Author: Janyre

Kids, Books, and Censorship, Oh My!

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Kids, Books, & CensorshipI went to the public library with my kids the other day. It’s one of my favorite places—the smell, the hushed reverence, and oh the books. Glorious books!

But I have an increasing frustration, not with the library, but with finding age-appropriate books that would also fill the school’s requirements for difficulty-level, inclusion in computer-generated tests, etc.

I feel like I am lacking a specialized degree in book selection.

I’m amazed at what levels my first-grade son is required to achieve, even when compared to what his big sister did just a few years ago.

It’s incredible. But along with the chapter-book-reading first graders comes an increasingly bigger issue—how do we find age appropriate, challenging, engaging books for our kids? If they’re reading what used to be a second grade book in early first grade, what happens when they’re in fifth grade?

I’m fully aware that I’m rather protective when it comes to my child’s mind, but I think we can all agree that a ten-year-old shouldn’t be reading what is meant for a sixteen-year-old.

Despite what we may have been told, what our kids read matters.

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There’s something Magical about Thankfulness–an early Thursday Thought

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Thanksgiving Is MagicI know that everyone and their brother is blogging about Thanksgiving this week. But I couldn’t resist. Being purposeful in noticing things in life is why I started “There’s Something About . . . ” Thursdays.

And yes, I know it isn’t Thursday, but I’m betting most of you would be in a turkey-induced coma if I waited. . . I promise you’ll live through my breaking of tradition.

Over the last few years, I’ve come to realize that the more I notice, the more good things I see, the more thankful I am, the more good I see . . . . It’s a delicious, magical cycle of goodness. Can you tell I’m a little addicted?

Science is catching up to what people of faith have known for centuries:

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Thanksgiving is magic!

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Juggling life

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4-Tips-300x300A little over a month ago, I attended my first writer’s conference as a writer and not an editor. I was terrified, but it was wonderful. I walked away armed with goals, ideas, and convictions. One of which was the necessity to start this blog.

When one of the women who run the conference asked me to write a blog for their website, I had no idea what to say. And then I realized I did.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m someone who hates not being able to do it all. So I wrote this blog for the Breathe Conference. It’s a little different than what I usually write. It’s targeted to writers, but really, it applies to everyone.

I hope you’ll pop over to the Breathe website and check it out. Happy juggling!

Juggling Life at the Breathe website

There’s Something About Thursday–Life

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There's Something About LifeI recently realized that I’ve made a massive shift in the last few years. The tectonic plates of my life have created an earthquake, and my easy way of moving through life has been destroyed.

You’d think I’d be reduced to tears at seeing my old way of life crumble. But I’m not. I’m glad.

Even though the commitment to look at my life, really look, is sometimes hard, it’s also really good.

I find myself looking at the sky, my kids, the rain, listening to the swell of the wind or the music on my radio, and I’m in awe.

There’s something about life. You know?

That got me thinking about how to be purposeful in recognizing the things that make me stop and wonder. I want to commit to at least every other Thursday giving a nod to the things that make me stop and say, “There’s something about . . . ”

There’s something about Thursday. We’re almost to the end of the week. Maybe it can become a time where together we find that something to think about.

Maybe you can notice and wonder with me. So for today, how would you complete the sentence: There’s something about . . . ?

Beauty from Ashes: a Metaphor of Hope in a Time of Terror

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There is a core of who I am that is tangled in music. I grew up going to symphonies, playing in some of the best bands and orchestras in the state. I was through and through a clarinet-playing, band geek.

My life has a nearly constant musical score running underneath.

There I am with the pep band. Apparently I have no pictures of me ACTUALLY playing. You'll just have to trust that I did.
There I am with the pep band. Apparently I have no pictures of me ACTUALLY playing. You’ll just have to trust that I did.

I write to music. Sing snippets of Broadway, Mother Goose, Louis Armstrong, Simon and Garfunkle, and even “Uptown Funk” to my kids.

Soaring melodies, growling tympani, rising arpeggios, staccato xylophone—they draw pictures, speak words I cannot always form coherently. You know what I mean?

This weekend I went with my mom and sister to our local symphony’s live presentation of Disney’s Fantasia. The overlap of the art of film and music reminded me of the fear and destruction happening in our world. In short, it undid me.

A little over halfway through the program came the music of one of my favorite ballets, Stravinsky’s Firebird. It isn’t a piece most modern Americans are familiar with, but I love the unexpected twists and the drama it sings.

http://enchantedgal.deviantart.com/art/Flowering-71685983
http://enchantedgal.deviantart.com/art/Flowering-71685983

In Disney’s take, a mighty elk, king of the forest, wakes Spring – Life personified, beautiful fluidity. Blue and green swirls. Life exalts in melting the snow and playing with the birth of flowers and butterflies, but is shocked when a mountain, an extinct volcano, resists her efforts to sprout in greenness.

In the center of the bowl is a form, dark and frozen. When she touches his misshapen face, the firebird comes crashing to life. Foaming fire. Slashing into the sky. Delighting in destroying everything Life has created. Reducing everything to ash . . . even Life herself. Continue reading “Beauty from Ashes: a Metaphor of Hope in a Time of Terror” →

Overflowed

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OverflowedIn the interest of being honest, I’m struggling.

Not in the sense that I am enduring the huge storms of life. No. It’s the slow trickle of the stream of stress that’s worn me down around the edges.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been on a journey to discover what it means to be still. It’s a glorious place . . . when I can find it.

What I’m struggling with, what I don’t know how to do, is be still within the hectic franticness that is life. How do you practice being still when helping your daughter study history, while your son is asking for help with spelling, and in the midst of realizing that you forgot to start dinner? Again.

The stream overflows. And that’s where I’m at. Overflowed. Continue reading “Overflowed” →

Beautifully Diverse

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trail-of-tearsMy daughter is studying the Native Americans in social studies. This week her class started studying the Eastern Woodland Indians, specifically the Cherokee. This amazing people group assimilated into the European colonies and, in many ways, looked exactly like their neighbors.

But they weren’t. They were different.

And that difference allowed people’s greed for gold to forcibly remove the Cherokee and other Native Americans from their land, enduring disease, exposure, and starvation. The Trail of Tears.

When I told my girl the story of the Cherokee, she stared at me, confusion pulling her eyebrows together.

“Why?”

In her wide-eyed innocence, “Why?”

Why, indeed?

You see, my girl is an artist and she understands that in art, in beauty, contrast and difference is celebrated and encouraged. That which makes something different, is core to making it beautiful. Continue reading “Beautifully Diverse” →

On Real Beauty

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IMG_3377

 

The light bends golden across the horizon.
Yellow leaves twisting golden in the breeze.
Distant sounds of laughter call me out

To join the dance

The celebration
Of coming winter
Of summer’s dying

A remembrance
Of predictable pattern
Of persistent change

In the beautiful death of one thing
Comes the shimmering new life of another.

 

headshot 1 fixedWhen I realized that the late afternoon light was the perfect golden tone for pictures, I grabbed my camera for a selfie. It didn’t even occur to me to not fix my makeup.
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Into the Darkness: A Story

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Flowers in sunset blurredI lay in the darkness. Eyes closed. Willing myself to sleep.

But rest would not come. In the next room, I heard the baby cough. I held my breath, body tense, wondering if she’d need me.

Glancing at the clock, I groaned. The red numbers read 5:32. I’d fed her, changed her diaper, and put her back in bed an hour ago. But I’d been lying awake since then, bracing myself, trying not to wake my husband, not quite sleeping. It was easier to get back up if I didn’t fall asleep. And sometimes, sometimes, I had to get back up.

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