Greetings! Here are some things that I’ve been wanting to share.
A 2015 study tested children during one whole year for the 16 most common respiratory viruses. Children under 5 tested positive for one of them ~50% of the time, not necessarily with symptoms. YUP.
“If there was one thing Maria Montessori hated, it was play. She also disapproved of toys, fairy tales and fantasy.” From a fascinating review by Bee Wilson of “The Child is The Teacher” in London Review of Books. I know nothing about Montessori’s life or views, will see if I can get my hands on the book through the library.
New to me: I learned about Dutch Loops from Beast Academy’s new Puzzle 4 book. My 4th Graders have been very much enjoying them! To get a feel for it, grab some graph paper and make an enclosed region. Try to draw a closed loop that passes through every square in the grid. Can you always do it? Does it depend on the starting region?
Dylan Kane has been blogging some awesome reflections that (to be upfront about this) engage with certain things I have written, but he takes them in his own thoughtful direction, check out the conclusion to his post on homework: “So there’s the pickle. I want to do important things in class, so homework can’t be critical to student success. Families want homework to understand what’s happening in school. But I need to keep the time constrained so it doesn’t take forever for some students.” It’s tough!
During this past year I started keeping track of songs that I liked in a Spotify playlist. Here it is. My other favorite year-end music list came from Aquarium Drunkard.
From that Aquarium Drunkard list I learned of the London Odense Ensemble’s Jaiyede Suite, Pt. 1. It starts with a Tomorrow Never Knows drone and quickly settles into a dark groove before reaching a keyboard solo that is superbly dark and chirpy—it sounds like a robot having a panic attack. I’m obsessed.
A pair of good books: Trust by Hernan Diaz (fiction), The Comedians by Kliph Nesteroff (non-fiction).
Watched: Waiting for Guffman, and now I desperately want to rewatch Best in Show. Fred Willard is a genius. Here is a very old video of him performing in Greco & Willard on the Ed Sullivan Show. Here he is on Fernwood 2night, in a slightly edgier context.
Go ahead and get lost in magazineparody.com which is precisely what it sounds like, a detailed and extensive collection of magazine parodies from the very old to the very recent.
I continue to write a weekly newsletter for The American Bystander, the humor magazine. In a recent edition I ranked my moral accomplishments from 2022.
And, finally, a question. Are there any topics you’d like to see me write about in 2023? I’m sorry that I’ve been slow to get the next Q&A out, but I’d like to do more of those. If you have thoughts or suggestions, please, place them in the comments!
Thanks,
MP