus far. At various times, I might have been ten to fifteen pounds above or below my set point, but I was never in the overweight category or even near it. If I wanted to slim down a bit, it was easy to do. I just went to Weight Watchers for a couple of months and once I was paying attention and working out, the weight dropped.

When I hit my late thirties/early forties, things changed.  Without getting into the personal details, I lost three people who were very significant in my life in the space of about four years, became depressed, recovered, had two kids.  By the beginning of the 21st century, I found myself up about 50 pounds and unable to lose the weight.  Until now.

I felt I’d tried everything, but in truth, I hadn’t. It took some experimentation to find a formula that worked for me, but it appears that at last I have. By combining elements of three different programs and 50-90 minutes of exercise a day, I appear to have hit a sweet spot.  Since July I have been losing weight at the rate of about one to two pounds per week. 

Though I've still got work to do, I feel confident for the first time that I can get there.  Confident enough to offer ten basic truths about my experience. If they sound harsh, it’s because they are. I believe it's because I have accepted them as truths and am working with them instead of fighting against them that I have the right mind set to succeed.

Before I start, let me say my only association with the programs and products mentioned is that I tried them at one time or another.  Indeed, I have no credentials as an expert in this field, and no connection to the weight loss, nutrition or fitness industry, other than as a participant.  So why should you listen to me?  No reason at all, other than that I've been there.  And perhaps that those who are credentialed have a vested interest in making everything seem easy, quick and painless.  I am here to tell you that weight loss is none of those things.  The one thing it is, though, is worth the difficulty, time and pain.

Here are my ten truths.

It is hard.

Just look at the numbers on the obese nation the United States has become. If it was easy, everyone would be thin and healthy. Realize that anything that suggests otherwise is either snake oil or ignorance. Don’t spend money on anything that promises easy weight loss. It’s throwing your cash away. (If you are just dying to throw your cash away, I have a PayPal account that will gladly accept it.)

It takes a long time.

There is no quick fix. It is much harder to lose than to gain. I can gain ten pounds in a day or two, but it takes me a good six weeks of hard work and sacrifice to lose that much. At the risk of stating the obvious, how long it takes depends on how much you have to lose. In my case, I found that after I lost the first 20 pounds, the weight loss sped up a bit. I have no idea why. Perhaps I just became better at the process, perhaps my metabolism got revved up a bit, perhaps a combination, perhaps none of the above. But it is still a long process, unless you can leave your job, your family, and your life to go focus on only weight loss for months and months. Even then, it will take months and months.  Maybe even years and years.  That money you were going to spend on something that promises quick weight loss?  PayPal.

It hurts.

You will be hungry, even to the point of nausea. You will have headaches. You will have sore muscles and painful joints. You will feel psychologically beaten up, deprived, and angry. In my experience, any diet or “lifestyle change” that assures you none of these things will happen isn’t going to work. What does work is acknowledging the pain and pushing through it.

One day, I decided not to eat when I was hungry to the point of nausea, just to see what would happen. It wasn’t time for me to eat, and if I did I’d be in trouble with my Weight Watchers points for the rest of the day. Guess what? It got worse and I felt crappy. But I didn’t throw up, and after about half an hour the feeling passed and I just felt "normal" hunger again. (It took me two years to get the guts even to try this because I have a phobia about vomiting.) After about two weeks of pushing through the nausea-inducing hunger, I stopped getting extremely hungry except when I’m really late for a meal or snack. Or premenstrual.  And then, it is "normal" hunger.

Another example. About a month ago, I went out to eat with my family and another family. The mom, who is one of my closest friends in California, is tall and thin, and though I don't know for sure, I gather she has never been overweight. She ordered deep fried onion rings among other things I would have loved to eat. She does this a lot. Chocolate Belgian waffle at brunch, mud pie type dessert at dinner.  (Of course, I only noticed this when I stopped doing it myself.)  I ordered a salad with chicken breast (and immediately cut the block of feta that came with it in half and discarded half to avoid overeating). She then proceeded to say she thought that a lot of people on The Biggest Loser intentionally gained weight to go on the show, and how she thought she could gain and lose 100 pounds pretty easily, though gaining would be hard.

Despite the fact that she’s one of my closest friends and I know she didn’t mean to push my buttons, I got pissed and snapped something ridiculous like "do you have proof of that?" at her, though it didn't seem ridiculous at the time.  There she was eating her deep fried food and talking about how hard it would be to gain weight and how easy to lose it, while I was being virtuous and suffering. Plus, if she’d ever been obese, she would know that the last thing someone who is obese wants to do is gain.  If you can't take off the weight you already have, it's not going to seem a good idea to try to take off even more. Particularly with $250K at stake. I mean, maybe it does happen.  I have no idea.  But my guess is not so much, unless the entire show is reality in name only and hires actor-poseurs to play the contestants.

In any case, my point is that even silly discussions with your closest friends can hit a sore spot when you're vulnerable from the weeks of hard work, soreness, and deprivation.  I had to acknowledge that it was sheer envy over those damn onion rings and that she doesn't have a weight problem that got a hold of me there for a minute in my weakened state.  I pushed through it, and come out the other side with the realization that it was my problem, not hers -- and feeling pretty ashamed about the whole thing.

It is not a panacea.

The man who doesn’t love you won’t start loving you just because you lost weight (and if he does, he’s a dick). If your nose was too big to start with, losing weight won’t make it small. It might even look bigger now that your face is thinner. You will still have stresses and obstacles in your life, and you’ll still have to deal with them. And if you don’t have some basic self esteem already, losing weight won’t give it to you.

Don’t get me wrong. Losing weight improves health and well-being, enables you to wear nicer clothes and look better in them, and avoids institutional discrimination and interpersonal nastiness based on weight. It removes one reason to be unhappy, and the better health, well-being and appearance that result can all help build self-confidence. There are a lot of great reasons to do it. But it won’t solve all your problems, and, by itself, losing weight will not make you happy. So don’t think it will.

It requires more exercise than you’ve been led to believe.

Seems like every time I turn around there’s a new headline about how little exercise you can get away with and still get health benefits.  I believed the ones that said you only needed about 30 minutes a day to lose weight.  But my body doesn’t see results on that amount of exercise. My body needs to exercise for at least 50 minutes a day to see results. If I don’t see results, I am not motivated to continue. In the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.   I now feel vindicated, because apparently that moderate exercise recommendation has been re-thunk.  It turns out you need to exercise more than you've been led to believe.

Also, you will need to sweat. Your exercise will have to be intense, not comfortable. Comfortable doesn’t make visible changes in your body, and after a point, it doesn’t increase your fitness level either. You must pant, you must push, you must groan. No pain, no gain. Truly.

Finally, if like me you’re not an exercise addict, you will need to find a motivator. I like weight loss television and Internet sites for this lately, but magazines and books can be great as well. And you will need to get to know yourself pretty well. I know that if I don’t exercise for more than one day, it is exponentially harder for me to get out there on day three. So I have been trying to avoid more than a day without getting to the gym or out for a run. On those days, I try to walk 10,000 steps, even if it takes doing donuts around the house to top off the pedometer at the end of the day. Then I can tell myself I exercised, and I keep my motivation up.

It requires more willpower than you've been led to believe.

I’ve tried a lot of different diets, and what drives me nuts about a lot of them, even the sensible ones like Weight Watchers, is the propaganda that goes something like this: you can eat your favorite foods! You can eat our delicious low calorie [fill in the brand name here] ice cream treats! You can eat as much as you want of X, Y or Z! You’ll feel full and satisfied and willpower will be taken out of the equation!

Bollocks. No, I can’t eat my favorite foods. If I do indulge in the miniscule portion that is permitted, even if I eat it so slowly that it ends up being over a period of three hours, I will not be satisfied. It will merely whet my appetite and I’ll want to eat until it's gone, and then eat some more. And why in the world would I want to waste my calories on diet sweets that don’t taste nearly as good as they look? What’s the point? Eating as much as you want of anything is just a bad idea. It perpetuates the main problem most of us have, which is an inability to control portion sizes.

If you’re going to indulge, you will need to be able to stop and it will take a strong will to do so. There is no magic formula of other things you’re supposed to eat, drinking water, exercising first, that will make this easy.  If you have that sort of willpower, more (will)power to you. If you are like me, it takes about all the willpower you can muster just not to start down that path in the first place.

I anticipate that when I reach my goal, I will splurge from time to time. But for me, it is a derailment waiting to happen if I try to do this while I’m losing.

Yes, I’m going to be hungry, not full and satisfied a fair amount of the time. See truth three above.  I have to believe, though, that it is worth it.

It takes experimenting and willingness to try something different if what you’re doing is not working.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of plans, supplements, drugs and other things I’ve tried: Body for Life, The South Beach Diet, Weight Watchers, The Road Back, Hoodia, Phentermine, Buns of Steel, Leptin Diet, Serotonin Power Diet. I even went to a couple of hospital-run programs designed to help with weight loss.  I learned some things in the process.

For me, low carb, high protein diets only work to a point. I can drop about fifteen pounds, but then I stall, mainly because I can't continue to lose eating the portions I'm eating, but I can't eat less because eating is the only thing that gives me energy.  I feel fatigued, and it makes working out unappealing.

Hoodia did nothing for me.  Phentermine enabled me to lose about twelve pounds without much effort, but it made me feel agitated, made my heart race, gave me insomnia, and sapped my energy. While I was taking it, there were times when I honestly thought I was going to die.  After a while, my body became immune to it and the weight loss stopped.  When I went off of it after about six months, I felt I’d been given a new lease on life.

What works for me has three parts to it.  First, I must eat a low fat diet with “good” carbs from grains, and a moderate amount of protein from sources other than dairy sources.  Second, I must control my portions.  Third, large quantities of fish oil tablets on a daily basis, CLA and vitamins seem to help, along with the aforementioned 50-90 minutes of exercise most days. I eat small amounts of fruit (one serving a day) and milk (about the same, unless you count what I put in my coffee or a tablespoon of parmesan cheese at dinner) and large amounts of vegetables. I do use real butter, but I only use a tablespoon a day at the most.

I track my food consumption religiously with the following exceptions: I don’t count the nonfat milk I put in my coffee, or the occasional bite of dessert or interesting looking snack one of the kids is having (more than a single bite and I’m past my willpower limit). I do still drink alcohol, but only wine (which is mostly what I drank before anyway) and no more than two glasses on the days I do drink, which is at most a couple of times a week these days if we go out to eat, and once in a blue moon if we don’t. I count the calories in the alcohol  toward my daily total. I do still drink Diet Coke; my consumption has even gone up. I'd probably be better off without it, but for now it doesn't seem to be impeding progress.

What works for me may not work for you. Again, it’s about finding that sweet spot. Just because the solution your best friend swears by makes you feel like crap does not mean you can’t find something that works. I'd stay away from things that promise results that seem too good to be true (if they do, they are), or involve primarily eating strange supplements, eating only a single type of food, eating in strange combinations or at strange times, drinking instead of eating, or avoiding a list of foods. All of these might as well be voodoo because they’re about as effective.

It must be a priority.

Weight loss this time around has been like a third job for me. I have the job that pays the bills, the job that raises children, and the job that loses weight.

It’s not just the time it takes to exercise. It’s the time it takes to go grocery shopping, which I hate. It’s the time it takes to cook, which I like sometimes, particularly if it is a social event.  But not if I feel it is required of me as a daily chore. It’s the time it takes to keep a food and exercise journal, and to pack up your gym bag to take to the office. It’s the time it takes to go to physical therapy when your knee starts to bother you from increasing your training. That doesn't leave a lot of time for hobbies, so I hope you aren't addicted to needlepoint.

It is scary.

I never had the classic weight loss worry, that I'd receive unwanted sexual attention.  It was never a problem when I was young and thin, unfortunately.  Now that I'm in my forties... well, let's just say "unwanted" doesn't really work in that sentence. I can't imagine anything more uplifting than feeling admired for the way I look.

My fears tend more toward the hypochondria spectrum.  They go like this:  "I’m losing weight. Me? But I couldn’t before. Something must be wrong.  That colleague of mine who died from pancreatic cancer lost weight.  A lot of weight.  Maybe I have cancer?"  Um, you’re dieting and exercising like a maniac, fool. Get over yourself.  Whatever your personal proclivities, it can be scary to lose weight.

There will be obstacles, frustrations and setbacks.  But in the end, it will be worth it.

My official weigh-in day for the week is Monday, and lately I've been noticing that I drop a pound or more about two days after I weigh in.  I briefly considered changing my weigh-in day, but then I had a vision of the drop showing up two days later anyway and myself endlessly chasing a better weigh-in around the calendar.  My point is that you may not lose every week, or as much as you want to every week.  I've had a couple of weeks where I stayed the same. Fortunately this time I haven't had any gains so far, but I know it can happen.

Something as normal as getting invited to a friend's for dinner, or having an all day meeting at work where they bring in food can seem like an obstacle to success.  Holidays, busy days, days where you just didn't plan it right and didn't get your workout in until it was late and you were too tired to do it -- these happen. 

My plan is to do the best I can without giving in entirely.  At a restaurant, I order the healthiest thing I can find, then cut the whole thing in half anyway.  I have the server pack up half for me to take home before I even start eating so I don't see it on or near my plate.  If I'm tired and the choice is between cooking in and eating out and I have food in the fridge, I pick cooking in then go to bed a little earlier than I would otherwise.  If I don't have time to do weights and aerobics back-to-back on my strength training days, I do the weights and come back to the aerobics later when I have more time.  If I'm at a function and I'm served something inconsistent with my diet, I try to eat just the parts that are consistent.  And if I eat at the high end of my calorie range one day, I try to eat at the low end the next.

The biggest obstacle I will have to face is maintenance.  By then the novelty of the diet and exercise will have worn off and I know I'll be wanting a cheeseburger and chocolate lava cake.  The positive reinforcement of the continued losses will be gone, and I'll have to figure out how to get jazzed by something as undramatic as not gaining. 

Then again, I'll have my old self back, and seeing her in the mirror again ought to be reinforcement enough.

**Morgana**

"When I Was a Kid, We Didn't Have [Insert Noun of Choice] Like That..."

Since the day after last Halloween, my children have been expressing their costume preferences for this year which seem to change on a weekly basis.  My stock response has been straight from my mother's own annals: "If you still want to be a [insert noun of the week] when Halloween comes, we'll see if we can find a [insert noun of the week again] costume for you.  Halloween is a long way away yet and you may change your mind."  A few weeks ago, when the Halloween specialty stores started popping up and you could no longer walk into a drug or grocery store without bumping into entire aisles colored orange and black, my kids were no longer buying it.  The five-year-old in particular gave me a look that said, "Just because you're in denial about the speed with which the second half of your life is rushing by and scared of confronting your own mortality doesn't mean Halloween isn't here, dammit."  Ok, maybe I'm projecting just a little.  (But only just a little; if you'd seen the look, you'd know.)

So soon we'll be looking for a lion costume and an as yet undecided second costume (the three-year-old is still waffling).  Last year we had a Dark Knight Batman and a Darth Vader.  Here's Darth:

What amazes me about kids' costumes these days is how much nicer they are than when I was growing up.  Look at the detail on that helmet.  It's a sturdy, hard plastic, a far cry from the mystery material that seemed to be part cardboard/part nylon they made Halloween masks out of in my youth.  And though you can't see it in the photo above, you can see from the catalogue photo that the costume is a soft, comfortable jump suit that at least makes an attempt at verisimilitude with a graphic of colored buttons to resemble Darth's blinking-lighted bodice, a belt and a cape.  Light saber not included, but available separately. 

When I was a kid, unless your mother could sew (mine couldn't) or you were old enough to create your own costume out of your various family members' closets and your mother's make-up case, costumes came in cheesy, flimsy cardboard boxes with clear cellophane windows on the front.  They consisted of the aforementioned mask and some odd smock thing made out of what I remember as scratchy nylon burlap.  They were also just plain bizarre.  More often than not, they had a picture of the thing you were supposed to be on the front of the costume.  So if you were a witch, you'd have a picture of a witch on your chest.  Take a look at this retro costumes site to see what I mean.  I remember as a child questioning this odd, post-modern-without-knowing-it design choice.  Even a seven year old knows Mickey Mouse doesn't wear a picture of himself.  Costumes have definitely come a long way. 

Once I started thinking about the differences in costumes, I naturally (for me anyway) meandered to thinking about other things that kids now take for granted that I would have loved to have growing up.  Videos and DVDs!  Imagine getting to see The Wizard of Oz any time you want, not just when it rolls around once a year on network television!  Computers!  The other day, the five-year-old saw me surfing away and asked whether I liked to play with computers when I was his age.  Now I know how my mother felt when she had to explain they didn't have television when she was growing up.  (Way to help me avoid confronting that mortality issue, thanks.)  He also saw me taking an LP out of a sleeve and asked "What kind of CD is that?" which was doubly amusing to me as a friend had told me long ago her son referred to record albums as "big CDs."

I do think that my life would have been much different if computers had been around during my childhood.  As an only child, I spent a lot of time lonely and bored.  There were only so many hours a day you could read books, watch reruns, swim, or hit tennis balls against the side of the house during summers when school was out and when your best friends were all on the road with their families.  Something as interactive and absorbing as, oh say, a graphic adventure or computer RPG would have made a lot of difference.  I suspect some of my tendency to become absorbed in computer games even now is just back-filling against those years.

There are also things they just don't make any more for which I am nostalgic and would love to share with my kids.  Whenever we visited my grandparents in Brooklyn, my dad would take me down to the corner store and buy me a Pensy Pinky or two.  We'd take them over to the park down the street and play handball.  Actually, he'd play handball and I'd try to keep up.  Another example:  Astonishingly, my mother bought a Sixfinger when I was about four.  I would find pieces of it in odd places for years afterwards.  She was pretty much opposed to toy guns (though in later years I had a cowboy set, a popgun and various water pistols), but I am sure she got the Sixfinger because she thought it was funny.  Her sense of humor ranged from extremely sophisticated to utterly silly.

Some of the things we 60s and 70s kids played with are still around, though the packaging has changed.  For a bit of fun, take a look at the Barbie case and the Playdoh. I had a similar Barbie case; I still have it in the garage somewhere.  It seems so innocent and simple compared to the ones available today when having 15 dolls to store is apparently common enough to warrant such a device, and when Barbie has her own web site.  A modelling clay purist, I only just tolerated Playdoh as a child and still find the smell revolting.

I have a feeling there is more to be said on this topic another time, but for now I'll leave you with the observation that the one thing that hasn't seemed to change that much is toy advertising.  The toys always look so much more fun than they turn out to be.  I also chuckled at the boxtop reference in that video -- I made one to a twenty-something WoW guildmate and was met with the online equivalent of a blank stare...

**Morgana**

Hiatus Interruptus

My abrupt disappearance from the blogosphere for almost a year can't fairly be blamed entirely on the repair of my home network last winter, which gave me access to World of Warcraft on my sadly outdated gaming rig. Although I descended into Northrend for a good six months, long enough to get Unchychunch, my shaman, capable of dps high enough not to drag others down in Naxx and to off a few bosses in each of its wings, long about May I bit the bullet and joined Facebook, yet another online time sink (at least until the novelty wears off).

Around the same time, work went through an out of control period of intensity until around mid-July. By the time that was over, I looked back, as I often have, at my most recent gaming spate with a feeling somewhere between fascination and disgust at how completely my non-work life had come to revolve around WoW. There was no withdrawal to speak of, so it has been easy not to go back. I don't even really miss it, mostly because I'd started to become disenchanted around the time the fates conspired to take me offline again. I found myself upset more often than not because I couldn't get anything other than a fill-in raiding spot. The majority of my then-guild appeared to live in the Central or Eastern time zones but to have chosen a Pacific time zone server for reasons known only to themselves. As a result, they started raiding at 4 or 5 p.m. on weekdays my time, which just didn't work for me. Escapism that is frustrating is no escapism at all, so I escaped from my escapist frustration.

So now, I'm doing things with my "free" time that are no doubt much better for my body and soul. I've combined the nutritional elements of three different weight loss programs into one, tweaked them some, and this, along with approximately an hour of exercise most days, is enabling me to make good on my long overdue resolution to get back to my mid-twenties weight. I'm about halfway to goal, and another fifteen pounds to stretch goal. Along the way, I looked online for inspiration and discovered the screamingly funny writings of Shauna Reid. I also developed a fascination with The Biggest Loser, which my kids call the "watching fat people get skinny show." Though I'm more than 75 pounds too light to qualify, and though I'd rather die than cry about my personal shortcomings and spew my stomach contents from overtraining (or indeed for any reason) in front of millions of people I don't know, I do fantasize about having Jillian Michaels as my personal trainer, psychotherapist and weight loss dominatrix. I'm even toying with the idea of trying to run another marathon on the 21st anniversary of my first and only, but I don't think I can swing the training schedule. If I start now, I might make the 25th anniversary, though.  Here's a memento from my only marathon to date:

On another note, we have a kindergartener in the house and I'm just tickled about it. He came home the other day and explained to me what an ellipsis is. There's something charming about a five-year-old who hasn't yet fully broken the reading code opining on "the three dots that means something is missing." August and September have been full of school-related tasks and commitments; I'm hoping things have settled down for good.

I may be one of the only people in the world who remembers the names of their first school readers, and I'm probably one of even fewer people in the world who have good enough memories of them to track them down on Alibris. Opening Books (cool picture of the inside at this link), A Magic Box, and Things You See (another cool picture) are winging their respective ways to my doorstep and I'm looking forward to cracking them open with my little emergent reader.

That's the nutshell version of how I spent my winter, spring and summer hiatus. There's a ton more to it of course, but even this much is too much for Morgie's Spot. I vowed when I started this thing I'd write about ideas, books, movies, writing, politics, memories, people other than myself, and other topics I find interesting rather than making this a (yawn) personal diary. Just thought I owed an explanation for the rather crevasse-like gap between posts.

**Morgana**

Morgie's Lost Writings

Come on, admit it. You do it too, don't you? I'm convinced that everyone googles themselves at one time or another. I probably do it at least a couple of times a year. I search on Morgana, the handle under which I used to freelance for Computer Games Strategy Plus as well as under which I wrote reviews and walkthrus to upload to the Gamers' Forum on CompuServe. It was also my handle for sysoping in some of the TEG forums on CIS. I also search on Morgie, a short form of that handle someone gave me as a nickname (amusing to have a nickname of a nickname), and of course, I search on my real name in its various permutations.

When I search on Morgana, I'm feeling nostalgic about my hard core gaming days and I can take a bit of a stumble down memory lane as my alter ego lives on in acknowledgements on user created DOOM and Heretic levels here, here, and here, a Gamers' Forum transcript of a conference with Origin around the time Ultima 8: Pagan was about to be released, and the once famous-in-Gamers' Lehua's Myst EndGamers Wall of Honor. Some of my gaming-related writings are still available on the web as well. My walkthru of a 1990s era graphic adventure games, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within from Sierra is available on a couple of web sites, although this appears to be the non-revised version and the original archive had several illustrations that apparently have not been preserved. My solution to the turtle bones puzzle in The Dig, a graphic adventure from LucasArts, is available too. Until recently I was also able to find my walkthru for The Dig on the web. My hint file for getting past the search light puzzle in Noctropolis from Electronic Arts also survived. I had uploaded these only to the CIS Gamers' Forum and I note that none of the sites to which I've linked here ever asked my permission to put these files up, nor did any of the folks who decided to upload them. I would have appreciated the courtesy of a request for permission which is why I put a copyright notice on the files. But I forgive everyone -- for the simple reason that these are now the only copies I can find of these pieces.

It's surprising to me that these are available after all this time and I was lucky to be able to capture copies. When I think back to all the work I put into these, it's nice to know they had some staying power. I did most of my gaming-related writing in or around 1995, and the games I wrote about are the sort that you have to use a program like DOSBOX to run now. The hint files have likely outlasted the useful life of the games, for the most part.

I'd dutifully copied all of my collected gaming works from computer to computer every time I upgraded for years, but I must have made the determination at some point to let my gaming material go. Maybe when I was making a rather half-hearted attempt to become a writer of literary fiction. Maybe when I was pregnant. I can't now recall, but I regret having lost them.

I know it is a long shot, but if anyone out there from the old CIS days or otherwise still has any of my stuff, please drop a line and let me know as I'd love to get copies. I found a hard copy of my review of Merchant Prince, but I am missing: walkthrus of Ripper (this was a huge document as I recall and was uploaded to CompuServe in two archives, I believe it also had accompanying graphics files) and Johnny Mnemonic, and reviews of Dreamweb, Noctropolis, Sim Health (as I recall this one, I did it in play form with the characters being Hillary and Bill Clinton), Millenium Auction, Bad Mojo and Syndicate. If there were others, I'm now not recalling what they were. But I'd love to be reunited with any or all of them, so if you can help please let me know and I'll be your best friend.

Pinky swear.

**Morgana**

Is it Smart to Vote Dumb?

Since when is being smart a bad thing?

To hear the Republicans talk, the last thing we want is someone who is "professorial" or "academic" running the country. Instead, we should have someone who is as average as Joe the Plumber, someone "real" Americans (i.e., not those who do notoriously well in school like the Jews and the Asians) can relate to because he isn't smarter than we are. In fact, he's not too smart at all. And his VP pick is dumber than a post but supposedly someone you'd want to have a beer with. Personally, I'd rather have a beer with someone really bright who would have farther to fall if he or she ended up drunk. Then at least the conversation would still be average, rather than stupid.

As best I can tell, this anti-intellectualism spate seems to dovetail with the general GOP fear-mongering. It can't be that they really think McCain, with his houses and cars and spousal millions isn't "elite." The argument seems to be: at least McCain isn't threatening. We don't have to worry that he'll do something that's too hard for us to understand. That he'll pull a fast one on us because we can't keep up. That he'll trick us, and take advantage of us -- that we have to listen carefully to his words because he's so smart we can be assured he'll choose his carefully and we might be being lied to without even realizing it.

Tell you what. I'm with Jon Stewart on this one. I won't vote for someone for President unless I think he or she is as smart as I am or smarter, or if that's not possible, at least pretty close. Why would doing otherwise be a good idea? Although Forrest Gump and Chauncey Gardner may be able to muddle through and come out on top, why would it make sense in anything other than fiction and satire to take such a risk? We had a President for the last eight years to whom Paul Begala referred as a "high functioning moron" on national television. And look where it got us.

It's unfortunate that people of "average" intelligence aren't as wowed by intellectual brilliance as people of average looks are of exceptional physical beauty. It just isn't valued in the same way, even though it is arguably more important to the survival of the species. By a lot. It's sad and more than a little disturbing to think that being an intellectual, i.e., someone who has a high degree of intelligence and uses it, is something so many people in this country consider a negative.

I admit I may have been in denial about how strong the tradition of anti-intellectualism is in this country, and not only on a political level. I have put Richard Hoftstadter's book on this subject on my reading list; just reading the reviews is enlightening. I've come across in my own career a belief that where you go to school isn't important, that how smart you are isn't important, it's how practical you are and how well you solve problems and interact with people that is important. This seems to me a false dichotomy: either someone is smart and well-educated or a practical thinking problem solver and has people skills, but not both. In reality, it simply serves the purpose of organizations not to have critical thinkers doing that critical thinking thing they do that sets the boat a'rocking, so intellectualism becomes devalued.

I accept that there are many kinds of intelligence and that all have value. A President of the United States requires multiple types of intelligence to be effective. It's rare, though, in my experience, to find an exceptionally smart and well educated-person who, on balance, doesn't have better ability to think practically and to solve problems than someone who isn't smart and well-educated. I also think a curious, open mind is more likely to be an understanding and empathetic mind. Since the President's job is to represent all of the people, not just those who voted for him or her, understanding and empathy should not be underestimated.

It's no wonder that public education in this country is in a shambles when our leaders don't value intellectualism. If Obama wins, at least there's a hope that being smart will be cool.

And I'll go out and buy some new shades.

**Morgana**

Was Dorothy a Slytherin?

From about midway through my first pregnancy until a few months ago, a period of nearly five years, I read almost nothing unrelated to work unless it involved pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding or child care. This was extremely unusual for me. My first choice for pleasure reading is generally literary fiction or nonfiction involving theoretical or abstract concepts. But I found myself unable to concentrate enough to lose myself appropriately in a novel, and unable to wrap my brain around anything requiring thinking in abstractions. At first I attributed this to preoccupation with the pregnancy, then to hormones, and finally, after the first birth and even more after the second, to sheer exhaustion. When it continued to my youngest's second birthday, I wondered whether having babies had permanently damaged my brain. Then one day a few months ago, to my amazement and delight, I discovered that the reading (and thinking) ability I thought had been lost had all come back and actually seemed even sharper than before. Perhaps it's true that "mommy brain" is actually a good thing.

During those lean reading years, the one exception was the Harry Potter series. I hadn't read these books, though of course, since I don't live under a rock, I'd heard about them. I have adult reader friends who loved them, and whose opinions I generally respect though they have different tastes. Most are genre fiction readers, mysteries or science fiction. With a few exceptions in the fantasy realm, that isn't really my thing. But I thought the books would be easy reads and I couldn't read anything else, so I picked the first one up in 2005 around the time Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out. I read the entire series through Half-Blood Prince, becoming something of a fan in the process. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, I read it pretty much in a couple of sittings, then I started the series over and read the whole thing again. And then I read it a third time. I probably would have read it a fourth time had I not discovered His Dark Materials when I was looking for a movie to watch on pay per view and ended up with The Golden Compass. (I found the movie unintelligible having no knowledge of the books, but was intrigued, read the books, and found them so interesting I ended up, after discovering my reading ability had returned, wanting to learn about the science underlying the fiction. Hence my recent readings in cosmology, astronomy and physics.)

Let me be clear. I'm not saying Harry Potter is great literature. But I still enjoyed it, and it hit the spot when I couldn't concentrate on anything that left too much unsaid. I could even find things to enjoy in the writing. I remember saying "Wow" aloud when I finished reading the confrontation scene between Harry and Voldemort in The Goblet of Fire. And the light-speed pacing of the Battle of Hogwarts scene seemed exactly right. (I also remember cringing every time a character was embarrassed. It seems Rowling could only show this through the character turning red, pink, blushing, or some other version of color flooding to their cheeks, and it often seemed this was happening every other page or so.)

Harry Potter has been criticized for, among other things, being derivative, and it's fairly hard to miss the debt the series owes to other epic fantasy tales of good versus evil. They're apparent at the highest level, as well as in the detail. At a 3000 foot level, the plot of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the Star Wars movies and Harry Potter can all be summarized as: an orphaned (seemingly or truly) anti-hero (Frodo, Luke, Harry) is thrust into a situation in which he becomes the world’s redeemer from ultimate evil (Sauron, the Emperor, Voldemort), coached by an aged and powerful sage (Gandalf, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Yoda, Dumbledore). At ground level, just as one example, the One Ring of Tolkien's trilogy and Slytherin’s locket-as-horcrux both cause negative personality changes in the wearer, are physical burdens far greater than their size, and display human-like willfulness.

But then, I challenge anyone to find a wholly original story anywhere. Being derivative, in and of itself, isn't something that should necessarily equate with bad. To my mind, a lot depends on how well the derivation is done; whether it offers anything new or just rehashes that which it is derived from, and whether it has any hint of self-awareness when it ventures into derived territory. Clueless is Emma, West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet, and Ulysses is The Odyssey but not because their authors obliviously thought they were the first to tell these stories.

The next time I read Harry Potter, likely when my oldest is old enough to enjoy having them read aloud, I'll try to remind myself to look for nods to its progenitors in the writing. I can say now, though, that I think Harry Potter does offer some new things, one of which was completely unexpected -- a new way of looking at The Wizard of Oz.

As I was reading through Harry Potter the third time, I also happened to be reading The Wizard of Oz to my oldest son. Although I've seen the movie countless times, it must have been thirty years since I'd last read the book. I don't often hear adults talking about rereading Oz the way they'll talk about rereading LOTR, the Narnia series (which I never read as a child and couldn't get into as an adult), or even Le Petit Prince. Either it doesn't compel rereading, or it's not cool to admit to.

Reading Oz again after all that time close on the heels of three jaunts through the Potter books, I identified a few obvious parallels. First, the witches in both stories can travel by disappearing ("disapparating") and reappearing ("reapparating"), and in both stories doing so requires a specific physical action of turning the body in a circle on the spot. Second, both protagonists, Dorothy and Harry, are protected through a "mark" on their foreheads originating in love. Dorothy bears the good witch of the North's kiss; Harry, the scar Voldemort razed into his forehead when Lily took the curse meant for Harry, sacrificing herself out of love for him. Third, the Winkies in Oz are a subjugated people who must do as they are told; Winky in Harry Potter is the name of a house elf, a member of an enslaved race that must obey their masters.

The most interesting of these parallels, however, is the one that casts a rather strange light on Dorothy.

The Mirror of Erised (Erised being "desire" mirrored, or spelled in reverse), central to the plot of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and discussed in later books as well, shows the viewer the deepest desire of his or her heart. The viewer need not be, and generally isn't, aware that this is what the mirror is showing. I thought about the Mirror as I read my son the part where the four companions each have their private audience with Oz the Terrible.

In The Wizard of Oz, Oz appears to each of Dorothy and her companions in a different form that reflects an innermost desire, but with a twist. Each different appearance shows what the next companion to have an audience with Oz most wants to see.

To Dorothy, the wizard appears as a giant head, the Scarecrow’s desire for a head full of brains. To the Scarecrow, who sees Oz next, Oz is a beautiful maiden, obviously the Tin Woodman’s desire for a heart so he can fall back in love with the Munchkin girl he was to marry. To the Tin Woodman, next in line, Oz is a horrible monster, a frightening appearance that evokes the Lions sought-after attribute of courage. And to the Lion, Oz appears as a self-sustaining ball of fire, which evokes Dorothy’s deepest desire, to depart life in Oz and phoenix-like, return from the flames into a new life back in Kansas. Each companion, after getting a debriefing from the one to see Oz immediately before him, expects to see Oz in one of the forms already experienced and is to some extent banking on it. Here's L. Frank Baum's description of what the Tin Woodman is expecting before he goes in to face the monster:

He did not know whether he would find Oz a lovely Lady or a Head, but he hoped it would be the lovely Lady. "For," he said to himself, "if it is the head, I am sure I shall not be given a heart, since a head has no heart of its own and therefore cannot feel for me. But if it is the lovely Lady I shall beg hard for a heart, for all ladies are themselves said to be kindly hearted.

Where it got really interesting was when I realized that each of Dorothy's companions, had they been spirited out of Oz and into Harry's world, fairly could be assumed to have been sorted into a different Hogwarts House based upon their primary character attributes. Each character's associated attribute is the one he mistakenly believes is lacking in himself and coincides with his heart's deepest desire, which he will ask Oz to provide: Scarecrow/Ravenclaw ("Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure"); Tin Woodman/Hufflepuff ("just and loyal"); Lion/Gryffindor (bravery; and by the way, the house emblem is a lion). The only House not represented is Slytherin, known for its cunning and ambition. And for turning out the most dark wizards of any House.

What of Dorothy? Would she have been a Slytherin? I think the answer might be yes.

If Dorothy hadn't been misaligned through a weird literary equivalent of a substitution cipher, she'd have seen Oz as fire; idiomatically, a fire in her belly -- a passion -- an ambition -- in this case to return home to Kansas. It is this ambition that drives her from the moment she lands in Oz, and she shows no end of resourcefulness in its service along the way. She bargains with her companions for their company and the skills they bring to the party by offering to do what she can to get Oz to help them get what they most desire (the lion is welcome to join, for example, because his presence will scare away other wild beasts). Here's what she thinks to herself after listening to the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman debate whether brains or heart are better:

Dorothy did not say anything, for she was puzzled to know which of her two friends was right, and she decided if she could only get back to Kansas and Aunt Em, it did not matter so much whether the Woodman had no brains and the Scarecrow no heart, or each got what he wanted. What worried her most was that the bread was nearly gone, and another meal for herself and Toto would empty the basket. To be sure neither the Woodman nor the Scarecrow ever ate anything, but she was not made of tin nor straw, and could not live unless she was fed.

Not that it's always inexcusable or even selfish to look out for number one. If you're a mom, or even if you've only had one, you can't really blame Narcissa Malfoy for her single-minded focus on saving Draco even if it meant betraying the Dark Lord. Her loyalties are with whoever can help her most, as are those of most Slytherins. Look at all the Death Eaters who gave up on Voldemort and built new alliances after his seemingly inexplicable defeat at the hands (head?) of a one-year-old. Dorothy has the same tendencies. Here's what our heroine thinks after Oz is exposed as a fraud:

Even Dorothy had hope that "The Great and Terrible Humbug," as she called him, would find a way to send her back to Kansas, and if he did she was willing to forgive him everything.

There are many more such examples, but I'm not going to make more of an undergraduate thesis out of this than I already have. Suffice it to say, the case can be made.

This doesn't mean I think Dorothy is evil. She remains one of my favorites from childhood, particularly when she's Judy Garland. But not all Slytherins are evil. Some are just banal. And some, like Severus Snape, are heroes in disguise.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this whole thought experiment for me was wondering whether Jo Rowling had any inkling that she'd thrown this aspect of a classic heroine into relief when she penned her own books. Those of us who've studied literature, and who've sat in creative writing workshops helpless as the living crap is kicked out of our brainchildren, have experienced the weirdness of a reader pointing out something that, uncannily but definitely, is present in the writing -- though not at all part of the conscious creative process. My guess on this one is a big fat goose egg. But isn't it pretty to think so?

**Morgana**