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GANE Insight: Kim Jorgensen Gane's Blog

I'm no longer directionally challenged--I have a clear vision to celebrate #MOREin2014 via GANEPossible.com. Preempting my novel in progress, Bluebirds, I'm very close to releasing my first GANE Possible publication (prescriptive "Dr. Mom" nonfiction), Beating the Statistics: A Mother's Quest to Reclaim Fertility, Halt Autism & Help Her Child Grow From Behavior Failure to Behavior Success. I'm also working on completing my memoir, My Grandfather's Table: Learning to Forgive Myself First.

It took a lifetime to get here. This blog documents my quest to self-fulfillment through my writing, and ultimately to shifting my focus to Beating the Statistics & My Grandfather's Table and speaking about them. They are the wellness and the memoir parts of my journey that had to be told, so that Bluebirds can one day be the meaningful, but fictional *story* it aspires to be.

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ENCORE Variety Show: An Entertaining Way You Can Support the Arts

8/19/2014

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My son will begin middle school this year at the middle school I attended. It’s the same middle school my brother, my eldest daughter, and two of my nieces attended. My son will likely be a fourth generation graduate of St. Joseph High School. And it is on that beautifully renovated and fully updated stage where I, and some 160 others from the 1950s through the 90s, will return this weekend for our ENCORE Variety Show to benefit the St. Joseph Public Schools Foundation. I’m among the very proud alumni of a school system in which I staunchly believe, and for which I am a proud advocate.
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Photo credit: Don Campbell, Herald Palladium staff
The reasons I love St. Joseph Public Schools are many fold. They include the strong English department that taught me to write, despite never handing in a lick of homework and not graduating from college (I don’t recommend that).  What saved my life and my sanity during my parent’s divorce, however, was the fine arts department, led by the likes of Miss Betty Theisen (fondly referred to by the lucky generations she taught as Miss T), Robert Brown, Dennis Bowen, and Steve Reed. Mr. Bowen, whom I’m honored to have accompany me this weekend, helped to grow my voice and provided opportunities to perform beyond church choir. 

My favorite memory from high school remains when WGN’s Jeff Hoover and I played opposite one another in The King and I our senior year.

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WGN: And Now For Something Completely Hoover
I haven’t sung in ages except for the occasional family wedding or funeral and alcohol-infused Karaoke. I’m mortified each time I recall when Jeff and I attempted to sing Islands in The Stream after neither of us had even heard the song since we'd rehearsed sufficiently and performed it with a band backing us for Showtime thirty years ago. There’s a reason neither of us volunteered to revive that performance for ENCORE. If you saw Sunday’s Herald Palladium, you are as excited as I am that Jeff is appropriately reviving a comedy skit, The Old Prospectors. He performed it back in the 80s with Jim Bartalone, and will again, hopefully to a welcoming and supportive full house.

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Photo credit: Godvine.com
The hearts of both performers and appreciators of entertainment and comedy were broken last week when the news of Robin Williams' apparent suicide socked us in the same bellies we would hold, laughing, often in tears, as we watched Williams perform. I grew up on Robin Williams’ comedy. My daughters watched Hook and Mrs. Doubtfire a thousand times each. My sweet father-in-law passed away last week, too. Israel. Questionable shootings. Too many tears of a different sort have been shed lately. We need this weekend and all the occasions that bring opportunities to laugh, to celebrate, and to recognize how music and comedy save our souls. How they and the people we love are sometimes the only things that make life worth living.  

Though he didn't graduate, Robin Williams was classically trained at Juilliard. Times are hard and cuts are prevalent for performing arts programs in schools across the country. Whether or not we shine brightly or fizzle hopelessly on our old stage this Friday and Saturday, it’s only a small piece of what this week means. It’s about supporting the future of St. Joseph Public Schools. It’s about continuing to provide programs that are sometimes the only lifeline for kids who desperately need to succeed and to shine and to have control of something when they often have so little control over what happens in their young lives.   

2014 has been a turning point for me. I wanted to stop being angry. I wanted more, so I decided, and I got it. I put myself “out there,” owning the title of Writer. In the winter, I took a train to Montana to attend a writers’ retreat. In the spring, I auditioned and won a spot reading one of my pieces for Listen to Your Mother in one of thirty-two shows across the US. This summer is almost over, and I am at the editing phase after completing a draft of my first GANE Possible Publication for release late this fall. I accomplished that through the #Write2TheEnd program I co-facilitate with my friend and fellow writer, Ami Hendrickson. We can’t wait to begin our fall session September 15th.  We hope you’ll join us and claim the title of Writer for yourself if that’s something you’ve always wanted to do. In 2015 I plan to learn to play the guitar my husband bought me over a year ago.

The idea is to stop dreaming, stop worrying about failure, and start doing. A foundation of my #MOREin2014 philosophy includes going back to my roots, to the things I enjoyed when I was young; before poor choices, responsibility, jobs, family, kids, new friends, or a spouse with different interests allowed me, little-by-little, to push my passions aside. Before I knew it, I'd allowed myself to make the choice to stop doing what I once loved: singing.

Earlier this year, I read Patty Chang Anker’s book, Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave. I reached out to Patty to tell her what a huge impact her book had on me. Between my possible and her brave, we became online friends. St. Joe is an incredible vacation destination and our “Riviera of the Midwest” happens to be where Patty overcame her fear of moving water and surfed for the first time, in WINTER (see chapter 7). I introduced Patty earlier this month when she visited Forever Books. Some Nerve inspired me enough to pitch an idea to the ENCORE powers that be to, sorta kinda but with a twist, revive a performance I did for Showtime, oh so many years ago. I am scared to death. But, like Patty might do, I’m singing despite my fear. 

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Photo credit: Scott R. Gane Photography
I can’t wait to grace my home stage with old friends and fellow alumni. The idea is thrilling. It’s exhilarating. And I especially can’t wait to honor the many years of Showtime and the teachers who made the spotlight, writing, comedy, music, and drama possible for generations of kids who desperately need the outlet and pure joy performing was and will be again. Whether it’s with us or at us, take time out to laugh this weekend, and do it while supporting a great school. 

Tickets are available online or in person at Edgewater Bank at the corner of Broad and Main streets. Get yours today! 
6 Comments

BACK TO SCHOOL WITH A TWIST, or MIDLIFE WITH A SIDECAR

8/20/2013

5 Comments

 
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I heard Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook and author of, Lean In, speak at BlogHer ’13 last month, and I must admit to being surprised at how much I identified with her message.  The question the Lean In campaign asks each of us is,  “What could you do if you weren’t afraid?”  I’ve lived my life afraid for as long as I can remember, and I’d venture to say my husband has, too.  He’s run and relocated to the next corporate job because he was afraid of losing the last one.  I’ve written my whole life, but fear of failure as well as fear of success prevented me from sharing anything I’d written until I began blogging just over two years ago.

“They” say the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting different results.  I guess my husband and I have been a little insane for going on the last twenty-one years.  When the inevitable challenge has presented us with the same obvious choices, we’ve gone with our usual response, until now.  This would be easier to grin and bear if we weren’t both at the same time attempting to make a midlife change to our knee-jerk response to life’s struggles, all while providing for a young child still at home.  
Every time I find myself not able to breathe or with a screaming headache, I try to understand and accept that it is taking all my husband has not to chase the easy money--for his American male, fifty-something work ethic not to risk another likely corporate disappointment, running on that hamster wheel.  We’re former Joneses in witness protection, only there’s no per diem. For my strapping 6’2” former firefighter/paramedic/police officer not to do what he’s always done--compromise his own happiness to feed us--but instead to marinate in this place where for the first time the actual possibility of failing to provide a roof over our heads does, too, is akin to taking a hot poker to his nether regions, something Corporate America has done enough.  Instead he’s limping along with his heart not quite in consulting as he builds a photography business on the side and dreams of having a food truck.  Things I want for him perhaps more than he wants them for himself.

Every fiber of my old self wants to run out and wait tables, tend bar, go back to being a miserable administrative assistant, or to throw together a hasty garage sale, even though everything I’ve done over the last two years has told me to keep writing, that I’m on the right path, that this me I’ve finally come back to is the me I was meant to be all along.  So instead, I’m composing this post from my new writers studio in a hip, lofty old factory turned (thankfully ridiculously cheap) artists’ Mecca, where I’ll focus on finishing my novel, and take the earnest leap to query and submit my writing for paid publication.

Our 500 thread-count sheets no longer possess the elastic wherewithal to remain tucked, and almost neither do I.  I try to be comforted knowing we still have friends with a big basement and even bigger hearts, and that we’re in this together.  We’ve been back home in Michigan where we belong for a year now, and where we have much easier access to our aging parents and married daughters.  This has been one of the longest summers in our history, but the ability to conduct our midlife crises nearer the support of friends and family has to be the only thing that truly counts right now.  

We will get through this, and come out the other side, hopefully having been rewarded and having taught our children to make choices that lead them to fulfilling lives much earlier than we did, even if today I wonder whether Ramen™ is available yet gluten free.

Maybe our son will always remember 5th grade as the year he had no new school clothes and carried a recycled backpack (hey, it’s a Jansport™, those things are guaranteed for life, right?), but hopefully he will also remember it as the year his parents eventually got it right.  This is the year we embraced the thrill ride of finding out who each of us is, instead of caving-in to what the Joneses would have done, even if neither of us has any fingernails left.  I’m calling it, 
Midlife with a Sidecar, where we’re all three taking the turns and holding on for dear life.  
5 Comments

Guest Post by Denise DiFulco:Tales of a Fifth-Grade Education -or- The Books

7/3/2013

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yours forever
Photo attribution:  Mathias Klang, http://www.flickr.com/photos/wrote/

Denise DiFulco is proud of herself for getting this #JudyBlumeProject post in right under the wire...and then we moved the wire, to an as yet undetermined time! Keep them coming, folks! With great stuff like this, we couldn't possibly stop now!  

Here's everything you need to know about the #JudyBlumeProject, including GUIDELINES to submit your own piece, as well as all the wonderful contributions to date.
Enjoy this moment in time #JudyBlumeProject piece by Denise DiFulco, writer/editor/author, at denisedifulco.com.


It’s the period book. Everyone calls it that. They never say its awkward, seven-word title. But also, that’s what it is: the period book. The one where the girl gets her period. And a bra.

I am 11 years old. I have neither my period, nor a bra. But I want to read the period book. Everyone is reading the period book. All they talk about is the period book. If I don’t read the period book, they certainly will talk about me.

Mom hasn’t yet pulled me into the basement, as she one day will, to talk about “it.” Not the just small “it”—the period “it”—but the big “it.” After a conversation where I declare I know what “it” is, she won’t say we need to talk about “it.” Instead she’ll tell me, “We need to talk about the birds and the bees.”

I know nothing about birds and bees and what they have to do with “it.” What I do know, I’ve learned from the other book. “The Book.” The one about the big “it.”

Finding “The Book,” the big “it” book, isn’t so easy. It’s not in the school library. It never would be in the school library. There are two copies at the public library.

This I know.

They sit atop a revolving rack—steps away from the librarian’s desk—some corner of their covers shorn away, spines bowed into an arch. On the front, a picture of a locket, suggesting the secrets within. I spin the rack, inspect the book about the fat girl, glance toward the desk. She’s looking down. Another turn. The locket reappears. A second check to be sure, only this time she smiles. I walk away.

Weeks pass and the girls at school are whispering and giggling in the halls. I, too, want to trade in whispers and giggles. I want to know what they know.

One day as I arrive at my fifth-grade desk, a friend shoves her hand into my knapsack. “Here,” she says. “Don’t tell anyone.”

I peer inside. It is “The Book.” The book about the big “it.”

The locket is half torn from the cover, but the contents are intact. I tuck it inside my desk to read the first page, then the second, then the third. Class has begun. I draw my loose-leaf binder over the lip of the table, the bottom edge of “The Book” resting on my thighs. The teacher is speaking, and the class learning something, I am sure. I am learning, too.

Next day I re-establish my cover: Binder pulled out, book beneath, resting on the edge of the tray. Its spine is so well-worn pages seem to unfold themselves. I am opening with them— following the words into another room—so when the teacher calls on me, I don’t answer. She walks around my desk, and as I realize this, I allow the binder to slip over my lap. She does not see.

Yes, I am learning.

Next time I’m more careful. I raise my hand. Answer questions. Look down thoughtfully. Continue my education.

By the time the bell rings, I, too, can whisper and giggle, trade in information so precious and rare no one dares speak its name. Somehow I am changed, though real change is far away. Many questions answered and so much yet to know. Like the noises. What are the noises?

I know they are important. There is no one to ask.
Denise DiFulco is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, Martha Stewart Living and numerous print and online publications. She currently is working on her first novel—loosely based on family history—which chronicles the life of a Jewish man who leaves Nazi Germany and renounces his identity only to find he can’t escape his past. Denise is blogging about her fiction writing at her recently launched blog, Setting Anchor, Setting Sail: A Writer’s Journey.

I'm SO very grateful to Denise for allowing me to share her story here! 
Copyright © 2013 Denise DiFulco.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission from the author.
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Hope and Homework, Today Anyway

2/14/2013

1 Comment

 
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He won't be nine much longer, this boy of mine who almost wasn't.  And nine is pretty terrific, and tough, all at the same time.

The past couple weeks have brought us to a crossroads with school work, in this, his first year of real grades.  This semester isn't going to look good.  But today?  Today was great! 

He burst into my arms the moment he reached the car.  I knew it was an exceptionally good day, because I'd received an email from his teacher.  "Mom!  I got to get off addition for Math Center and do multiplication and I PASSED!"  Yes, my fourth grader was stuck on the same (still) addition sheet for WEEKS, unable to finish the last three problems in the arbitrary two minutes.  My boy who has a little hitch in his brain body connection and who lets stuff get to him, like timed tests, like boys who are bullies, like girls who are "over" him because sometimes he gets stuck and he just "can't" get it. 

This is the same boy who is teaching others in his class to do long division, because that he gets.  Long division, he loves.  Multiplication, today, he loves.  Addition, not so much.  Ever. 

This is the same boy I reminded today how his teacher last year believed in him, and genuinely liked him, and who thought he was an amazing kid.  His teacher this year believes in him, genuinely likes him, and thinks he is an amazing kid.  I reminded my boy today that he has an amazing brain that is going to do amazing things someday; a brain that is already doing amazing things like long division.

He looked away, and swiped at his eyes.  He swiped at his eyes again, and then rubbed them vigorously. 

"Buddy?  What's the matter?"

"Sometimes I'm just so happy I have tears."

I swiped at my own eyes, so I could see the road before us, "You make me so happy that I have tears, too."

1 Comment

A Small World; A Huge Nation Broken

12/17/2012

2 Comments

 
The funny thing about our world these days is that Social Media vehicles like Twitter and Facebook have made it much smaller than it once was.  Due to the recent events in Newtown, Connecticut and the immediacy of shared information, other countries are suddenly offering their input and participating in a dialog that was once uniquely American.  I’m new to Twitter, but I’m becoming more and more aware that I could be talking to someone across oceans, and certainly across thousands of miles of tundra.  I could be talking to someone who isn’t American, about a topic that concerns Americans, because suddenly it weighs heavily on the hearts and in the minds of the world.

Such was the case last evening when a dialog began about gun control and mental health between two mothers in two different countries.  In the shorthand that is unique to Twitter, we only whispered at the surface, but I am building a great deal of respect for her views on success and failure, and we and the brilliant minds at Leadership Voices agree on the need for an urgent global discussion on mental wellness.  Irene Becker is a business coach and consultant with Just Coach It in Canada, and I am actually working with a business coach, Nancy Kaye, of Define Your Destiny in San Diego, California.  These women and others like them share a vision of the potential that can be reached by many who may have previously seen themselves as failures.  And it’s quite possible these two fine, smart, beautiful spirits who are trying to heal the hearts and the minds of the clients they work with, one at a time, may share some other similarities in their views on gun control.

I have a unique perspective on the issue of gun control, in that my husband is an ex-police officer/ firefighter/ paramedic and is a nationally recognized security expert who specializes in Business Continuity Planning that encompasses active shooter and violence in the workplace programs. 

We’re from Michigan, and we tend to be prepared sorts.  That being said, neither of us is against federal mandates for stricter gun control policies as they pertain to the consistent vetting (across the country) for past criminal and mental health issues, right to privacy be damned—I would not be opposed to such background checks on all members of legal age in a prospective household, a waiting period not to exceed a week, for example, safety checks and required safety courses.  With his background, my husband was part-owner of a gun store in our town for a time and served as gunsmith and armor to many of the local law enforcement agencies.  On occasion I worked in that gun store, and thus had to go through the extensive training and testing and obtain a Concealed Pistol License (CPL) myself.  I understand there are those who have very differing views on and feelings about guns than many of the rest of us in the US, as I’m sure we do on other issues.  Much like the taboo of mental illness, this wasn’t something I often felt I could talk about in California, as I imagine it wouldn’t be in many circles in Canada and other countries.  I must tell you, however, as a 5’0” woman who has been the victim of date-rape and who spent years as a single mom, I rather enjoy feeling competent and prepared; less scared and less like a potential victim all the time.

I suspect the incidence of all crimes is lower in Canada than in the US.  But here we are, and suddenly taking guns away from law-abiding citizens while leaving them in the hands of criminals and psychos who don’t abide by the laws of the land, amounts to piss poor planning.  However, Leadership Voices, Irene and Nancy are definitely onto something when they speak about the amount of stress under which our society lives and functions on a daily basis.  I’ve seen it first hand, having lived in Chicago for a time when our daughters were young, and more recently having lived in San Diego for two years.  We have chosen to return to our small, Midwestern town, where the pace and the demand and the traffic and the competition and the stress is far lower than what we experienced in either of those two bustling metropolitan areas, and frankly where I’m less afraid (and better prepared) to walk the streets.  There was a school shooting at Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad, California, not fifteen minutes north of our house when we first arrived there.  There were two incidences of highway snipers that occurred in the short time we lived there, the 2nd one ending with an incident AT our freeway exit.  There were robberies in malls, there were home invasions, there occurred two murders of cab drivers two exits to the south of ours in an area we frequented with out of town guests; all and much more in the short time we lived in California.

In our experience and in fact, the problems don’t stem from those of us who legally and responsibly own guns for the protection of our homes.  The problems tend more to come from those for whom guns have been purchased by others, or from those who illegally possess guns.  My hometown in Michigan sits on a stretch of highway that runs between Detroit and Chicago.  There is a great deal of drug running that occurs, and there is plenty of gun violence that occurs in the socioeconomically depressed and welfare dependent town that sits right across the river from ours.  We cross the river to go to the movies, and we cross the river to do our Christmas shopping.  Thus, we are occasionally the victims of muggings and other crimes, particularly this time of year, and shoplifting and petty larceny is rampant. 

Among the difficulties of the recent events in Newtown, CT, for me, is the fact that it has taken away an insular sense of security I once treasured here in my hometown.  Mine is very like the town of Newtown: lakeside, quaint, picturesque, we parent and love one another’s children without restraint; we look out for our neighbors.  Sandy Hook Elementary is a school very similar to my son’s.  The staff and the children who lost their lives, and ALL of the town’s and the nation’s and the world’s parents and citizens who grieve them, look and sound very similar to those in our town.  And even while I grieve my own and my children’s loss of innocence in such times, I have a strong sense that the past several years of economic destruction in many American families has left us heartbroken and emotionally, mentally, and financially battered.  Those with the capacity for hope and the mental stability to do as Irene so aptly describes in her essay, Winning the New War, to use our Constructive Discontent to Fail Forward, will survive and with the help of people like Irene and Nancy use our skills to grow and perhaps even to excel in these times.  It is the perpetually poverty-stricken, the sick and the tortured, the ones who suffer from undiagnosed and untreated mental illness, PTSD, and even chemical imbalances that can sometimes be attributed to something as simple as food sensitivities, who are clearly more susceptible to urges that lead them to take their pain and their anger out on innocent victims.

But patting them on their heads and holding their hands and telling them that it will be OK and being afraid to discuss mental illness or to reach out for help that isn’t there; caring more for their civil rights than for their mental health and the safety of others, clearly isn’t doing enough to ensure the health and safety of the public at large, and it must be immediately addressed. 

Americans will always feel differently about guns than Canadians and those in other countries do, because Americans have had to fight hard for our freedoms, and Americans have had to fight for the weak and for those who have been inhumanely treated by their own governments.  But what of our own?  We are the self-appointed and globally-appointed protectors of freedom and justice in this world, and that ideology isn’t likely to change any time soon.  Now we just need to find a way to heal our own troubled nation and protect the children in our own backyards and schoolyards, classrooms and hallways.

Taking the right to bare arms away from law-abiding Americans is akin to “changing the minds” (a la Paul Ryan in the vice presidential debate) of Middle Eastern nations or changing women’s minds about the right to choose—from either perspective.  That’s a war nobody wants to take on.  Perhaps we can, however, come to a reasonable compromise about important things like background checks for all persons of age in a prospective household, waiting periods, trigger locks, safety checks and safety courses.

I wouldn’t be GlutenNaziMom if I didn’t relay the fact that much of the anger and the malcontent that exists in our country can be attributed both to what is lacking (vital nutrients/ variety) and to what is present (GMOs, sugar, chemicals and additives) in our Standard American Diet—S.A.D.  And there’s a reason the acronym is so very, very SAD.

We must realize that all of the pieces and the parts are connected.  I am a sometimes reasonably liberal and sometimes reasonably conservative chick—founding member of the Enlightened Middle Majority—who occasionally likes to very safely shoot guns, who has chosen both life and otherwise, and thus could never presume to “choose” for another woman, and who has pulled herself out of the depths of poverty as a single parent and for a season contemplated suicide, and who believes that Health Care Reform as it sits is faulty, at best.  How can it support itself if NO ONE is paying a copay?  The math simply doesn’t work.  And what earthly good can it do if we don’t address mental health in the process?  If we continue to fail to address or even discuss Welfare Reform?  Mind, Body, Spirit; it’s all interconnected, from an individual standpoint, and from our nation’s. 

Guns and the right to bare arms, religious freedom as well as the freedom not to worship are organic and fundamental pieces of the ideology on which this country was built.  Mr. President, you may have won the election because for just enough the alternative was unpalatable, but you have a long way to go before you win over and heal the hearts and the minds and the pocketbooks of the Greatest Nation and of the world.  And until we as a nation come together, support one another, and collectively do so, unthinkable and unacceptable horrors such as the one in Sandy Hook Elementary school last Friday, such as the one in the mall in Newport Beach, California, three days before, and the one in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, before that, will only continue to happen and likely continue to escalate.  I think we can all agree that nobody wants to see that happen in their corner of small town America, or anywhere.
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Mom, There's Something I Have to Tell You...

11/26/2012

7 Comments

 
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Says my fourth grade son, very seriously, today after school.  The deep breath and pursed lips told me this was going to be big. 

“I know you put my presents under the tree.”

“What are you talking about?  We don’t even have a tree yet.”

“At Christmas, before, I know you’re the one that puts my presents under the tree.  Matthew Owen said.”

My disappointment was surely palpable.  I didn’t want this day to come.  Had I known that last year was the last year he would believe, I would have savored it more. 

I do remember thinking to myself that 2011 would likely be the last Christmas my last baby would believe in Santa Clause.  Sometimes I hate being right all the time.  Well, most of the time.  OK, sometimes.

I took a long breath myself, stalling, trying to think of a way to convince him otherwise, “And what do you think about that?”

He thought a moment; even put his finger up to his lips, and looked skyward. 

Then he threw his arms around my ample middle and rested his head on my soft breasts, because he’s still that small, and said earnestly, “I just want you to keep doing it!” 

He looked up at me with the smile that always melts my heart, and the love that is always in his eyes, and I felt his thank you, even if he didn’t have the words to say what he was feeling. 

This boy of mine, who almost wasn’t.


Posted this to #JustWrite, please visit The Extraordinary Ordinary to read some other fantastic blogs--or perhaps even TO WRITE YOUR OWN!


Featured on BlogHer.com
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The Degradation of Language in America is Nothing to LOL About

3/22/2012

4 Comments

 
And no, my spell check did not land on LOL.  Nope, not then either. 

I’ve gotten into the habit of perusing Facebook, Yahoo News and such places for writing inspiration each morning.  A very well written post from Sarah R. Callender’s blog, Inside-Out Underpants, caught my attention.  Myth talks about when to discuss The Birds and The Bees with your child, and points at the prevalence of “soft” pornographic images, namely breasts and bras, in popular media.  I have an almost nine-year-old son; good points.  “Points” I’ve covered his eyes or attempted to distract him from on more than one occasion.  And, another one of Callender’s excellent examples, we’re crazy if we think they didn’t catch the references to Weiner’s wiener all over the news.  It’s only one of an elementary aged boy’s top five favorite words.

Callender provides a link to the perfect example, a Victoria’s Secret commercial.  Even as I wonder where our probably very dusty copy of Where Did I Come From could be (Callender offers other worthy options, too), and beat myself up for the missed opportunities to speak to my son about such things, I’m distracted by the grammatical error in the first five seconds of the advertisement.  I watch it again to make sure.

Indeed, There’s 5 Ways, is quickly blazoned across the screen, while the caption below the video uses the proper grammar, “…there are 5 ways….”  Did Victoria’s ad agency really choose visual balance over proper grammar?   Did they merely shrug and accept the fact that it’s oh so wrong, or assume that their targeted demographic (frighteningly teens and twenty-somethings) wouldn’t catch it?  Have we grown so accustomed to the improper use of grammar in texting, Twitter, Facebook and other forms of short-hand communication, that we’re growing tolerant of such representations, and the fact that it’s insidiously infecting popular media? 

Nope, spell check didn’t catch “texting” either, when “sending a text” is probably more proper. 

I’m not going to pretend to know the exact grammar rules that once determined what is correct.  I don’t have a degree in journalism, communications or language arts or any degree at all, for that matter.  But my public school education prepared me well to communicate effectively into adulthood, from the time I was in early elementary school.  We learned cursive.  We wrote and we wrote some more, and the more writing we did, the better we learned grammar and punctuation, and the better our fine motor skills became. 

Here’s a shocker:  Cursive is no longer required curricula in many elementary schools.  Ahem.  If kids aren’t taught cursive, how will they learn to read cursive when Grandma sends them a card or writes them a check?  A simple Yahoo! search of “cursive no longer in curriculum,” revealed states like Indiana, Illinois and Hawaii are no longer teaching cursive.  And worse, on a national scale, this article in the Herald Review warns that at least 44 other states have adapted to such standards in response to the national standardized exam that is expected in 2014.  The article compares the future of cursive script to ancient hieroglyphics, which only a handful of archeologists can decipher.  When is the last time you met an archaeologist?  When is the last time you met a person who writes in cursive? 

Huh.  I tried curricula and curriculum in the first sentence of the last paragraph and spell check was no help with either.  I really must purchase an old fashioned dictionary.

One homeschooling mom I know here in San Diego isn’t teaching her kids keyboarding because, “the direction we’re headed is talk to type.”  She claims her kids won’t need it.   But if we are headed in that direction, they’d better learn first how to talk properly.  And guess what writing helps kids learn—language, speech, how to form ideas and get them across properly, methodically, rhythmically, in a way that is presentable and makes sense.  The very basis of everything they must do in school and out, from math to science to reading, to getting into college and later landing a job.  And as I’ve demonstrated throughout, spell check isn’t all that reliable, especially where usage and syntax is concerned.  And our kids are reading less, also essential in learning and developing language and communication skills, and playing more video games, which aren’t at all useful for much of any purpose other than entertaining your kid on a long car ride.  Say, from California to Michigan.

My mind can’t grasp the enormity that the immediate twenty years of technological growth might simply erase the prior five hundred.   Morse Code has been in use for more than 160 years, and is still being used by the military.  Why?  Because it’s reliable, it can be transmitted visually, using mirrors or lights, thereby keeping radio silence when necessary, and because if one day technology fails and survival of the fittest comes back into vogue, Morse Code and long hand may just keep you alive.   Yes, I’ve been reading The Hunger Games.  And I’m from Michigan; we’re prepared sorts.

And thanks to no child left behind, all this “progress” is government sanctioned.  Nay, soon to be government mandated, when IMO our children will be left oh so far behind.   By the way, nay is a fancy, old timey word that means no.  And IMO didn’t get flagged either.  Our kids are screwed.

Don’t even get me started on gym class and school lunches.

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    Write2TheEnd | 

    Kim Jorgensen Gane

    Author|Award-Winning Essayist|Freelance CommercialWriter|GANE
    Empowered Wellness Advocate, Facilitator, Speaker

    Kim is a freelance writer, living and working on Michigan’s sunset coast with her husband, youngest son, a standard poodle and a gecko. She’s been every-mom, raising two generations of kids over twenty-seven years. Kim writes on a variety of topics including parenting  through midlife crisis, infertility, health and wellness, personal empowerment, politics, and about anything else that interests her, including flash fiction and her novel in progress, Bluebirds.  Oh, and this happened!

    Kim was selected as a BlogHer '13 Voices of the Year Honoree in the Op Ed category for this post, an excerpt of which has been adapted for inclusion in the book, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics, to be released late 2014.  Visit her Wordpress About page to see her CV.
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*GANEPossible.com is an anecdotal website and in no way intends to diagnose, treat, prevent or otherwise influence the medical decisions of its readers. I am not a doctor, I do not recommend going off prescribed medications without the advice and approval of a qualified practitioner, and I do not recommend changing your diet or your exercise routine without first consulting your doctor. These are merely my life experiences, and what has and hasn't worked for me and my family. You must be your own best medical advocate and that of your children, and seek to find the practitioner with whom you have the best rapport and in whose advice and care you can entrust your health and medical decisions.


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