'Tis the Season!

Faire season, that is! Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire is upon us and I want to see everything! And everyone! And with this year's theme pirate-y, and with the different themed weekends...

There are so many Faire-vorite things, as sung by Rowan and the Rose (who are engaged to be married sometime during the season!).

Our favorite performers of all Her Majesty's entertainment is Barely Balanced, comedy - acrobat - jugglers. They're amazing and we love them and they haven't been at PARF for a couple years now, but they will be BACK for one weekend only, Sept 7-8.

We also love love love The Mad Mechanicals, who "put the shake in Shakespeare". They can sum up any of Shakespeare's plays improvisationally, and they are not afraid to lay their bodies on the line to further the humor. (Thanks, Jill! Stay dry!) Aaaand they won't be at PARF until the latter half of the season.

So we'll see Rowan and the Rose, and Empty Hats, and Circus Vagabonds this weekend, and we'll see which pirates win, and a first for us, we'll be there on Time Travelers weekend.

God save the Queen!

---

PS Once again, Wil Wheaton has managed to encapsulate, succinctly and from the heart, the merits of embracing geekdom in whatever form it takes. Love what you love and welcome others who love it, too.

Indiana Jones cosplay

source: reddit user Speeedo
Why would you get your photo taken with just Indy when you could frame a whole tableau of you AND Indy running away from a boulder?

Add it to the list.

I suspect if it weren't faire season, this Renaissance capelet wouldn't even have caught my eye. But it is, and it did.

TIL E.B. White went by "Andy"

Which put me in mind of Andy from Toy Story.

Letters of Note published a letter he wrote to his editor on why he wrote Charlotte's Web. Well, kind of why. I also am delighted by the idea that he took Charlotte's egg sac home with him and let her kids make webs on his dresser. And I admit that in practice I would have been kind of freaked out. EB White: A book is a sneeze

Geneology, or I looked at The Hundred Family Surnames and blinked.

TIL that the Hundred Family Surnames is a real thing, not just a concept.

So of course I looked for Yee. Which, in Mandarin, is Yu. (Yee is Toisanese.)
But I don't know how to alphabetize in Chinese.¹
And there are a lot of ways to write Yu.
Wiki had a list of 25 different characters that are pronounced "Yu": 余, 于, 魚, 鱼, 漁, 渔, 楀, 柳, 劉, 刘, 俞, 喻, 兪, 於, 遇, 虞, 郁, 尉, 禹, 游, 尤, 庾, 娛, 娱, and 茹. Within that, they highlighted eleven.
Our family writes it, 余.
Which evidently is the 90th name in the book of 100 Family Surnames.
Yee

¹ As interesting as the Parade of Nations² always is, one uniqueness of the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing 2008 was that, until announced (posted onscreen), I never had a handle on which countries were coming up. And that's setting aside political quirks like Taiwan being separate from China, but how separate depends on whose government you ask.
² One Winter Games, Big Frog and I were watching the Opening Ceremonies with a group of friends, and Earl and another sound tech from our church decided that they were going to seize the opportunity to become the Mexican bobsled team. Build your bucket list!



PS TIL Yee is also in the Urban Dictionary. Evidently Yee is ebonics for "Hooray!"

What is the FIRST book you remember?

FIRST is what makes this a tough question for me. I simply don't remember not reading! That's a good thing. I grew up at the library, Howard County Central Branch, with mom volunteering all the time, cutting out projects for storytime and shelving, shelving, shelving.

But first book? I'm going with Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things that Go. I remember looking for Goldbug on every page and identifying the curiously specific vehicles, in the vein of the Kissmobile we saw at the airport open house. Mom says my first word was "truck". What does that say about me?

Mrs Starks, who lived across the street, says she remembers me on the front lawn reading and wearing a Pampers. I went to kindergarten reading and writing, print and cursive. Part of that also stems from being in a neighborhood with a lot of kids of all ages, so just about everyone had to strive to keep up with the "big kids".

Some other books I remember from really young are:

• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle¹
• When I was 5, our babysitter gave our family a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends. I wanted it for my very own so instead of putting it on the family bookshelves, I hid it under my bed and read it by flashlight. I've never actually grown out of keeping books under the bed.
• All my elementary school teachers read aloud to us. Mrs Sandler introduced me to The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie (Andrews) Edwards.
• Reading Rainbow was the BEST kids' program! Mom recently gave me a bag of books we bought because we heard about them from LeVar Burton^2,3, including but not limited to:
  • Bea and Mr Jones, about a kindergartener swapping positions for a day with her dad. Not swapping bodies a la Freaky Friday, just the 5yo going to work and the corporate adult going to kindergarten.
  • Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport, about not wanting to move, especially from familiar NYC to such a foreign environment as Texas. This was also my first exposure to "you pronounce it like an "H"".
  • A Chair for My Mother
  • A Pocket for Corduroy, which I have always preferred to Corduroy.
  • Gregory, the Terrible Eater
• Mom also dug out my copy of How we are Born, How we Grow, How our Bodies Work, and How we Learn, which is the first encyclopedic science-y book I remember really working through. It was not just a fact or two per page but loads of pictures surrounded by different sized type for how much you wanted to/were able to dig into the material.

¹ More recently, I introduced The Very Hungry Caterpillar to my friend C. She was perhaps 3 then? And she had the memory to remember-read (or perhaps picture-read) the book after my reading it to her just once. A few days later she was feeling kinda blah, so I suggested a slice of watermelon, a cupcake, a sausage, etc, "like the Very Hungry Caterpillar", which she was very excited about. Her mom, by contrast, suggested a green leaf. Less-happy C protested, "I'm not a caterpillar, I'm a girl!" Her mom replied, "So you were only a caterpillar for junk food."
² But you don't have to take MY word for it.
³ I know you're "supposed" to recognize him from Star Trek. But to me he'll always be the guy from Reading Rainbow. Actually, we recently found him on Perception on TNT as a recurring character. He plays the department chair over the lead, Eric McCormack (Will Truman from Will & Grace)'s character. I'm very much enjoying the show.

It makes me sad that kids' books have such a short shelf life! They get loved hard and wear out. I heard once that most kid lit gets a 6mo print run and then on to the next. Some of these fabulous titles I bet you could still find, but others have come and gone. Fortunately new authors and illustrators are cropping up every year! A few recent favorites include:

• Patricia Polacco
• Kevin Henkes
• Mo Willems (My favorite of his is Hooray for Amanda and Her Alligator, although I also like Knuffle Bunny. Less fond of the pigeon, but I know he has his followers)
• Suzanne Bloom (A Splendid Friend Indeed and its three-that-I-know-of sequels)

And longtime authors and illustrators:

• Sandra Boynton (my mom's favorite illustrator ever)
• Rosemary Wells (Max & Ruby)
• Tomie dePaolo (Strega Nona)
• Steven Kellogg (who illustrated for a number of other authors as well)

So... what was your FIRST?

PS I wonder, if I asked my mom and my dad what they remember as my first book, what they would say?

Murland, hon!

Yay, Murlan! Maryland, my Maryland!

Buzzfeed, journalistic summit that it is, recently published 20 reasons why Maryland is the coolest state. Go there now and read it. We'll wait for you. It's a pretty cool list. And all factually true, if perhaps a bit biased.

"Where are you from?" means very different things depending on how it's asked, but for me the reality is, although I was born in Detroit, I moved at 2yo and simply don't remember living there. I grew up in Maryland, or as we say it, "Murlan"¹.

¹Bawlmer, Murlan, as opposed to Warshington, which all good Murlanders call Dee Cee. I have a colleague who's from Montgomery County and who cheers for the Redskins and Nationals. I'm from Howard County (HoCo) and cheer for the Ravens and Orioles. Not to say that there isn't crossover. But as we live smack dab inbetween Eagles/Phillies/Flyers Philadelphia and Steelers/hey the Pirates are worth talking about this year/Penguins Pittsburgh, any time we see anything sports-related in purple or burgundy it makes us glad. (And yes, sometimes I spell Murlan/Murland with and sometimes without the D. Deal with it.)

This month actually is a turning point for me. As of the tail end of August, I will have lived in Pee Ay ² longer than Murland. But I'm always asking people where they're from, and it seems to me that all transplants to PA identify themselves as from somewhere else no matter how long they've lived in the area.

²Is PA the only state³ that self-identifies by its postal abbreviation? Pee-Ay? Pennyslvania is a really long word. When I lived in Mechanicsburg, my mom always commented on its having so many syllables, too.
³ It's a commonwealth, actually. Not a state at all. But in Harrisburg most everyone seems to work "for the state", not "for the commonwealth", which I suppose also is saving syllables.

But every time we cross into Murland and see the big "Welcome to Maryland" sign, subheaded with the governor's name, we count off and yell "Hi, Martin!" Leaving, we yell, "Bye, Martin!" Or whoever is the current governor. Parris... Bob... Martin... this time next year they'll be voting for Anthony... The sign tells us what we should yell. We actually don't do that leaving/entering PA, because recently I literally had to look up who was the current governor, despite having driven past his house twice this week.

There's no place like home.