Showing posts with label twinkle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twinkle. Show all posts

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Seeking Perspective

My eldest grandgirlie is Star of the Week in her first-grade class. It's quite the honor which offers her, as well as any student whose turn it is, the opportunity for lots of cool things, like bringing special show and tell. She invited me to come read a book to her classmates, a humbling honor, which I gladly and gratefully accepted.

I asked her to pick out the book, but she already had one in mind. It's a book I keep at my house, a book purchased at Paperbacks and Pieces, my favorite used book store of all times. Barely a visit goes by when the girls don't ask me to read The Piggy in the Puddle.

The class loved hearing it as much as I love--every single time I read it--the way the illiterative language (nice, eh?) rolls off my tongue.

But before I was up on the docket, and while the teacher gently and with great patience and humor put the kids through their morning routine, I walked around the room and absorbed the creative energies.


Profound Perspective 
How profound are those words?! I got out my camera and snapped a photo. What if every single day we asked ourselves to define those three short lines using a single word.



  • Yesterday was ... busy. That's one way to put it.
  • Today is ... grace filled. I'm here with my grandgirlie!
  • Tomorrow will be ... Hm...Pleasurable. 



It is good, I thought, to find kindness and perspective, to filter our mental filing, and set a tone for the future of positivism. To be honest, it was a deeply profound interior moment for me.

It wasn't until later I noticed the days of the week beneath the lines. I only noticed them then because the teacher asked one of the children to come correctly place the days of the week next to the lines.

Perspective: through a teacher's creative spark, a child's learning curve, and an aging woman's goals.

Perspective.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

The day I decided to launch this blog

I've been noodling around the Internet, "checking in" with my Facebook and Twitter friends, curious how long it's been since I posted a Traveling Laugh. Later today, I'm planning to begin work on a  TwinkleGram.

Is there no END to your social media blathering, Charlene?!

Yet, while flicking from one set of hosted words to the next, a thought niggles. Sometimes my brain ignites a MUST-SHARE! idea, question, quote or curiosity that does not quite "fit" any of my aforementioned stay-in-touch outlets, not even the books I write.

As I type this Words to Help You Twinkle blog intro, of sorts, I am reminding myself that I do not have time to start something new. Hel-LO, Charlene! Your estrogen powers are waning in this twilight season of your life. Nonetheless, here I happily go anyway, Pandora cranking in the background, launching this new endeavor. I can't stop thinking about WORDS. Words that make me twinkle with every layer of  definition.

Case in point. Earlier today I was reading a recent copy of Shelf Awareness. In it, I found an article called Wi7, which stands for Winter Institute 7: Social Media. In the second paragraph, I read about author John Green who wrote a book called The Fault in our Stars. Seems his book has been a  bestseller. My blinking (not quite twinkling) rapid-fire thoughts went something like this: Never heard of the guy. Never heard of the book. Why can't I keep up? How did I not notice a title with the word star in it? What is the book about anyway? I'll look it up later. And ... I'm on to the next paragraph, which is a recap about a guy named Dan Cullen who cites statistics from PEW Research. HAHAHAHA! PEW Research. As in P.U. pew-ey! As in ... that's juvenile, Charlene. You're 66. Snap out of it. Then I read where Cullen says that my demographic, whom he refers to as "wired seniors," is the fastest growing segment using social media. Wired senior, huh? As much social networking as I do, my nickname should be The Electrified Geezerette.


I finish reading that article and move on to the picture below it. I love pictures. The cutline explains who the dudes are, and it happens again! I learn of another book title which I've never heard of. Film School: The True Story of a Midwestern Family Man Who Went to the World's Most Famous Film School, Fell Flat on His Face, Had a Stroke, and Sold a Television Series to CBS, by Steve Boman. How much do I love THAT title? Lots. So I try to Tweet it, but it's too long. Even Deck.ly, TweetDeck's answer to Tweets longer than 140 characters, has a problem sending it. [Sidenote: While nabbing the link for TweetDeck, my home computer Tweeting choice, I learned TweetDeck is aimed at "power users". STAND BACK!]


If only you had your own blog, Charlene, you could talk about that book title there!


Next thing I know, I'm playing with Blogger templates and ... Here you go. Words to Help You Twinkle, blog post number one.
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END NOTES:

--I did look up this John Green chap. His interview (wait till you see who's conducting it!) on B&N made me laugh out loud.  I've now added The Fault of Stars to my reading list. Curious words beget searched words, beget another book on the pile. Amen.


--The PEW Research Center isn't funny. It's smart. I checked. You might wanna too.