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Posts Tagged ‘children’

Barber Gets Kids to Read

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 16, 2016| 2 Comments »

Just saw this 2015 article on Facebook. Originally reported in the Telegraph Herald, the story is about a remarkably wise barber in Iowa.

“Dubuque, Iowa, barber Courtney Holmes is a member of the Dubuque Black Men Coalition (DBMC,) an organization that works to improve the quality of life within their community by providing support and leadership to programs that seek to make a difference in the lives of African-American youth.

“As a father of two, he understands the importance of encouraging kids to read, but also realizes that not all parents share this sense of encouragement, so he decided to take matters into his own hands by rewarding children with a free haircut, if they read books to him while he works.

“The concept began at a back to school event in Comiskey Park, where non-profit organizations gather to support kids in getting ready to go back to school. Holmes started with a few kids, and before he knew it there was a line of over 20 kids getting ready to read a story in exchange for a new look. At the end of the event there were still kids in line so he decided to give out vouchers for them to come back to the salon to read to him and receive their hair cut. …

“Holmes hopes to continue his good work through a monthly event at the salon. He’s also been receiving books from people who want to help keep the movement alive.

‘There’s a lot going on in the world. But it only takes one person to change something. I am just trying to make a difference.’

Check out the rest of the story at Earthables.

Photo: Telegraph Herald
Courtney Holmes, a barber and member of the Dubuque Black Men Coalition, offers free haircuts for children who read to him.

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Beatrix Potter’s Grownup Themes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 7, 2016| 10 Comments »

I confess that although I can see why children adore books by certain illustrators, sometimes I don’t like reading the artists’ words.

Richard Scarry, for example, with his delightful animals and five-seater pencil cars, writes text that can get boring pretty fast. And Beatrix Potter, whom I admire for a multitude of reasons, employs very big words and potentially scary themes.

Christian Blauvelt recently covered that angle at the BBC. He begins with Potter’s first line in a storybook.

“ ‘Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs McGregor.’

“Old Mrs Rabbit’s frightful warning to her children Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail and Peter appears on the opening page of Beatrix Potter’s first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Aside from featuring perhaps the most dramatic use of a semicolon in children’s literature, it sets the tone for her work from the start: that horrors abound in a world of Darwinian struggle, but that these must be faced calmly.

“Your parents, and perhaps your children, may be devoured by a vengeful property owner, or sold for tobacco; you may have your tail ripped off by an angry owl; an invading rat might tie you up in string and include you as the key ingredient in a pudding. But life goes on – disappointments must be faced and tragedies overcome. …

“Potter’s tales have been consistently popular with adults, as well as children, since The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published in 1902 when she was 36 years old. This is not just because they feature adorable creatures in harrowing situations; her talking-animal stories also comment on the era’s class politics, gender roles, economics and domestic life.

“Did she examine British society through animals because she spent more time with animals than children, aside from her brother Bertram, when she was young? Because she wanted to rebel against the bourgeois values and morals of her wealthy middle class family – which had made its money in the textile industry – but only dared do so through furry surrogates? Because she could only publish children’s stories since her true passion, science, was a career field closed to women in the late 19th Century? Because she had a German tutor who introduced her to the back-to-nature ethos of the Romantics?” More.

Hmm. Maybe I’m being too anti-intellectual here, but I’d say Beatrix Potter just got a kick out of telling stories like that.

And maybe she was right that small children could handle the scary parts. My three-year-old grand-daughter for example, has always loved Peter Rabbit and could recite the fancy phrases by heart when she was only two. Reciting fancy phrases is great for language development.

Photo of Beatrix Potter’s art: Penguin
Beatrix Potter, an amateur scientist, was meticulous about representing nature accurately, even if the animals did wear clothes. Here Peter Rabbit gorges on Mr. McGregor’s carrots.

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Haley House Meets Trustees of Reservations

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 14, 2016| 2 Comments »

I had an awfully nice lunch yesterday, and I’d like to tell you about it. It involved two nonprofits — the mostly Caucasian conservation group Trustees of Reservations and the mostly African American community-outreach enterprise called Haley House.

The trustees had a really great idea recently to do meaningful art installations on a couple of their properties and chose one next to the Old Manse in Concord. The Old Manse is most often associated with 19th Century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, but the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson was also a resident and saw the historic events unfold at the North Bridge on April 19, 1775.

Artist Sam Durant wanted to draw attention to the presence of slaves in the early days of Concord and launch a discussion, so he constructed a kind of big-tent meeting house, with a floor made of the kinds of materials that might have been in slave buildings.

The Trustees conferred with him on a series of “lyceums” that might bring races together at the site. They decided that at the first one, they would encourage races to break bread together and talk about food traditions.

From Haley House in Roxbury, they brought in a chef, a beautiful meal, and singer/educator/retired-nurse Fulani Haynes.

I ate a vegan burger, sweet-potato mash, very spicey collard greens and wonderful corn muffins. Also available were salad and chicken.

Haynes sang a bit and talked about the origins of Haley House, how it helps low-income people and ex-offenders and local children, teaching cooking and nutrition and gardening, among other things. She invited attendees to tell food stories from their early years, and several brave spirits stood up.

That participatory aspect of the activities helped to reduce the impression that African Americans were making entertainments for a mostly white audience (art, food, music entertainments).

I loved the whole thing and learned a lot. (For example, Grandpa Emerson had slaves living upstairs, and “the embattled farmers” who “fired the shot heard ’round the world” were able to go marching off because slaves were working the farms. I really didn’t know.)

African American artifacts are on display next door at the Old Manse. The art installation will be up until the end of October 2016.

More here.

Photos: Artist Sam Durant offers the crowd a new lens on history. The chef from Haley House keeps an eye on the African American cuisine. Fulani Haynes demonstrates how a food can become an instrument.

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Planting a Meadow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 13, 2016| 2 Comments »

Photo: Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe
Jean Devine (left) and Jayden Pineda, 7, make a meadow at the Waltham Y.

I’m excited that today the Boston Globe caught up with my friend Jean’s terrific biodiversity-education outreach. Readers may recall that I blogged here and here about how she and Barbara Passero got started on “meadowscaping” — hoping to ween homeowners from using pesticides and herbicides that harm the environment and contribute to global warming.

Debora Almeida reports on the educators’ latest work with kids: “Swimming, crafting, and playing games are staples of day camp, but kids at the Waltham YMCA are doing something new this summer.

“They’re learning how to plant and cultivate a meadow — and why they should.

“ ‘We just want to save the world, that’s all,’ said Barbara Passero, cofounder of Meadowscaping for Biodiversity, an outdoor environmental education program for students of all ages, which has partnered with the Y for the project.

“Over the course of the summer, Passero and program leader Jean Devine are teaching children the fundamentals of meadow upkeep and the importance of planting exclusively native plants. They are the best hosts for pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, and moths. In turn, the insects attract other wildlife such as birds and rabbits, building biodiversity.

“While some people’s first instinct would be to spray pesticides to protect their hard work from leaf-munching insects, Passero knows that birds will take care of the insects on their own. She also refuses to use any toxic substances around the children, who truly get their hands dirty digging in the meadow. Seth Lucas, program administrator at the Waltham Y, said kids love the activity. …

“The meadow started as a patch of weedy grass, but is in the process of becoming a 10-by-60-foot flourishing garden. Passero and Devine are setting the meadow up for success with native plants that come back year after year. The plants are self-sustaining and spread on their own.”

Such a happy story! Do read the whole thing here.

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Sustainable Fashion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2016| 2 Comments »

Shows how far we have come from ancestors who let nothing go to waste that making clothes out of leftover fabric is a novelty. But it’s a good idea nevertheless.

Katherine Martinko at TreeHugger writes that Beru Kids is a children’s clothing company in downtown Los Angeles that makes use of textiles that would otherwise be landfilled.

“The garment workers are mostly female,” she says, “and are paid higher than minimum wage (not per-garment, as is usual in the fashion industry).

“What’s really interesting about Beru is that it repurposes deadstock fabrics to make its clothes. ‘Deadstock’ refers to surplus fabric that has not been used by other factories. In LA, it is sent to a warehouse, where Beru’s founder Sofia Melograno goes on a regular basis to purchase whatever textiles catch her eye. Beru has also begun recently incorporating organic, traceable cotton into its garments.”

Traceability means the cotton can be traced back to its original source so it’s possible to assess whether all steps in the supply chain are environmentally and ethically sound.

Martinko adds that because the fashion industry is a huge polluter, finding a use for fabric that would otherwise get thrown away is good for the planet.

More here.

Photo: Beru Kids (via Facebook)
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Spreading Understanding

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 5, 2016| 1 Comment »

My friend was born and raised in Hawaii. His parents were Japanese-American. His mother was sent to an internment camp during World War II. It’s a complicated story how she got released and ended up in Japan for the war’s duration. Something like a prisoner swap. She returned to Hawaii after the war and raised a family.

My friend was invited to talk to fifth graders about his mother’s experience in the camp. He was reluctant. It’s painful to think about. Would young children get it?

In the end, he went, and it was a good experience for him as well as for the kids. I think he had an impact on how they think about differences in our multicultural society. And their curiosity and understanding was a comfort to him.

Here is what he put on Facebook this spring.

“Last week I spoke to two classes of fifth graders about my mom’s experience in a Japanese-American relocation camp during World War II. After the talk, one of the students asked me why the Japanese-Americans had been relocated to camps but the German-Americans hadn’t. Wow, I could have hugged that boy for asking such a perceptive question, and I was also touched by how the students were able to draw a parallel between the Japanese-American discrimination decades ago and the anti-Muslim sentiment that’s currently been gaining so much traction in the U.S. and elsewhere.”

My friend posted a family photo that he goes on to describe. It is not the photo I put below.

“This photo, taken in the mid 1930s, is of my mom and her younger sister when they were growing up in downtown Honolulu, before they were forced to relocate to a camp in Arkansas. My mom looks like she’s around the age of the students I was talking to last week, and when I showed those students this photo I got a little emotional imagining my mom as a young girl being in that classroom too, listening to me tell her story. In such ways, our stories really do have such raw power to connect people through different generations and cultures, which, I suppose, is why I first became interested in becoming a writer all those years ago.”

America has always needed people like my friend’s mother — people who carry on and return benefits to the place that harmed them. And there are lots of them. Even in the town where I live, a couple who suffered internment during the war became quietly known for philanthropy to both the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund, Inc. and our town, donating all their reparation money to local high school scholarships.

Photo: Dorothea Lange
Some Japanese-Americans who suffered from internment in World War II
still chose to return kindness for hurt after the war.

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Library on Horseback

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2016| 2 Comments »

Are you familiar with the “Lens” blog at the NY Times? It focuses on “photography, video and visual journalism.” Here David Gonzalez writes about the photos of Putu Sayoga.

[Hat tip: Asakiyume on twitter.]

“If you live in a far-off place, a library may be something you’d only read about in books. That is, if you had books to begin with.

“That became the mission of Ridwan Sururi, an Indonesian man with a plan — and a horse. Several days a week, he loads books onto makeshift shelves he drapes over his steed, taking them to eager schoolchildren in the remote village of Serang, in central Java. ..

“Mr. Sayoga, a co-founder of the collective Arka Project, had seen something about the equine library on a friend’s Facebook page. It reminded him of his own childhood, where his school had only out-of-date books. Intrigued, he reached out to Mr. Sururi, who offered to put Mr. Sayoga up in his home while he spent time photographing Mr. Sururi on his rounds. …

“Mr. Sururi made a living caring for horses, as well as giving scenic tours on horseback. One of his clients, Nirwan Arsuka, came up with the book idea as a way of doing something to benefit the community, specifically a mobile library. He gave Mr. Sururi 138 books for starters. Most were in Indonesian, and the books included a lot with drawings.

“Children at the schools he visits can borrow the books for three days, and demand has been so great that he now has thousands of books.” More here. Check out the slide show.

Photo: Putu Sayoga

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Five Months on a Sailboat

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 11, 2016| 2 Comments »

Erik’s sister and family are off on their five-month European sailing trip. The three children have homework to do during the first part of the trip, when they would ordinarily be in school. All five family members are contributing to a WordPress blog they call Burning Cloud. Four write their posts in English; the youngest sometimes writes in Danish. The entries are a lot of fun to read.

Here is the oldest child’s May 11 post:

this is a word for word conversation.

Klara : the first qustion is, why are we not moving

Klaus: because we are waiting for our gear to come back from the repair shop

Klara : the second question is: when are  we going to move?

Klaus: on Friday

Klara: the third question is: what is wrong with the motor?

Klaus: the gear is leaking a bit of oil.

Karl-Oscar: how will they fix the gear?

Klaus : it will be repaired in Køge  with some spare parts that are cominng form Gottenburg.

written by Axel.

Join the fun at Burning Cloud Blog. You can follow the route on maps the family posts periodically along with other entertaining pictures. (Don’t miss the photo of everyone making sushi on shipboard.)

Photo: School at sea.

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Foster Mother Multiplies Her Good Works

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 12, 2016| 2 Comments »

Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/Christian Science Monitor
Vicki Houska, who has fostered 12 children, including Brandon (l.) and Michael, started a food pantry to help other foster parents.

I could probably write a post every day just drawing from the Christian Science Monitor series People Making a Difference. It’s overwhelming how many stories they collect — overwhelming and reassuring about human goodness.

Here’s one by Marjorie Kehe about a St. Louis woman who mothered 12 foster children in addition to her biological ones and now helps other foster parents lighten their expenses.

“Vicki Houska is a woman of many gifts. But one of the first things that her friends and colleagues will tell you about her is that she is a hugger.

“ ‘No one leaves her without a hug and a smile,’ says Michelle Barron, a work crew supervisor for the St. Charles County Juvenile Justice Center. …

“On this busy Saturday, though, Ms. Houska is getting ready to dispense more than just hugs. She’s moving briskly through the jampacked rented rooms that house the operation she runs for FAST (Foster Adoption Support Team), a support organization for foster and foster adoptive families caring for children who are wards of the state of Missouri.

“Houska’s making sure that packages of frozen pork chops, fresh loaves of bread, and tiny snowsuits are all properly shelved and stacked, ready for the families who are about to arrive and lay claim to them. …

“A foster parent herself since 1998, she has fostered 12 children over the years and, of those 12, adopted three. ‘It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do,’ she says of foster parenting. The emotional challenges ‘will bring you to your knees.’

“But one thing that doesn’t have to be so hard on foster parents, she decided some years ago, is the financial burden. …

“Foster families are expected to provide food, clothing, and household items like toothbrushes and hairbrushes, and to cover school expenses and any additional treats, lessons, or outings.

“From her own experiences and those of other foster families she has met, Houska came to feel that financial challenges were one of the biggest obstacles to the foster-parenting experience. So in 2005, to help alleviate the strain, she lined her own basement with industrial freezers and shelving, sought out donations, and began distributing food, diapers, and toiletries each Saturday, free to all local foster families. …

“Eventually, the OASIS Food Pantry, a local nonprofit, notified Houska that it had rental space available near its own operation in a nearby strip mall. …

“Houska’s pantry offers not only household items but emotional and social support. …

“Foster families arrange play dates, with pickups and drop-offs scheduled at the food pantry. Sometimes, for siblings who have been assigned to separate families, a trip to the food pantry is a chance to reunite in the pantry’s backyard, where the children are invited to romp on the playground equipment donated by a local church and other well-wishers. …

“ ‘Poverty doesn’t take a vacation,’ [Houska] says. ‘Kids in need don’t take a vacation. So neither do I.’ ”

Read what happened to Houska at age 21 that is one reason she is so dedicated, here.

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How Darwin’s Kids Preserved History

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2016| 2 Comments »

A friend on Facebook clicked “like” on an American Museum of Natural History story about youthful doodles covering original Origin of the Species pages. So I have to admit that Facebook is sometimes good for leads.

The museum reported, “We may have Charles Darwin’s children to thank for the surviving handwritten pages of the naturalist’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ manuscript. Most of the original 600 pages are lost, and of the 45 pages that exist today, many were repurposed by Darwin’s brood of 10 children as art supplies.

” ‘Darwin was done with those pages — he was throwing away sections of his draft and not caring about it because the book was published,’ said Darwin Manuscripts Project Director David Kohn.”

McKenna Stayner at the New Yorker magazine has more on the Darwin story, adding that the family lived at Down House “in rural Kent, England. … They had ten children … and Down House was by all accounts a boisterous place, with a wooden slide on the stairs and a rope swing on the first-floor landing. …

“What may seem like sacrilege now—turning the only handwritten copy of a seminal work of science into scratch paper—appears to have been normal then. Once Darwin had sent a fair copy of the manuscript off to his publisher, John Murray, he made the rest of his changes to the book directly on the galley proofs, and evidently he wasn’t precious about the originals. Paper being a hot commodity, the children co-opted the pages for themselves.”

And that, O, Best Beloved, is how some of Darwin’s original thinking got preserved for posterity.

Pretty talented children, if you ask me, with some of their father’s interest in animals and birds. Check out these pictures.

Art: Darwin’s children
From the American Museum of Natural History and Cambridge University Library.

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Raising a Family in Antarctica

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 10, 2016| 2 Comments »

Raising a family is challenging under any circumstances, but Simon Romero of the NY Times can tell you about families that have added on a somewhat more extreme challenge: settling in Antarctica.

He writes from Villa Las Estrellas, “Children at the schoolhouse here study under a portrait of Bernardo O’Higgins, Chile’s independence leader. The bank manager welcomes deposits in Chilean pesos. The cellphone service from the Chilean phone company Entel is so robust that downloading iPhone apps works like a charm. …

“Fewer than 200 people live in this outpost founded in 1984 during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, when Chile was seeking to bolster its territorial claims in Antarctica. Since then, the tiny hamlet has been at the center of one of Antarctica’s most remarkable experiments: exposing entire families to isolation and extreme conditions in an attempt to arrive at a semblance of normal life at the bottom of the planet.

“It gets a little intense here in winter,” said José Luis Carillán, 40, who moved to Villa Las Estrellas three years ago with his wife and their two children to take a job as a teacher in the public school.

“He described challenges like trekking through punishing wind storms to arrive at a schoolhouse concealed by snow drifts, and withstanding long stretches with only a few hours of sunlight each day. …

“Most of the students at the village’s small school, who generally number less than a dozen, are the children of air force officials who operate the base; some of the parents say the isolating experience strengthens family bonds.

“That Villa Las Estrellas is so remote — its name can be translated as Hamlet of the Stars, since the lack of artificial light pollution here enhances gazing into the heavens — sits just fine with many who live here.

“ ‘People in the rest of Chile are so afraid of thieves that they build walls around their homes,’ said Paul Robledo, 40, an electrician from Iquique (pronounced E-key-kay). ‘Not here in Antarctica. This is one of the safest places in the world.’ More here.

And here you thought our cold snap was a little intense!

Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times  
Children being picked up from school in Villa Las Estrellas. Most of the students at the village’s small school, who generally number less than a dozen, are the children of air force officials who operate a nearby base. 

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Friends Helping Refugees in Greece

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Swedish friends of ours have a home on the Greek island of Samos, where boatloads of refugees are landing every day. The family is collecting donations, buying bread, water bottles, diapers, and such, and delivering them to exhausted but grateful families. I will paste here the Facebook translation of the Swedish post, which may not be quite accurate, but you get the picture.

My Mom wrote yesterday:
It has blown hard in the last few days. Looking from the terrace, you can see the coast guard boat coming with inflatable boats on a trailer full of refugees. In the night 200 came, many families with children. Got together with J– and shared out approximately 100 bagettes without meat (Bedun Lachum) but with potatoes, eggs and mayonnaise, croissants, biscuits — also gave out diapers and wipes. The kids have priority always. The next delivery is 50 packages of diapers and 120 packages biscuits. Another 2000 Bottles of water were ordered.”

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Avant-Garde Grandparent Script

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 29, 2015| 4 Comments »

An experimental theater piece to test the Theory of Purposefully Divided Attention to Fend Off Meltdowns.
Cast: Grandma (G), Adult One (1), Adult Two (2), Adult Three (3), Small Child (Small)
Setting: Dinner table

G: Why is your hairdresser your hero?

1: She’s a real bootstrap entrepreneur. She’ll try anything.

G: Is that a blackberry in your popsicle?

Small: No, a blueberry.

2: Well, when you have kids, you can’t participate in every charity event or random partnership.

3: You have to prioritize, be strategic. Know when to say no.

1: But she has a great community reputation. She’s so upbeat.

G: I really think that’s a blackberry. Like Mrs. Rabbit’s in Peter Rabbit. Supporting everything in the community can add up.

1: It rolls up.

3: But you can waste a lot of time.

2: And energy.

G: People are grateful, though. If you’re strategic, you miss the kind of opportunities that you have no idea where they will lead. I like the way that popsicle drips right into the holder. It’s less messy.

Small: Do you want one?

G: I don’t want to take your last popsicle.

Small: We can make more.

G: Maybe after dinner.

Small: Let’s do it!

G: Careful — the juice is spilling. One and one and 50 make a million. It’s good to be open to serendipity if you possibly can.

2: There are only so many hours in the day.

3: Numerous small investments can’t get what one big investment would.

G: Do you want a napkin?

Small: I got a green popsicle at Whole Foods, but it dripped all over my dragon shirt. It was green.

G: There is nothing like a reputation for being upbeat and cooperative. I know where we can pick blackberries for the next batch of popsicles.

Small: But you have to add juice so it sticks together.

1: We now trade services. She does that with almost everyone. I feel like she could teach a class in entrepreneurship.

G: Teach one together, how about?

Small: Do you want a popsicle? Do you want one now?

G: Maybe after dinner. Look, that’s a raspberry. Or do you think it’s a strawberry?

Small: Do you want a popsicle now? I can go get it. We can make more later. Yes or no?

G: OK. Yes.

Small: Say, Please.

G: Yes, please.

Photo: Matthew Klein

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Blooms and Blooming

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 26, 2015| 4 Comments »

Two of my grandchildren just got back from a month in Scandinavia with their parents, visiting the Swedish side of the family. It’s amazing how much kids can develop in one month.

The baby left here with four teeth and came back with eight. She could barely reach for something without falling over and now crawls like a demon. Her older brother is more of a conversationalist than ever and has returned with new ideas for playing with old toys.

The children bloomed and blossomed with all the love and attention of their Swedish family.

The lotus below was also blooming during the past month.

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Camel Library

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 7, 2015| 2 Comments »

First there was the photo, which was tweeted with a link to tumblr. But tumblr offered no story and no credit. I did some searching and found the story at The Trumpet. It reminds me of this post on Sam and Leslie’s Uni, a pop-up library that has traveled from New York to Kazakhstan and many places in between.

At The Trumpet, Jeremiah Jacques reports on a Mongolian Andrew Carnegie (without the fortune). “What do you do if you are a young book lover? You go to the library. But what if you live in the rural regions of the Gobi desert? Your situation would be bleak — were it not for Dashdondog Jamba. He has devoted his life to writing, translating, publishing and transporting books to children all over Mongolia with his Children’s Mobile Library.

“ ‘I can’t remember how many trips I have made—I have lost count,’ Mr. Jamba said. ‘Sometimes we travel by camel, sometimes on horseback, and with horse carts or ox carts; we now also have our van.’

“Over the last 20 years, his library has traveled 50,000 miles through every province of Mongolia — mostly before the van was part of the operation. Jamba’s assistants are his wife and his son. They often spend several days in one place to give as many children as possible a chance to read their books.

“ ‘[It] is a little different from other libraries,’ Jamba says. ‘The walls of this reading room are made of mountains covered with forest, the roof is blue sky, the floor is a flower-covered steppe, and the reading light bulb is the sun.’

“Jamba created his library in the early 1990s, shortly after Mongolia abandoned communism and adopted free-market economics. Life in Mongolia changed dramatically, mostly for the good. But organizations focused on children’s literature fared badly. They were viewed as profitless, so no private investors wanted to take them over. Most children’s libraries were converted into banks.

“Jamba tried to keep the libraries alive. … Ever since, he’s been writing children’s books, translating foreign youth literature into Mongolian, and bringing books to children who would otherwise never read them. Several of his original books have earned the Best Book of Mongolia award. Some of his stories have been put to song. Some have been made into movies. In 2006, his mobile library won the prestigious ibby-Asahi Reading Promotion Award.” More here.

Photo: Dashdondog Jamba
Dashdondog Jamba has traveled more than 50,000 miles through every province of Mongolia with his Children’s Mobile Library.

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