Lights, Literacy and Little things

Finally Autumn's Child has her lights. She seems more real to me now than ever. She seems like a child, stretching her reach to its limits, she seems to have been doing so since before time. I'm pleased.

In the September issue of Wired is an article by Clive Thomson about the effects of the internet on literacy. It's been thought for years now that literacy was being eaten alive by the net. Certainly language is affected by the 'new' medium. But language is a living thing, and prone to change with the times, not always for the better. Thomson's article argues that now that students are writing for an audience, writing skills are actually improved overall. There does seem to be some peer pressure motivation at work here. Despite the dribble and fluff of myspace, twitter and the like, students are at least writing more. Does practice make perfect?


I don't know. I went online to learn more. Interestingly, Thomson's article came up first in my search results.
There seems to be a fair amount of interest in the subject. I'll be watching. I'm interested to hear what you think.


This evening Orion accidently saw a preview on television for some upcoming Halloween programming. Dammit. It had clips featuring Chucky and the clown face from Saw. It was brief, but enough that he said it freaked him out a bit. So after reading I promised to stay until he fell asleep.
I put on a Samauri Jack DVD quietly for some familiar background noise and read with my booklight. After about ten minutes I felt him jump. He opened his eyes and told me he felt as though he fell. He was smiling and a little embarrassed. I explained that this is something everyone does, and how it's a thing that happens when our brains tell our muscles they can relax. Something that everyone does. Not children, but everyone. It was another of those reminders that he's not just my child, he's a person, an individual, subject to the same life curriculum as the rest of us humans. It's a curriculum I can't insulate him from. I know this. I've already watched my other children cross boundaries into their own spaces. And I've known since he discovered the alphabet that he was well on his way. It makes me a little sad. Of course it does. Because it's evidence, proof even, that everything changes and that we can hold onto nothing. But it was a beautiful moment, his smile, his realization that he'd straddled the boundary between asleep and awake. I feel extremely fortunate to have been there to see it.

g'night