New Favorite Font Collective

I've found my new favorite font place! Its the League of Moveable Type. Its a great collection of free fonts (which can be hard to find sometimes), and a great attitude. Their tagline: "No more bullshit. Join the revolution." Fits right in here at Casa Ball.

Also, did you know that the ampersand (&) symbol was originally written as a combo of the Latin word et (means and). Check out this awesome font project focusing on this interesting symbol. The fonts featured on here, however, don't tend to be free. But - they are pretty!

Found: Library List

Sometimes I find really interesting things in library books, little forgotten moments from someone else's life. So, as I find these interesting little tidbits, I'll share them on here.

I've just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest book Outliers: The Story of Success, which I borrowed from my local library, of course.

I found someone else's list of checked out books and thought it was interesting to see what else they were reading.

They checked out:

Outliers

How babies talk: The Magic and the Mystery of Language in the first 3 years of life

Why America's Children Can't Think: Creating Independent Minds for the 21st Century

Tales from the Dad Side: Misadventures in Fatherhood

Interesting list. Sounds like this person was interested in helping their child make it. I'm wondering if, perhaps, just a wee bit, I too am worried about my daughter being successful. It's a common obsession we Americans tend to have. But, should we instead be concerned with giving more children the chance to succeed (including my own) instead of figuring out how best she can edge out her peers? I'd like to think that I'm in the charitable, egalitarian first group. But as my Little Bit gets older, I find myself falling back into the "let's beat them all" category. And I'm not ok with that.

This book wasn't quite what I expected. Mostly, he completely debunked the fairy tales we tell ourselves about successful people. Outliers, when we take a close look, end up being that way because they were fortunate to be born in the right time (month and year in some cases), to the right kind of parents, and are given the right kind of opportunities. Which all adds up to the conclusion that success in our society really isn't something you have much control over. Kind of depressing. But something I've felt/believed for quite some time.

Lest you think this book is a complete downer, Gladwell actually has several great ideas for ways we can improve our education system to remove inherent biasing as well as overcome the growing distance between american students and their international peers.

His first contention is that birth month does matter. Since we separate out the "gifted" students so early (kindergarten/first grade), the students who are on the older spectrum have quite an advantage over their younger peers as they are more mature (both emotionally and physically) and appear more "gifted" than younger children. He goes through and shows how this is true with pro hockey players in Canada.

We could compensate for this bias by either waiting to separate out gifted track children until there isn't as much developmental difference between a child born in January and a child born in September, which ends up being about 4th or 5th grade (9 - 10 years old). Or, even more intriguing, we could divide up the classes (and gifted testing) into thirds - so all students born between Jan and April in one cohort, May - August in another, and Sept - Dec in a third. That way students are only competing with others who are within 3 months of their own development.

This is quite intriguing to me because my daughter's birthday is on 12/26. The cutoff date for entering kindergarten is 9/1, so she'll be on the older side of her class. I've been talking to various parents to see what they thought as far as trying to get her into school earlier. The advice has been quite unanimous. Don't force it. Wait a year. The overwhelming reason is that this gives her more time to develop intellectually before she has to perform on the required tests. Even though she is curious and delights in learning - the longer we can keep her out of the formal school system the better chance she has of being successful in it. And Gladwell confirmed the anecdotal evidence I'd collected. It's better for your children to be the older ones in their class.

The other suggestion he had that I'd like to see get more attention is to drop the whole notion of summer vacation. It is summer vacation where we see the learning gaps between rich and poor get way out of proportion, mostly because poor children are not given the same opportunities to improve their skills during their time off. I vote to get rid of it. Not just for the learning part. But also because working parents now have to figure out child care (since most of us don't get a nice long 3 month break) which puts unnecessary stress on everyone.

Anyway - I enjoyed Outliers. And when I take it in context with some of the other great books I've been reading lately, has a lot of big ideas on how to change our children's future. And not just my child. Everyone's child.

This feels like this is going to be a theme for me for a bit. Stay tuned for more rambles on this topic.

PS. In other news, the camera repair geniuses have said they can have my camera back to my desperate hands in about 2-3 weeks. I cannot believe how very much I miss my camera. Here's hoping I never have to send my baby off like this again!

Merry Christmas!

So I know I am totally late, but I really hope everyone had a great holiday season.

Snowy Fence, originally uploaded by hannah8ball.

We got snow for Christmas! It was in the upper 70s the day before. And Christmas Eve, snow on the fence. Unbelievable. It's apparently been something like 50 years since TX got snow for Christmas.

We got all bundled up and went out and played in it. The snow wasn't that great for building snow people, but we still had lots of fun playing in it. And then went inside for a nice cup of hot chocolate.

Hoping you and yours had a great holiday!

The moment

You know what I'm talking about.

You settle in with a hot cup of tea or coffee, or a cold beer, with a good book, or your knitting project, or your new game. You've had a good day. You had a lot that needed to get done today, and here you've managed to get all the balls in the air at the right time, in the right order, and everything fell into place just like it should have.

You've called the babysitter to remind her about tonight. You've prepared the dinner fixings so everyone can eat. You even managed to try that new bread recipe you've been dying to taste.

Your husband calls to let you know he's ahead of schedule. So you move your timeline back and hour to make sure that everything still gets done before the horde descends and this moment of calm is overwhelmed.

At this precise moment, when you feel your body relax. Your brain betrays you.

Suddenly you realize that you have forgotten one very important thing. That one thing that needed to be done before you can enjoy the evening with your love, before the babysitter gets here. That little load of laundry with the baby's things in it that absolutely must be done for her to be able to go to bed tonight. That also requires the hot water you'd been counting on for your nice, hot shower.

At that moment, every word your mother ever told you never ever to say comes streaming out of your mouth. That moment, all of your well laid plans, and flawless execution. All meaningless.

Why is it that I always forget the one thing that absolutely had to get done until it's too late to get it done?

First Snow!

First Snow!, originally uploaded by hannah8ball.

Just to prove that yes, indeed, we can get winters down here in TX, it snowed on Dec 2! Didnt stick arond long, but wow - I think its gonig to be a cold one this year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone was able to enjoy good food and got to spend time with family, both those you chose, and those you didn't. We had a great visit with my mom and Richard, and we also got to spend the Thursday meal with friends. Jason went all out on the cooking, and everything turned out really well - except that I burned the bottom of the bread (I attempted to bake it at the same time as the turkey and the shelf ended up being too close to the bottom). Still, everything was great, and so are the leftovers :)

Here's a great little video from the last glee episode that just made my heart happy (ok the vocal effects are WAY overdone on this show, but bear with me...)

Well, I'm off to enjoy the rest of our time off and this gorgeous weather we've been having lately. Have a good one!

In a world with more than 6 billion people...

it was bound to happen...
There is another red-headed Hannah out there who likes coffee, sometimes. Check it out on etsy. I'm surprised by how tempted I am to buy this...

Its interesting also because I just listened to this episode of Radio Lab. Yes, I know I'm way behind, but these shows are like gold - I like to spread them out to make them last. The concept of the show is fascinating - that the perception of fate is really just a failure to zoom out far enough. And here, my friend Nancy, dropped a link on my facebook page to this delightful work of art to prove that, even halfway around the world, there is someone out there who, freakily enough resembles me in some key ways (but I'm sure she doesn't resemble me in other key ways).

Ladies and gentlemen, your moment of zen.