Recently the family has been watching The Muppet Show on the Disney+ platform. As has been widely publicized, some of the episodes are preceded with a content warning and so we have made it a game to try to determine the offending portion of the episodes that would merit the warning. For example, in the Steve Martin episode, was it when he sings in “Chinese”? Apparently the Swedish Chef is OK–he appears in many episodes without the warning including one where he speaks “Mock Japanese”.
Months before, while perusing the Internet, I came across a list of banned books (past and current) and found it contained a lot of great books. Going through the list I saw many that are already part of the home library, but also identified some gaps that needed to be filled. In particular there were a few books that I know my wife would enjoy so I obtained nice, hardbound copies.
On the list were also various books that I have read before and have no desire read again. There were also various books that for which I have no desire to read even once. I don’t want those books in my home. It’s interesting to lookup why some of the books are banned and also to compare different lists of banned books. Overall, I have found various lists to be a good source of ideas of things to read, but definitely not a comprehensive or even reliable source of quality books. Some banned books are not worth reading (but perhaps shouldn’t be banned).
Many of the banned books are time-tested classics and thinking about such great literature being banned evokes images of historical factions burning books because of the radical ideas contained within. However, in the few months that we’ve had our banned book display in the foyer, my kids saw in the news about certain books being pulled off school and public library shelves–in a couple cases they found our home copies and added to the display.
I find the Disney+ content warnings for The Muppet Show to be silly, but I appreciate that Disney still makes the content available instead of withholding the entertaining shows for various ill-defined reasons. As for books being banned, there are a lot of books out there that I might find offensive–I choose not to read them. There are also books that I do choose to read in spite of the opinions of others.
I am not the target audience for Tuesdays at the Castle or the other books in the series. Likewise, the books are of little interest to my three sons. My wife describes them as “cute and predictable”. However they do tell stories which interest my daughter who gets excited when she is interested in something and who loves to share her excitement.
I suppose I should be honored that my daughter brought Tuesdays at the Castle to me as soon as she finished reading it so that I could [presumably likewise] enjoy the text. While I thought the concept of a castle that irregularly changes on a regular basis to be interesting, overall I think my impressions were that of a reader who is reading a book target towards young girls and is not part of said target audience. Nevertheless, it is not the worst thing I have read and it allowed for various conversation with my daughter. At her urging I think I have read all but one of the books in the series.
For many years (even predating the birth of the girl-child), my family has read various books at the table after dinner. With three older brothers, the books selected are frequently not the books my daughter would choose. Or sometimes, such as when we read Where the Red Fern Grows she does get really into the book only to become emotionally scarred. So when she proposed reading Tuesdays at the Castle as an after dinner book, it seemed only fair.
Even with an only marginally interested audience, the reading went quite well. Despite knowing what was going to happen, my daughter would get excited and her enthusiasm tends to be infectious. She was also a good sport and did not get offended at [amusing but snide] comments by brothers or the less-than-flattering voice affectation I employed for the characters. So despite it not being a preferred text for the majority, a good time was had by all.
Another good thing that came out of this was a renewed effort by the boys to find “good fit” reading material for the girl child. With a better understanding of what she likes, they raided the bookshelves and found several books they thought their sister would enjoy (and they did a pretty good job). This led to my daughter being exposed to even great books.
I’m glad that the family read Tuesdays at the Castle together and that I read the books as well. In both cases the change in reading material theme brought about happy memories and positive interactions.
I’ve been fortunate to work for companies that are supportive of families. While I was working for Datastax, the company supported employees and their families in various ways including reimbursing up to $1000 for expenses related to physical and mental health. And as for my current employer, Circle’s mission is to make families’ lives better online and off.
When Covid-19 quarantining started and everyone was home, my wife and I quickly realized that it was too easy to fall into into a slothful pattern of lounging around in soft pants all day and never leaving the house. While there are merits to said lifestyle (particularly during inclement weather), it didn’t seem conducive to a health family life. So we instituted “Homeschool PE”.
Every weekday at 11:00am, the family would head outside and do something. Examples include:
The Datastax health expense reimbursement paid for a lot of Homeschool PE equipment and members of my team refrained from scheduling meetings during my family’s Homeschool PE block. When I started at Circle, the first time I met the [woman who would soon become] CEO was when she dropped off a computer at my house while I was playing table tennis in the driveway with my kids. She commented that at her house they played table tennis on the back patio. She responded favorably when I told her about Homeschool PE and I later learned even suggested it to other employees.
As online school started up in the fall and the weather became less amenable, regular Homeschool PE faded away, but during the spring and summer it was definitely a good thing for my family. Sometimes it was hard to get everyone to get up and outside, but once we started playing it was generally a good time all around. I’m grateful for the fun experiences and happy memories from Homeschool PE and appreciate my employers who support me and my family.
When Boy#1 started kindergarten, I took it upon myself to walk him to school. Back then I still went into work every day so I would push my bike along as we walked and talked. Once he was safely deposited, I would hop on my bike and ride the rest of the way to work. I quickly realized that walking with him was time well spent. I don’t think the boy missed any days of school that year so, apart from a handful of days when my wife decided it was too rainy to walk or I was sick, he and I walked to school together every day that year. It was great.
The next year we continued walking together rain or shine to the school every day. It certainly wasn’t always what could be considered “quality” time, but day after day, week after week, month after month certainly added up to “quantity” time. It was great.
Then Boy#2 came of age and so the three of us walked together. Some days we’d race. Some days we’d walk backwards or skip or gallop of hop for stretches of the route. Some days the wind and rain were such that I worried the kids would get too wet. Some days we just walked and talked. It was great.
Then one summer we moved–it wasn’t very far, but it did significantly change the walking route to the school. Other people saw the good thing we had going and soon we had a few other children joining us on the walk. There were a few days when we had every grade K-6 represented in our little group. This changed the group dynamic significantly and it was interesting to see how the kids of different ages interacted together. It was great.
Eventually Boy#3 came of age and joined the herd. By this time Boy#1 was participating in some early morning activities at school and so he didn’t walk with us every day, but there were still days when I was walking with my three sons along with other kids from the neighborhood. The next year, Boy#1 moved on to middle school so he took the bus instead of walking. Two years after that Boy#2 joined him, but that same year the Girl Child started kindergarten. I watched my children grow as I walked with them each day. It was great.
Over the years, certain reoccurring themes developed. These include “The Great Tennis Court Race” and the dancing hill. In our version of “button, button, who’s got the button” we race to hit crosswalk signal button. We were chased by [imaginary] wolves across the [also imaginary] frozen tundra and engaged in “slug bug” vs “punch buggy” debates and battles. We avoided stepping on cracks except for when we could only step on cracks. It was great.
This past school year–the Girl Child’s last year of elementary school–we continued walking every day. For the first part it was just me and her and then a younger girl joined us for the balance the daily journey. Things were going great until suddenly and unexpectedly things changed due to covid-19 and kids stopped going to school. I miss the chatter of children. I miss warming to the day by walking. I miss the pattern, the habit, the routine. I miss the time spent together.
Today would have been the last day of school for my daughter, so we walked to the elementary school together one final time. While the rest of the family slept, she and I walked the familiar route and engaged in pleasant conversation. We reached the empty school, took a couple of pictures, and then walked home together while planning activities for the summer. It was great.
My home is typically not quiet. Lately, with everyone home, it means there’s been even more noise. The kids are supposed to practice their various instruments daily which include piano, saxophone, trombone, and clarinet (not to mention the “bonus” ukulele and drum playing). Boy#2 is on a smoothie kick when means the blender is frequently running. Doors slam as kids run out to play in the yard and then come back in yelling about minor injuries. Conversations (calm and animated) abound.
A year or two ago I purchased an “On Air” sign online. The cord exited from the side so I modified it so instead the cord sticks straight out the back. It was intended to be hung by a chain (included), so I added some slots to be able to screw it directly to the wall. I then removed the plug and pushed the cord through a hole I drilled in the wall. The cord was rewired to an extension cord that plugs in to a simple “smart” plug. From there it was simple to hook it into our Alexa home ecosystem.
Now, when I have a meeting and need the house to be quieter-than-normal, I just say “Alexa, turn on broadcasting” (saying “turn on on air” sounded awkward to me) and the sign illuminates. But beyond that, my family is good enough to recognize the glowing red above my door and refrain from high audio behaviors.
I often judge books by their covers and when I saw the cover of The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart I immediately decided that it was a book that my family would enjoy. I was correct.
It is supposedly bad to judge a book by its cover, but I find it to be quite effective and, although I don’t necessarily have a definitive algorithm in mind, there are apparently some “rules” that book covers tend to follow. Over the last few years, I’ve read a few articles about studies where AIs are trained to identify the genre of a book from the cover. I’ll leave an exhaustive search of those sorts of articles as an exercise for the reader, but I will highlight “Does the cover tell you something about a book? Use AI for genre classification” (20 February 2019) by Viridiana Romero Martinez as a fun sampling.
In the case of The Mysterious Benedict Society, the title is certainly a draw, but it’s the fantastic artwork by Carson Ellis which make the book cover (and the covers of the sequels) stand out. The title could be for a murder mystery or horror novel or even a dystopian science fiction book. The art somehow makes it clear that it’s a story about children and for children yet it does not pander to the “norm” (whatever that is). It’s playful and yet dark at the same time. Although not apparent at the first glance, after reading to book one can see the level of detail from the text that went into the visual.
Sometimes I make an incorrect assumption when judging, but I was certainly correct when it comes to The Mysterious Benedict Society and the sequels/prequels.
I work in a fast-paced environment where everyone on the team is assigned several tasks to be accomplished in an allotted time. Many of these tasks are complex, but everyone on the team is a skilled, experienced professional and we do a great job of meeting our individual commitments. Except when we don’t. Sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes a system crashes. Sometimes something that was thought to be easy ends up being complicated. Sometimes someone with a critical task gets sick (or their child gets sick). Sometimes something doesn’t work and nobody knows why. Sometimes during the daily standup someone reports being blocked. When we encounter these problems, we swarm.
Usually swarming begins by getting everyone on the core team into a [virtual] room. If other expertise is required, we will pull in other people. Solving the problem is what is important–I never hear blaming or see finger pointing. Solving the problem becomes everyone’s priority. We all help. Even as we divide out work to reach a solution, we typically keep the video conference going even though people may leave awhile for things like dinner or putting kids to bed. Sometimes we shuffle around assigned tasks so that we can have the right people focused on the problem. Having everyone on the team swarm together takes time and effort, and it certainly isn’t a sustainable pace, but when we solve the problem we all share in the sense of accomplishment (and relief).
My family also swarms. We don’t gather together to fix a “defect” or implement a “business requirement,” rather we swarm together to support an individual. Here’s an example of how we swarm together.
A couple weeks ago my wife bemoaned having married me because, having taken on my last name, it moved her significantly forward in the alphabet. Even though it was only the second week of the term she had to put together a project worth a quarter of her grade (the presentation dates were assigned by last name so had she kept her maiden name she would have had three more weeks). This presentation was on top of the regular coursework and of course she still had to work at her job and do the myriad of things she does to run our home. All of the research got completed and the project was in the works, but my wife expressed during our family standup that the submission deadline was looming and she was stressed. So we swarmed.
In this case “swarming” meant planning and following through how we could support my wife. Dividing out pieces of her project wasn’t a viable option because of the concept of academic integrity, but we could support her in other ways.
The next evening, the kids made dinner. My daughter made bacon (she learned how to make it in the oven from an online video) and also a fruit salad. Boy#2 made scrambled eggs. Boy#3 made toast. My main contribution was cracking the eggs (I can do two at a time). My wife was able to come down, eat dinner quickly with the family, and get back to her schoolwork. After dinner the kids took care of the cleanup (which they usually do anyway).
Part of the project required my wife to use a specific piece of software and this created difficulty. We are mostly a Linux household (including my wife’s laptop) and the software was Windows or Mac only. Fortunately Boy#1 does have a Windows laptop so he and I cleared some space on my disheveled desk and he set the laptop up with mouse, headset, etc. so that she had an environment in which to work.
“Quiet” is not an appropriate word to describe my home. My kids take various music lessons and thus regularly practice piano, saxophone, trombone, or clarinet not to mention the more casual strumming of a ukulele, banging on a drum, or causing odd noises to emanate from my father’s old trumpet. There are also various loud communications, chases, squabbles, and bouts of laughter. The project presentation needed to be recorded meaning background noise was frowned-upon. During the time my wife was “on air”, the family quieted down a few notches, kept activity to the other end of the house, and refrained from conflict.
After our family standup that evening, one of the boys tucked in the girl child while I provided my wife with technical support. The boys found quiet ways to pass the time before going to bed. My wife finished up and submitted her assignment a couple hours before the 11:59pm deadline.
There are many other examples of our family swarming to help each other, but this is a recent one and I like how it shows the kids being involved in family success. I’m proud of my wife earning a perfect score on her project. I’m proud of my standup family swarming to support her.
Last October I described how my family started including a daily standup as part of our nighttime routine. This works great when everyone is home, but that’s not always possible. Occasionally I travel for work such as to Chicago last November and Florida last month. But just because we were geographically separated doesn’t mean I couldn’t participate in the family standup–again I looked to how things function for my work team standups.
Everyone on my team works in a different place; mostly we work from home. Of the four members on my core team, we are spread out in three different timezones and four different states. In order for us to have our daily standup, we utilize video conferencing technology which allows us to communicate verbally and with facial expressions and we can also use screen sharing so that we can all see the same thing. Another important factor taken into account is finding a time that works for all of us–my teammates are kind enough to not schedule anything at “o dark thirty” my time and we also take care not interfere with anyone’s family responsibilities such as picking up children from school.
While in Florida, my family used similar strategies to make our family standup work. We don’t have access to enterprise level online meeting tools, but free “social” video chat tools are available that meet our needs. We also had to account for the three hour time difference which we did by moving up our family standup to 8:00pm left coast time which was 11:00pm in Florida. The adjusted time allowed me to participate in the evening activities at the summit I was attending and also get to bed at a reasonable time.
Normally we all sit in the living room, but we had to change that in order to allow everyone to see everyone and also avoid audio feedback from too many mics in the same area. As such, I was of course in my hotel room (mostly lounging on the bed), my wife and Boy#1 were at the kitchen table on one device, Boy#2 and the girl child were upstairs on another device, and Boy#3 was typically in the teen room on yet another device.
It may seem like needless effort and that it would have been fine for me to have missed a few days of family standup, but I believe it was worth the effort and and the value of my attendance was even greater than that of a “normal” standup because there were updates that couldn’t have happened through other informal channels such as around the dinner table. Here are key updates that were shared during these remote standups:
Boy#1 announced he finally decided which college he will attend in the fall
Boy#2 described on his progress in his exhausting life guard certification course
Boy#3 reported on things he was doing with friends and something he was working on on the piano
My daughter can make an adventure story from almost any experience (and she did), but I mostly remember her saying she loved and missed me
My wife reported her grades earned in her graduate school class and where she was on her final paper
I was able to share the experience I had eating dinner beneath the Space Shuttle Atlantis
My cul-de-sac was reported to be haunted; not near my house, but at the other end. Most of the mysterious events seemed to be in proximity to the abandoned (vacant with a “For Rent” sign out front) house on the street. I had a carefully neutral response when informed by my daughter of the alleged haunting, but as a whole I was pleased–a haunted cul-de-sac is certainly interesting. At least as long as it’s the other end . . .
As the unexplained incidents increased, it seemed like we might need to prepare for a Ghostbuster’s style end-of-the-world battle scenario. But instead of succumbing to fear of the unknown, my daughter and her crony, in true Nancy Drew style, founded a detective agency to investigate.
I don’t recall having read Nancy Drew books except for when her path crossed with the Hardy Boys and they collaborated on a mystery. For my daughter, however, they have been a source of entertainment–both during the reading and then during the inspired adventures. With a sleuth bag in which carry detective gear, one is always ready for a mystery.
There was much detectiving and investigation as the girls went up and down the cul-de-sac and deliberated in their office (the gazebo). Eventually I was informed that all of the mysterious occurrences had a logical explanation. I think this was a relief to my daughter who replaced fear of the unknown with confidence of comprehension. However, now she needs another mystery. Also, I will miss living on a haunted cul-de-sac . . .
My family has many happy memories associated with our after dinner reading. Gordon Korman’s No Coins, Please is one of very few books that has warranted being read aloud twice as a family. There are many hilarious passages throughout the text, but probably the most memorable is when one of the characters announces “Sheldon, Cow Expert!”
Those words are perhaps not funnier than the rest of the book, but for some reason the first time those words were read over the dinner table the family was reduced to uncontrollable laughter which continued for some time. The second time we read this book, despite (or perhaps due to) being anticipated, similar mayhem ensued. And now that phrase and book are associated with one of may happy moments we have shared.
Although not extremely flexible, we nevertheless find situations where we can quote those now immortal words. Whenever we do, the family joins together in laughter and any unfortunate bystanders simply stare quizzically–we’ve mostly given up trying to explain. It’s just to hard to explain who Sheldon is, what a Cow Expert is, why Sheldon is a Cow Expert, why he announces “Sheldon, Cow Expert!” and why it is so funny to my family.
