Tag Archives: book

still life of odin’s maker table.

still life of odin's maker table.

a few years ago we turned a room in our house into a “maker room”. i suppose in days gone by it might have been called a craft room, but hey, we love the maker culture, hence its name.

as is typical with kids, odin just assumes that everyone has a subscription to make magazine and an entire room dedicated to creating stuff. it amuses us greatly that odin will matter-of-factly tell people that he was doing this or that in “the maker room”. some folks furrow their brows and not have a clue what he’s talking about, but a good number of people are familiar with the emerging maker culture which i guess shouldn’t be so suprising when even the white house is blogging about maker faires and founders of the movement are being honored as whitehouse champions of change.

in any case, we make stuff on a nice, big 7 foot table ( appropriately, it’s made from a door ) and it’s usually as messy as you’d expect a making table to be especially when odin is in the middle of tinkering on a few projects.

i went in the room to find something and loved this “still life” of one small portion of the table with a copy of “How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself” ( first published in 1958! ) and “The Dangerous Book for Boys”, a sheathed knife, an x-acto knife, a cutting mat, bits of paper from various pop-up projects, a pile rubber bands, batteries, , yarn, knitting needles, crochet needles, a crochet project, copper tubing first used to study eddy current braking and now used for who-knows-what and, of course a copy of the latest issue of usa hockey magazine.

Your Desk Job Makes You Fat, Sick and Dead

while there’s no doubt changes in our diets over the past 40 years have contributed to the obesity epidemic, there’s growing evidence that sitting at your sedentary desk job isn’t doing you any favors either ( well, duh! ). the people’s pharmacy also had a recent program with james a. levine MD, PhD, author of “move a little, lose a lot” where they discuss some great tips for counteracting the hazards of sitting all day.

‘Fragile Beginnings’: When Babies Are Born Too Soon

npr ran a story, ‘Fragile Beginnings’: When Babies Are Born Too Soon about a newly published book with the same title written by Dr. Adam Wolfberg which documents his experience of being in neonatal intensive care after his daughter was born at 26 weeks and examines the, “…the struggles, discoveries, and triumphs of the newborn intensive care unit.” it’s amazing how even after almost 8 years i can recall distinctly the emotions of being in a nicu for almost 100 days. i still sometimes think i might write my own book with, of course, with lots of pictures.

day 2581: The Harry Potter Adventures Begin.

day 2581: The Harry Potter Adventures Begin.

it is nearly impossible to escape the harry potter juggernaut and all the moreso when the second of two movies based on the 8th and final installment of the series is now playing in theaters. odin has definitely heard of harry potter and even seen bits and pieces of the earlier movies when we’ve been on vacation and it has happened to be on the television and cousins wanted to watch it. but the movies have always been a bit much for him to take in and i doubt he’s gleaned much beyond the names of the characters and very basic plot elements.

since he just turned seven we thought we’d try and read the first book, “harry potter and the philosopher’s stone”, with odin and see what he thought. i don’t know what the conventional wisdom is on the age-appropriateness of the books, but our understanding is that the first few books are the tamest of the series and we thought, really, how much worse can it be than “grimm’s fairy tales which he enjoys.

turns out, for the most part, he loved it! and asked us to read it during the day for long stretches and we really got the sense that it was his first experience with a “page turner”. he even told me one morning, “poppi. i have something to tell you. i woke up and turned on my flashlight and grabbed the book and just flipped through the pages. i hope i didn’t wake you up.” i told him i might have done the same thing with my favorite books when i was his age 🙂

for days he recounted stories of the characters struggles and quidditch and muggles and hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. the ending, though, ended up being a little intense for him and in the final analysis he said simply, “it was a good book, but i had mama read some of the scary parts in her head and i think i might like to read the next book in two years when i’m a little older.”

a fair enough review for sure, but i can’t help but wonder if we’ll be starting “harry potter and the chamber of secrets sooner rather than later.