Language, Literacy, and Storytelling – Part 3

A Teacher's Reflections

In Part 2, I shared worrisome statistics about children who enter school excited to learn to read, and the dramatic drop-off when they are not exposed to books and hearing words.  I talked about the next step, engaging children in both conversation and thinking – writing picture stories.

Part 3
There is proof in the pudding down the road.  Language, literacy and storytelling makes a difference, and not just with children.  Well, there’s more. Adults. That proof is in the high quality of Cuban cigars. It’s a great story, one of my favorites.

Reading aloud never gets old. It weathers time and generations. For adults, when we are read to, we listen, think and feel. And, we have to stretch our brain. When we only hear the words it sharpens our mind, and our performance is much better.

The Cuban cigar industry understood this. That’s why they make…

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Free books or the price of ignorance…

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”  – Haruki Murakami 

“You don’t have to burn books to destoy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”     – Ray Bradbury

For Jack Eason and the other authors who keep us in stories despite the struggle. Please visit Jack at his blog: https://havewehadhelp.wordpress.com/ and do all you can to support our independent authors, presses and publishers.  I owe so much to the books in my life as well as the neighbor’s daughters that taught a three year-old how to read. It saved me.

Free books or the price of ignorance…

The author says nobody wants to buy

Real books, waiting for kindle

Or what they can get for free

Long ago I learned that

Precious little is free

Waiting to see the strings attached

Or what might appear

From behind someone’s back

I will admit to a “free” book

But I did have to exchange one

Of my own precious volumes

The price to be paid

Yet Jack is right

The author deserves his compensation

When one writes, much of who we are

What we believe is invested in each word

Writing is not merely work, a job

It is opening veins and pouring

Out your blood, opening oneself

To the acid tongues of the critics,

Those judging not only your work

But your life, who you are

Fiction’s DNA, the authors reality

To take what is produced

Without re-numeration, theft

 

 

–

Remember, purchasing a good book is a gift you give yourself. It needs no batteries nor electricity and is easily shared. 

 

Bisous, 

Léa

 

 

Cyberspace has done it…

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficent means for going backwards.” – Aldous Huxley

“I know there’s a proverb which says ‘To err is human,’ but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.” – Agatha Christie

 

Cyberspace has done it

 

Cyberspace – has eaten my poem

Two pages- copy, sans paste

Without a trace

The shortcut copied

But wouldn’t paste

Said nothing was there

 

Anger at an inanimate object

As useful as catching waves

Yet time away might save it

From my temptation to destroy

That which stole from me

 

So patiently it waited

Fumbling to copy it all

No, of course it wasn’t – being

Extremely technically challenged

Can’t I just blame the new PC?

My MAC, saved as I typed

 

This old dog – slow but steady

Never wins the race

Technology I’ll never conquer

It keeps me in my place

Humble, frustrated and confused

 

In the deepest despairs of

Cyberspace, my ire is raised

About to trash it, not my fault

When technology is granted

A royal reprieve – F.F.T.T.

Feline Focus Therapy Training

 

 

In the immortal words of

E.M. Forster – “I don’t know

What I think, till I read what I said”

Two pages, a poem in the ether

No ropes to pull it back

I stare at a blank page

 

Bisous,

Léa

 

 

Endings, beginnings …

For those of you who have not yet met Carly Jay, meet the most courageous person I have ever known.

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Silence

“Silence is a true friend who never betrays.”   – Confucius

“True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.”  – William Penn

“Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.”  – Marcel Marceau

                                                                                  –

Silence 

 

That is not what

She is saying –

Music – a passion

But silence – silken, warm

Comforter, blanket, cape

To withdraw –

The cocoon where

Creativity germinates freely

Where her mind

slows its frantic pace

From chaos to

Inspiration

 Repressed mantra

– 

Silence – her fortress

It has her back

Shelter from the storm

 She hears the predator coming

The clacking of her heels

Rattling of keys

Always different from other disasters

Silence, sounds its warning

Flight, the favored response

Hushed cantata

–

Soldiers

Recount lying in wait

As the enemy approaches

Rubber sole alarm

The heart skips beats

Hands quiver, mouth dry

Words, forsake her

Her litany to be alone

 Quelled psalms of youth

–

Soil, secure, reticent, fertile

Where seeds finds solace, 

Nourishment, sanctuary,

Strength, time – her friends

Adapting, evolving, processing

She bursts forth

 Her ode to joy

 

–

Bisous,

                                              – Léa                  

                          

 

Damned!

“My Alma mater was books, a good library… I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”   – Malcolm X

 

“We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”    –  B. F. Skinner

 

“You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.”   – Dr. Seuss

 

Damned!

 

Damned!

Again and again

You introduce me

To another author

I haven’t read before

Before now

Before this discovery

Something in a title

Or description

Catches my eye

Inflames my curiosity

And the world

Of another author

Is opened to me

Perhaps this one

Will hook me

And more of

Their work

Lines my

Overcrowded shelves

Can’t you hear them groan

DEMANDING

To be read?

Piled so high they

LEAN over edges

Hunger for more

Les livres

Well loved stories

Searching for what else

The author has written

Words, stories, poems

I never could keep

This addiction secret

Hooked so young

A passion often key

In forming new friendships

Yes, that is me

I am damned

Damned to a life

Of books

Merci beaucoup!

*

Bisous

Léa

mots d’une immigré / words of one immigrant

 

“There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.”   –  Michel de Montaigne

 

“Communication works for those who work at it.”   –  John Powell

 

 

 

 

mots d’une immigrés

at times

immersion

comes slowly

despite desire

and diving in

head first

i still catch

myself

glancing at

the time

yet

en la belle France

time is not

measured in

minutes, hours

or seconds.

but in kisses

aperos,

discussion

avec des amis

au-dessus d’ un repas

my tongue

trips and

tumbles over

vowels and

consonants

yet

la langue

française

moves stealthily,

silently,

randomly

into my written

voice

*

bisous,

léa

Un café s’il vous plaît

“A different language is a different vision of life.”   – Federico Fellini

“The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language.”  

– Ezra Pound

“A man who does not know a foreign language is ignorant of his own.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

*

Un café s’il vous plaît

*

Most mornings

I

Start the same

Un petit noir

Deux fois

*

Aujourd’hui

Making my pilgrimage

Despite pouring rain, et

Vent violents

My new umbrella

Turned inside

Out

*

Le journal à lire

People to greet

Chatting vigilantly

With the new-found

Tongue – as if

Trying it on for

Size

*

Se réprimander

Unsure at times

If I am grammatically

Correct

Yet eager to

Améliorez

*

Risqué du rire

Armed to laugh

At myself

Never one to stop

And test the waters

Je plonge dans la tête

D’abord

*

Laughing at

Myself

I will return tomorrow

Practicing, stumbling,

Learning

*

Bisous,

Léa