Out of Her Mind

I've Got the Dissertation Blues

2011-03-06T11:29:00.002-05:00

After receiving the news that I had
been accepted into the EdD program.

I am halfway through my doctoral course work, and I have hit a wall of stress, fear, and frustration. I realize that my classes won't go on forever. Soon, I am going to be an "expert" in an area. I will have to design a study (and my shaky stats knowledge has got me quaking). I will have to gain entrance to a research site or sites. I will have to conduct my research ethically. I will have to run the right analyses and draw the correct conclusions.

I know that my dissertation won't change the world. I am aware that no one will likely read it aside from my dissertation chair and perhaps my mother. I know that the best dissertation is a done one. I realize that the dissertation is not the end of my scholarly quest but rather the beginning.

However, I am stuck at point A. Before I do research, etc., I have to find a topic. Then I have to narrow that topic. I have to do a literature review. I have to read and read and read in the area in which I am interested. I have to find an unanswered question on which to focus. I have to frame all of my work with a theory.

I came into the doctoral program with a clear idea of what I wanted to study. Although I am still deeply interested in these areas of research, I have to admit that my head has been turned in other directions by my doctoral classes. Take for instance, a project I did last semester on the effects of resiliency on those facing extreme adversity (read: the effects of poverty). This project opened up the research world for me. It was a qualitative quest, one in which I explored the autoethnography. I was thrilled to be able to use my love of creative writing and the expressive arts in my storytelling. I was excited to use my life story as a tool of analysis. BUT....

Reading research, when qualitative, is typically in the form of a case study. It is not arts-based or arts-informed. Most reading research is conducted by those in the field of psychology, with their passion for metrics and the gold standard. Now I feel as if I am having an identity crisis.

The quandary: Do I become a researcher of a certain style (qualitative) and risk my authority in the reading field? Do I somehow do both? Do I stick with traditional forms of research in reading? Do I turn away from research in reading altogether and research perhaps mentoring (as that is my current job)?

I really want to spend my future researching reading and teaching pre-service teachers. I am afraid that the research decisions I make during the dissertation process will guide my professional future, perhaps in unforeseen ways. If I focus on mentoring, will I limit myself to positions like my current one (which I enjoy, but it is not my end destination)? Does the dissertation topic factor heavily in the type of position I get in my future?

These questions are driving me batty. Adding to the stress is the fact that I have a full-time job and two young children. I am on campus one day a week. I feel very disenfranchised from the entire process--I need to find time to be on campus more! I came into the program with an EdS, so all of my elective requirements have been met. I am not taking classes currently in the reading program. I do not have an assistanceship or teach any classes as an adjunct. I have not made appointments with professors to chat. I don't know how to begin. I don't know what to talk about.

And so I am left stressed, stunted in my head at the start. I know it is like eating an elephant--one piece at a time. But the pressure is currently on because the director of the doctoral program will be meeting with me in 2 weeks to discuss my dissertation plans. He wants me to answer questions such as, "What do you want to know?" " Your question/issue is important because....." "What is known already about the question/issue?" "What is not known about the question/issue?" "What is the conceptual framework that informs your study?" And so forth. Needless to say, I am not here yet. I appreciate this effort to have us thinking about the end from the beginning, and the way our classes are sequenced are designed to do just that. Stressing now will help me be sure that I have thought over these things for when I get there.

But I feel left behind. I simply don't know the answers to these questions yet. I do know that I want to focus on disabled secondary readers. I know several theories of reading that will frame my study. And I know why the research is important. I need to narrow my topic and do a literature review. And I need to settle my dilemma regarding methodology so I can answer the final questions the director posed regarding my choice in methodology.

And though I have the blues, they are of different hues. Ultimately, I am excited. What fun stuff to worry about, what a luxury to spend all this time in thought (and study).

Hope is in the Air

2011-02-26T15:21:00.002-05:00

What a difference 8 months make! My last post was right after Nadia graduated from preschool. Now, she is in the 2nd half of kindergarten. She has learned to read. She loves school. She says that she wants to be a teacher because her teachers take such good care of her (they make sure she gets her enzymes each time she eats at school). She has even taken to assigning herself homework when she doesn't have any (Wonder where she gets this from?) This week, I tried to get her to go to bed with the promise that we would finish her homework in the morning--but she wasn't having it. She cried to do her homework!

Her energy and personality manage to keep me from hyper-focusing on her illness all of the time and staying freaked out (as I was in my last post), though it still happens. This winter, she has been plagued with a chronic hacking cough. I am assured that this is the result of recurring sinus infections. Like clockwork, this begins in earnest at 3 am, and it is so loud that I wake up. Once awake, I struggle to go back to sleep because all of the "what ifs" come back to haunt me. What if this coughing is a sign that her lungs are now getting damaged? What if I should take her to her doctor at Baptist instead of her pediatrician? What if she is really sick this time and has to be admitted to Baptist for antibiotic treatments? What if....? She is taking an antibiotic currently, and even though it is watermelon flavored, it is really nasty. The other night, she took it and promptly threw up her dinner (green peas--yuck!). She really hates blowing her nose, and hearing her fight with Jef over this and cry breaks my heart.

But--this is a blog of hope! I have just begun the 2011 Great Strides Campaign for Team Nadia Denise. I have been remembering the unexpected support of all of our friends and family last year in this endeavor. We are not alone in this journey, and their support reminds me of this lesson. They all love my little girl. She views this walk as her day, and it is a celebration of her spirit. I think it will help her to come to terms with her illness as she gets older. Already this year, our friends and family are more energized and committed than last year, and that is a reason for hope. I hope that our efforts will advance research and medical discoveries for cystic fibrosis. I know that my friends and family love us. Love goes a long way!

Now I have to turn my attention to writing this year's Nadia poem for our team t-shirts. I will post it here for your comments when I get a draft. I am glad that I started this tradition because it gives me a deadline and motivation to reflect on my beautiful daughter and her personality and actions as I try to convey her in words.

I hope you like the picture above that will be on this year's posters in Asheville.

Please consider making a donation to our campaign and/or joining our team: http://www.cff.org/Great_Strides/dsp_DonationPage.cfm?walkid=7009&idUser=287867

We are also on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=331933955442

Hopefully yours--

Bobbi

Commencement Tears

2010-09-07T09:23:00.003-04:00

Some time in June....
Nadia graduated yesterday, and I cried--not because of the significance of the moment (it's only pre-school, and I'm not that sappy!), but because I wondered if I would see another graduation for her--if, in 13 years, she'd be alive and part of the graduating class of 2023! [Okay, that year was weird to write.]

Something was way wrong with me yesterday. I mean, who loses it at a routine visit to the gyno? Of course, most people don't go to those visits planning to learn that their daughter will never have children, either. I suppose I should have known that, logically. I knew that boys with cf are sterile. By the time a person with cystic fibrosis is of realistic (out of their teens!) child-bearing age, her health is likely to have deteroriated to the point that pregnancy is out of the question--a danger to the mother, if she is physically able to get pregnant at this point (low weight causes a host of reproductive issues). I know Nadia is only four, but she loves to play mom and teacher, by turns sweet and patient with her "children" and bossy and instructive. She has spoken of being a mother. When I ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she answers, besides Nadia, that she wants to be a mommy like me. I know that she may change her mind, that she may understand her limitations and accept them far better than I do, that there's always adoption. But I fear she might go the route of Shelby in Steel Magnolias.

I was so unprepared to face this fact yesterday. And I could tell that my doctor thought I'd already known. For now, we've been dealing with the basics--getting her weight to 30 pounds, stopping the rectal prolapses via the correct dosage of enzymes and Prevacid to keep stomach acid from making these less effective, and a high calorie diet (read: a shake with breakfast, 3 snacks, lunch, and dinner). We've been working with teaching her how to avoid germs by using copious amounts of hand sanitizer, frequent hand washing, and not sharing food or drinks with others. She's a pro at coughing in her elbow!

Also, my OBGYN asked me if I wanted to get my tubes tied. At very nearly 31, knowing that I do want another child, I can't take that step just yet, though I also know that Jef and I won't roll the di and see what happens, either. But there are other ways. I'll be 36 by the time my soon-to-be-inserted new IUD is removed--I should hopefully have had my doctorate for two years. My mother was the same age (36) when she had Laci--and if things are going well financially and so forth--who knows? I've never felt that two children are enough.

So I wept at a pre-school graduation and felt like a fool and tried to hide it. Nadia looked so grown up wearing her white cap and gown (incidentially the same colors I wore when I graduated high school). Her cap (a size small) was still so big for her head that her teacher had to staple it several times and it still kept falling off during her performances. Her tassle is a minature version of the one I just received from ASU for completion of my EdS, and it now hangs, intertwined with mine, from my rearview mirror.

The highlight of the evening--when Nadia went to her classroom after the ceremony and held center stage during her photo shoot with her friends, her skirt fell off in the middle of class as she danced around. Thank God she was wearing underwear for once!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A week after this, the stress triggered shingles, an ailment I battled with all summer. Now that school has started back and Nadia is in kindergarten, I am feeling better--for now.

What I Learned About Reading This Summer: A Reflection on the Psychological Processes of Reading

2010-06-16T00:32:00.006-04:00

In this course, the Psychological Processes of Reading, many of my notions of what the brain does while it reads were solidified. Prior to this course, I had studied several theories of reading, but this course helped me to synthesize those, to understand their historical development, and to see that several reading theories, although partially disproven, still hold value to the researcher and the reading teacher. Furthermore, I began to understand reading comprehension with more depth.

As any serious student of reading knows, there are two important reading theories regarding attention and automaticity. LaBerge and Samuels (1994;1974) first posited that reading is like playing a musical instrument or a sport: that you overlearn the lower processes (like reading the music or memorizing the plays) so that the brain will be able to focus on the more difficult aspects of the activity (playing the music or executing the play). In reading, Automaticity Theory explains that lower level processes such as decoding must be overlearned so that conscious attention can be paid to the attainment of comprehension (Tracey & Morrow, 2006). Perfetti’s (1985) Verbal Efficiency Theory builds on this idea of limited resources (Tracey & Morrow). Although these theories remain useful lenses with which to view reading, new connectionist models of reading are neither top down or bottom up; rather, as the title suggests, the different processes are integrated (Tracey & Morrow). Adam’s (1990) model of reading is one such model. Prior to taking this course, I had studied her model, but now I understand how former and current research fits into her model of reading. Adam’s model involves four processors: the orthographic, the phonological, the meaning, and the context processors. Each of these processors interacts with the others bi-directionally, although the orthographic processor is the first to be used when a text is read as it is here that a text begins to be visually processed. However, Adams model supports both Automaticity Theory and Verbal Efficiency Theory in that processes such as the decoding of words efficiently are integral to comprehension.

An early study that established the connection between automaticity of decoding and reading ability was done by Perfetti and Hogoboam (1975) and led to the development of Verbal Efficiency Theory. In this study, skilled and less skilled comprehenders were presented with high and low frequency words as well as non-words, and their vocalization latency was recorded. Because data for each participant was only recorded for words they knew the definitions for, vocabulary size could be ruled out as a contributing factor to their overall differences in vocalization latency. The more skilled readers recognized all word types fastest, and the skilled readers and less skilled readers were most different in their vocalization latencies of low-frequency words and non-words. The results of this study indicated that the automaticity of decoding is a key component of skilled reading. Prior to this course, I knew that this premise was truth; however, I was not familiar with the study that produced the support.

However, Joshi’s (2005) article "Vocabulary: A Critical Component of Comprehension" explores the crucial role vocabulary knowledge plays in reading comprehension. In this article, Joshi laments that we need more research to see how vocabulary affects reading comprehension, but explains that a synthesis of research shows that there is a causal relationship--that those with poor vocabulary knowledge also have poorer reading comprehension skills and vice versa. Compounding the issue is what is known as the Matthew Effect--the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In reading, the better comprehenders read more widely, and their vocabulary increases. Poorer comprehenders avoid reading (or read easier materials) and do not make gains in vocabulary. Thus, the gulf widens. And, as I learned from other class readings regarding the connection between socioeconomic status, vocabulary development, and reading skill, this gulf is present from the very start of schooling in America and is even present before formal schooling begins (Hart & Risley, 1995; Beck &McKeown, 2007).

Joshi (2005) discusses ways of teaching vocabulary, though noting that most vocabulary knowledge isn't directly taught. Rather, it is acquired with each contact with a word, and, as neural network models would argue, each time the word is encountered in context, the meaning of that word is strengthened in memory.

Nevertheless, Joshi (2005) urges teachers to continue teaching word meanings and other vocabulary knowledge; however, they should abandon the ineffective practice of having students look up word meanings in the dictionary for a test on Friday. Rather, strategies such as teaching the use of context clues, teaching prefixes, suffixes, and root words, and teaching the etymology of a word are recommended. Also, graphic organizers, such as those found at Inspiration, are particularly effective tools when teaching word meanings. Finally, instructional focus should be on Tier 2 words, words that are content words and are comprised of the 60% of our English words that are derived from Latin. However, as the studies done by Beck and McKeown (2007) indicate, even with intense vocabulary instruction such as their More Rich Vocabulary Instruction, which provided protracted contact with a select few words each week for about 20 contacts per word, gains were minimal, with 5.58 words gained over the control group’s 1.04 words.

The finding in the Beck and McKeown (2007) study mirrors that of Morris & Gaffney’s (in press) in the sense that any gains in reading requires targeted, expert instruction at a child’s reading level and is an arduous task for student and teacher once a child is more than a grade level behind. From experience, I know that making any reading gain with a student takes time, and though a student’s improvement may not “wow” researchers, using scientifically based instruction and interventions to target a student’s strengths and weaknesses has allowed me to move a student two and even three grade levels in reading, which is significant to them. When a person can read any level higher (which involves a combination of rate, word recognition accuracy, and comprehension), they stand more of a chance to read more often, and will therefore continue to read better. I will continue to use research to inform my practice, and know that I know more about designing research studies, I hope to conduct research rooted in my classroom to help me help my high school students read better.

Joshi (2005) also discussed Drop Everything and Read (D.E.A.R.) and Drop Everything and Write (D.E.A.W.) as two instructional practices that have resulted in vocabulary gains for students involved. Both wide reading (receptive) and wide-writing (expressive) increases vocabulary, a fact I find encouraging, as I LOVE to write and frequently incorporate writing in my classes. Now I have further reason to do so, and I plan to investigate the correlations between reading and writing.

Ehri and Wilce (1979) explored the role orthography plays for beginning readers and found that the letters in a word are significant factors in reading, disproving Goodman’s theory that reading doesn’t take place at even a word level. Ehri and Wilce explain that prior to formal schooling, words have three identities (acquired with oral language) in a child’s lexicon—phonological, syntactic, and semantic. As children learn to read, they gain an orthographic identity—the visual image of a word (not to be confused with word shape theory, Larson, 2004) that becomes amalgamated with the other identities of that word and speeds the automaticity of word recognition. Ehri and Wilce argue that the letters themselves act as a mnemonic device to help students overlearn words, and they proved this with a study using nonsense words and different types of cues: squiggles, initial letter, initial letter + spelling, and initial letter + misspelling). Prior to this course, I was familiar with Ehri’s stage theory of spelling development, but I had not read any of the research that gave rise to this theory, a theory that guides my understanding of a child’s reading ability based on his orthography and therefore guides my teaching. This study has made the “glued to print” stage much more meaningful for me.

The most foreign territory for me this semester was the research on working memory. I knew working memory contributes to reading ability, but I wasn’t quite sure what this term entailed, nor did was I familiar with its research base. Daneman and Carpenter (1980) explain that working memory is more than short term memory—it is the area of the brain where information is actively processed. It is here that amalgamations are created, that propositions are encoded, that meaning is attained. Daneman and Carpenter tested the reading span of college students to get an idea of the average amount of information that good and bad readers can hold in working memory, and found that the reading span measure was a more robust measure of working memory than the traditional digit and word span tests. Reading spans ranged from 2-5 final words of sentences being held in active memory, and students with smaller reading spans performed significantly poorer on reading measures (comprehension tests and verbal SAT scores). This research helped me to understand my EC students who have legitimate cognitive limitations that hinder their reading skills. It is with these students especially that the road to good reading will be paved with detours, and road construction (intervention). It will take them longer to attain reading goals, but if we persist, they WILL get there.

References

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Beck & McKeown (2007). Increasing young low-income children’s oral vocabulary repertoires through rich and focused instruction. The Elementary School Journal, 107, 3, 251-271.

Daneman, M. & Carpenter, P.A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal Of Verbal Learning And Verbal Behavior, 19, 450-466

Ehri, L.C., & Wilce, L. S. (1979). The mnemonic value of orthography among beginning readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 1, 26-40.

Joshi, R.M. (2005). Vocabulary: A critical component of comprehension. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 21, 209-219.

Larson (2004). The science of word recognition. Advanced Reading Technology, Microsoft Corporation, http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/wordrecognition.aspx

Morris, D. & Gaffney M. (2008) Building Reading Fluency In A Disabled Middle-School Reader in press.

Perfetti, C. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford University Press

Perfetti, C. A., & Hogaboam, T. W. (1975). Relationship between single word decoding and reading comprehension skill. Journal of Educational Psychology, 67(4), 461-469.

Samuels, S. J. (1994). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading, revisited. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, and H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed.) (pp. 816-837). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Tracey, D. H. & Morrow, L. M. (2006). Lenses on Reading (pages 131-147). New York, The Guilford Press

Comprehension Strategies

2010-06-14T14:33:00.001-04:00

"The Development of Verbal Efficiency, Metacognitive Strategies, and Their Interplay" (Walczyk, 1994) uses Perfetti's (1985) Verbal Efficiency Theory as the lens with which to view the construct of comprehension. The following is a response to a couple of questions raised by Dr. Ari in regards to this article.

1. On page 182, Walczyk discusses “compensatory mechanisms” and the conditions under which they may be used. What does he mean by “compensatory mechanisms”?
Compensatory mechanisms are the comprehension strategies students might use to repair comprehension. These strategies require that the reader be metacognitive. Once a breakdown in reading comprehension has been detected, the reader has several courses of action, depending upon where the breakdown occurred. For example, a student can read slower. If the information decays in working memory, the reader can re-read the text (or that portion of the text). The reader can pause to summarize text and to integrate propositions. All of this strategies can be used when the reader is not under time constraints (i.e. standardized testing).

2. Walczyk argues that older readers and adults compensate for inefficient lower level processes, limited resources or difficulty of text when reading under normal (non-pressured) conditions. How do you think Walczyk might explain the poor readers’ failure to monitor their comprehension in the Long and Chong (2001) study?* Recall that subjects read passages in Long and Chong’s study at their own pace by pressing a space bar to present the next line, which erased the current line.

In the Long and Chong (2001) study, students were reading with time constraints, so their ability to use "compensatory mechanisms" was automatically hampered: readers didn't have time to pause and summarize and felt the pressure not to read too slowly. Also, due to the nature of the exercise, readers could not go back and re-read because text was presented a line at a time and could not be re-visited. In essence, this exercise measured reading ability without the aid of compensatory measures. It would be interesting to test how 2 groups of similarly poor readers performed on a measure when they could and could not use comprehension strategies (under timed vs. untimed conditions, I suppose).

*Recall that poor college readers were found to be insensitive to textual inconsistencies in passages where the character description (Bill’s physical condition) was separated by a long filler section from the target action (Bill runs across street quickly and picks up the boy). Remember also that subjects were defined as good vs. poor readers on the basis of a standardized reading test (i.e., Nelson Denny Reading Test).

A Case Study of an Older Disabled Reader

2010-06-09T14:22:00.002-04:00

Morris & Gaffney's (in press) article, "Building Reading Fluency in a Disabled Middle-School Reader" details the work done with a rising 8th grader at Appalachian State University's Reading Clinic over the course of a calendar year.

Who is Luke?
Luke is a middle-schooler, a rising 8th grader, who reads at the rate of a 2nd grader. He lacks fluency and speed.

Exogenous Factors: moved from another state in 5th grade
Endogenous Factors: ADD, seizure disorders; both controlled by medications
Reading History:

at 5th grade, read at late first grade level
had difficulty in decoding/read at a slow rate
after working int he Wilson Reading program, his decoding had greatly improved by the end of 6th.
However, rate remained slow.
He currently reads at a 3rd-4th grade level with a significant deficit in reading fluency.

Luke's Intervention--Focusing on Fluency

Using his interests (Civil War, WW II, Civil rights, & Greek mythology), the authors created a 1 hour lesson plan to target his weakest area--fluency. The lesson plan was as follows:

1. Check Luke's Homework. Luke was assigned tape-recorder reading (6-8 pages of a book audio-taped by the tutor) at instructional level to read each night. At the end of each page, he stopped the recorder and re-read the page. At the end of the chapter, he practiced the first 2-3 pages for a homework check the next day, which consisted of him reading 2 minutes orally from a selected passage. His words correct per minute (WCPM) were charted.
2. Guided Reading. At his instructional level, Luke and his partner took turns reading. He read 1 1/2 to 2 pages and then the tutor read, which gave him a fluent model and helped him build reading stamina. Stauffer's Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) was used to monitor comprehension in an on-going manner.
3. Repeated Readings. Luke read 300 word passages that he had already read as guided reading. He read as many words as he could for 2 minutes, charted his WCPM, reread, and charted again. This routine was repeated the next day as he reread the passage for the 3rd and 4th time. After the 4th re-reading, Luke began the process with a new text from guided reading.
4. Tutor Read-Aloud (last 7-10 minutes). The tutor read-aloud from an instructional level text. In the fall, this was incorporated with the homework. The tutor read-aloud from the book Luke used for tape-recorder readings.

The intervention lasted from the summer of 2008 until the spring of 2009. The summer intervention was 4 weeks in length, Monday-Friday, and he received intervention for a total of 13 hours. In the fall, the intervention was for one hour, two days a week, for a total of 18 hours. In the spring, I assume he had the same schedule as in the fall, and he had a total of 16 hours of intervention. For the year, he received 47 hours of tutoring.

Findings.
Although Luke experienced a 25 words per minute rate increase in his reading of connected text, his rate in reading isolated words, as shown on the Word Recognition in Isolation (WRI) measure (link for answer sheets; link for summary sheet), did not improve. The authors explain the discrepancy by arguing that sight vocabulary does not necessarily determine fluency; that, "in addition to sight vocabulary [there was another factor]that contributed to Luke's improvement in reading fluency" (p. 15) and that factor was phrasing. Luke learned to read words in phrases faster.

Connections to Previous Readings.
The use of repeated readings (1979) as a fluency intervention is directly from Samuels and LaBerge's Automaticity Theory. Also, this intervention is supported by Adam's (1990) model of reading in that he performed better on connected text--when all 4 processors had a role. On isolated words, the context processor is defunct.

The Lukes in My Classes.
As a high school English/Reading/ELL teacher, I teach Lukes everyday. Most of my students read between a 3rd-5th grade level, and because their rates are slow, it is hard to pin down their exact instructional reading level on an IRI. If their rates were a bit higher, they would fall into the higher instructional level. I think what happens is that these are students who have gotten off-track. They finally get back on-track and pick up word-decoding. However, they lack the routine practice of reading (for whatever reason--they hate it, poor readers actually read less at school, etc.), so they lack automaticity and fluency. Luke's intervention is nearly identical to the intervention I instituted last semester in my reading classes except that we met for 90 minutes a day for 90 days. The students loved the repeated readings (I had them do these in pairs--with more fluent readers so that they had a fluent model), and this practice significantly improved their fluency. Also, many of my students have a mixture of endogenous and exogenous factors that contribute to their reading difficulties, including factors such as frequent moves, interrupted schooling, medical conditions like ADHD, and so forth.

The Constructionist-Integration Model of Reading

2010-06-05T00:23:00.004-04:00

The Constructionist-Integration (Kintsch, 1988; 2004) Model of Reading comprehension (CI) sounds like it may be a construction crew out building libraries or bookstores, but it is really a model of how working memory constructs meaning by assembling propositions (sentences or meaning units like phrases). This model is from the constructivist school of thought, which espouses the idea that we create meaning from the world around us rather than discover a meaning that was intended from the beginning. In other words, a reader brings his or her background knowledge to the text, and in that manner, he or she will have a unique reading experience no matter the book. If a sentence says "dog," one child might envision a poodle while another envisons a pit bull. Therefore, each reader interacts with and experiences the text differently.

In order to understand this model, it is necessary to understand some key terminology.

textbase or microstructure--the current proposition and 2-3 surrounding sentences
macrostructure--the gist of the text as a whole
situation model--a mental model of the text as it is being read; the reader visualizes the text using his/her background knowledge and supplies details where the details are scant. For example, a reader might think of the smell of an apple pie in the story even if the smell hasn't been discussed. Because situation models are unique to the individual, they vary from reader to reader.
local coherence--thought to be the main goal of the comprehension process in a minimalist model; a reader will make a minimal amount of inferences to connect seemingly unrelated sentences, for example. Local coherence is maintained with propositions that are in close proximity to one another.
global coherence-- thought to be the process used in a constructionist model; the reader is continually making inferences as he/she reads in an effort to make sense of the text of the whole and even retrieves previously suppressed material as it becomes relevant.

Context plays a pivotal role in the construction of propositions. According to Kintsch (1983) and his macro rules that govern the encoding of propositions, context determines what meanings are quickly suppressed, what propositions are deleted from the microstructure, if a series of propositions can be reduced to one general statement, or if one proposition activates another (i.e. inferring "school" from "grades"). Because English has so many polysemous words, context is key to processing the meaning of a text, as Adams (1990) inclusion of a context processor in her reading model indicates.

Kintsch

For further reading:
Inference Generation and Cohesion in the Construction of Situation Models: Some Connections with Computational Linguistics (Graesser et al., 2007)

What is Working Memory?

2010-06-01T21:59:00.001-04:00

How Does The Brain Work?

If I could answer that question, I could probably be cooling my heels on a nice island somewhere, mimosa in hand, Instead, I am left to read research and theories about how the brain (and reading) operates. One can dream, though.....

For years, researchers delineated memory into two types: short term and long term. More recently, after the advent of LaBerge and Samuels Automaticity Theory (1974) and Perfetti's Verbal Efficiency Theory (1988), this construct was re-imagined as working memory--which adds the dimension of processing to the function of storage (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). As they explain, "Working memory is assumed to have processing as well as storage functions; it serves as the site for executing processes and for storing the products of these processes" (p. 450). Working memory is active rather than passive.

Tanabe, Azumi, Osaka, & Naoyuki (2009) explain that working memory consists of at least two domains, the verbal domain and the visuospatial. They note that there is not a sufficient test for visuospatial working memory, and set out to create one, entitled the Picture Span Test. They explain that these two aspects of working memory perform different functions. It is the visuospatial aspect of working memory that allows for "reading comprehension, reasoning, language learning, and so on" (p. 1). Because working memory involves processing information, the authors argue that other tests of short term memory have been insufficient (such as the digit span test and the word span test), as noted also by Daneman and Carpenter (1980): Perhaps "digit span and word span tests do not sufficiently tax the processing component of working memory," which would explain why there was little correlation between these measures and reading comprehension (p. 451). These tests simply required the memorization of words or numbers, but no processing, no comprehension, occurred. With the conceptualization of working memory, a more complex test was needed, a test that required the processing of information. The Picture Span Test satisfies that requirement.

Adams (1990) would argue that working memory is comprised of different domains but that they interact with one another. These domains loop, each informing the other and allowing the reader to encode propositions more efficiently. The verbal domain and the visuospatial domain are interconnected, especially when one performs the difficult task of reading. Subvocalization is a rehearsal method of storing the words in working memory as the next word is read and phrases and propositions are encoded or translated into meaning. Of course, these loops occur simultaneously and with little effort as a reader becomes more advanced. The orthographic processor would be situated in the visuospatial domain of working memory, and the phonological domain would be in the verbal domain of working memory. Where then would the meaning and context processors reside?

I argue that these processors are in both areas of working memory. Depending on the stimuli, the context and memory processors operate in either area of working memory. Take, for example, listening. If a person is to comprehend something they hear, these processors are activated verbally. If they comprehend something they read, these processors are activated visually. It depends on the input. This theory explains why a student's listening comprehension can be much higher than reading comprehension if the student has a reading disability rather than a cognitive one.

Meaningful Differences: A Comparative Look at Oral Vocabulary Usage in Low and High SES Households

2010-05-30T19:43:00.002-04:00

Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children (1995), by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley is a qualitative look at the at how parents and children interact during early childhood, as children acquire language and then develop their language skills. This longitudinal study examined 42 families, 23 of which were middle class and the remainder which were classified as professional (high SES) or welfare families (lowest SES), and their verbal interactions beginning when the child was 10 months of age and ending when the child was 3 years old.

The researchers noted that the biggest cause of difference in amount of utterances in an hour was SES status, rather than gender, race, birth order, and so forth. They observed that in any given hour, the children in professional families heard approximately 2, 153 words per hour in contrast to the children of welfare families, who heard an average of 616 words an hour. Once this data was extrapolated (in 1 year, children in professional families hear an average of 11 million utterances, while children in welfare families only hear 3 million utterances), the gap between the social classes became immense, and the implications of this gap is also immense. It is a contributor to the reason that students from lower SES families are at-risk for educational failure--they often enter with this oral deficit as well as with less exposure to print and being read aloud to.

Furthermore, after analyzing the data to see if there was a difference in the quality of the interactions in the different families, it was revealed that in the welfare homes, the children were more likely to hear "prohibitions"--being told that they couldn't do things. Interestingly, Hart and Risley concluded that the content of the language reflected the different values of each culture, the culture defined by the SES. In the professional families, the families were "concerned with names, relationships, and recall" (p. 133), preparing their children for a future in college and "analytic problem solving" (p. 133). In the welfare families, the focus seemed to be tradition--learning the socially acceptable--and "parents seemed to be preparing their children realistically for jobs likely to be open to them, jobs in which success and advancement would be determined by attitude, how well the children presented themselves, and whether they could prove themselves through performance" (p. 134). It is interesting that the talk in the home was qualitatively AND quantitatively different.

A quick summary of this study and its implications can be found here.

I would be interested to see how these observed differences played out in the children's education--did students of the welfare families struggle with reading as a result of this gap in oral language? Was that question addressed elsewhere in this book (aside from chapters 3 & 6)? I imagine that some achievement tests were done at the end of the study based on this statement, "....These quality features should be strongly linked to the children's accomplishments at age 3 and later. We would have been amazed, baffled, had we found otherwise" (p. 134). Also, I wonder if there would be any changes if this study were replicated in today's technology-saturated world? In fact, it is possible that in the professional families, the children would have an even stronger advantage (school age and beyond) because of their exposure to the Internet and all of the reading and writing that is done that way. Just thinking of the emails and texts these students send as well as how facile students from wealthier households are with technology than students who come from homes with no computers astounds me. This would be an interesting area to explore...how the haves and have nots differ educationally as a result of less exposure to computers and Internet.

I also wonder how the data would have differed had this study been done during the time when children were supposed to be seen and not heard. The world was a different place back then, and education wasn't a focus for many. it certainly wasn't seen as a necessity in the lower SES households......

Why Vocabulary Instruction is a Big Deal

2010-05-26T00:49:00.003-04:00

Beck and McKeown's "Increasing Young Low-Income Children’s Oral Vocabulary Repertoires through Rich and Focused Instruction" (2007) details 2 studies that show the importance of rich and extended vocabulary instruction for students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds.
Study 1
Research Question. In study 1, the research question was, "How well do students in kindergarten and first grade learn vocabulary through direct instruction compared to those who are just exposed to the words in text (incidental acquisition)?"

Participants. Participants in this first study were in four kindergarten classes and four first graders from the same small, urban school district. Although the study began with 119 students, pre-test and post-test data was collected on a total of 98 students (46 in the control condition and 53 in the experimental condition). Further, the school was one of high poverty, and of those in the study, all were African-American and 82% were eligible to receive free or reduced lunch. There were 4 participating teachers in the experimental group, all female, 2 Caucasian and 2 African American, with teaching experience ranging from 2 to 25 years. The 4 teachers in the control group were also all female. 3 were Caucasian and one was Asian American. Their teaching experience ranged from 4 to 24 years.

Materials. In the experimental group, the vocabulary instruction was taken from Text Talk, a research-based approach using read-alouds. Because young students have higher listening comprehension capacities than they do reading comprehension capacities, teachers are able to read books aloud to them that are higher than their instructional reading levels, thus exposing them to more sophisticated language and language structure, as well as to story grammar. Texts chosen for this study were "conceptually challenging enough so that grappling with ideas and taking an active stance toward constructing meaning are required" (p. 255). Texts were chosen that had the following qualities:

complex events
a traditional event structure
unfamiliar ideas and topics
figurative language, requiring students to dig deeper for meaning
stories told primarily through text rather than pictures

Tier 2 words from the selected texts were chosen for the focus of direct vocabulary instruction. From a larger list of possible tier 2 words from each text, 3 were selected to be taught using Rich Instruction. These three words were selected on the basis of how frequently they might be encountered in other texts as well as on the ease with which they could be explained to the students. If the word represented a concept that was too abstract, it was not selected.

Rich Instruction occurred after reading so as not to distract from the reading itself and so that students would have the rich context of the story in which to situate the new words. Rich Instruction involves:

placing the word in the context of the story--referring back to its use in the text
explaining the word's meaning in kid-friendly language
providing examples of the words in other contexts
asking students to categorize whether or not given examples were examples of the word
reinforcing the "phonological and meaning representations" of the word (p. 256)
revisiting the words the remainder of the weeks, through a variety of activities such as keeping a word wall and encouraging students to use or find examples of the words

Teachers in the experimental group received 36 books for kindergarten and 36 books for first grade, questions to guide the read-alouds and vocabulary instruction, and additional vocabulary activities.
Teachers in the control group used their regular materials.

Main Findings. In both kindergarten and first grade, students receiving the Rich Instruction in vocabulary made significant gains in comparison to the control group, who received daily read-alouds from books of similar quality/difficulty as those used in Text Talk.

Instructional Implications. Therefore, direct instruction DOES result in students' increasing their vocabulary knowledge. However, the instruction must be more than the typical "look it up in the dictionary, take a test on Friday" approach. The instructional method used in study 1 provided students with several encounters of the word and the word was rooted in context. Further, the words were chosen with care, rather than just at random or on the basis of the word simply being one with which students might be unfamiliar. Also, the definition was provided for the students (which is key because dictionary definitions can actually confuse the child more). The practice of having students categorize situations based on whether or not they were examples of the target word is also an important one, as even my high school students struggle with this skill.

Study 2
Beck and McKeown realized that even with rich, targeted vocabulary instruction, students in the experimental group still did not learn all of the words, so they designed the second study.

Research question. The question in this study was whether students would learn more vocabulary words if the instruction was sustained for longer periods of time.

Participants. 3 kindergarten and 3 first grade classes participated in this study. These students were at another school in the same district as in study 1. Data was reported for 36 kindergartners and 40 1st graders. The 6 teachers involved were all female; 5 were Caucasian and 1 was African-American. Teaching experience ranged from 7 to 32 years.

Materials. The text talk read-alouds with Rich Instruction were used with each group. 7 trade books were used, and 6 words were chosen from each book in the same manner as in study 1. From each set of words, 3 were randomly assigned to the Rich Instruction group and 3 were assigned to the More Rich Instruction group, the group which received the more sustained vocabulary instruction. In the 2nd condition, students were taught all 6 words using the Rich Instruction format. Additionally, on 3 of the words, they received More Rich Instruction, consisting of the same types of activities. This group had 2 review cycles during which previous words were revisited.

Main Findings. At both grade levels, the students receiving the More Rich Instruction treatment made significantly higher vocabulary gains than those receiving the Rich Instruction treatment, proving that there was not a ceiling on vocabulary learning for young children and that more instruction words nets greater gains.

Instructional Implications. Even very young students can be taught sophisticated vocabulary if the teaching is done in a systematic, sustained manner. As Beck and McKeown explain, "The earlier word meanings are learned, the more easily they are accessed later in life" (p. 262). In other words, they build deeper contexts with these words and understand them more fully. They have a more complete semantic map with each word, which will help them as they read texts that might contain other words they don't know. We SHOULD be directly teaching vocabulary, and we should be doing it in a carefully planned manner to maximize the number of words learned (breadth) as well as the depth to which they are learned.

With such rich instruction, the Matthew Effect can be counteracted, and we all know that the gap is easiest to close early on, before students with less vocabulary knowledge get discouraged, stop reading, and learn less vocabulary even as their more "knowledged" (privilaged?) peers take off as readers and learn more and more words!

Reading Models. These studies particularly invoke LaBerge and Samuels's Automaticity Theory and Perfetti's Verbal Efficiency Theory in that the authors state, "Accessing word meaning is more efficient and robust for words acquired earlier" (p. 262). When students learn words in the primary grades, they are able to access them automatically, which allows them to focus on comprehending the text more fluidly, rather than searching for word meanings. Also, as Adams's model indicates, when a known word is activated, the context and meaning processors can work together to aid in word recognition. The meaning processor can help the reader place the word in the appropriate context. Gough's revised model (Component Model of Reading) incorporates vocabulary as a key component to comprehension.

Vocabulary knowledge is a key component to the reading process and its instruction should be as paramount as decoding. Imagine trying to read in a language where you know few of the words, such as Spanish. The letters are mainly the same. You may know how to pronounce the words. But if you can't access the meaning of the words, what have you done?

Decoding + Vocabulary= Reading Comprehension

2010-05-21T15:19:00.003-04:00

The article "Vocabulary: A Critical Component of Comprehension" (Joshi, 2005) explores the crucial role vocabulary knowledge plays in reading comprehension. In this article, Joshi laments that we need more research to see how vocabulary affects reading comprehension, but explains that a synthesis of research shows that there is a causal relationship--that those with poor vocabulary knowledge also have poorer reading comprehension skills and vice versa. Compounding the issue is what is known as the Matthew Effect--the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In reading, the better comprehenders read more widely, and their vocabulary increases. Poorer comprehenders avoid reading (or read easier materials) and do not make gains in vocabulary. Thus, the gulf widens.

Joshi discusses ways of teaching vocabulary, though noting that most vocabulary knowledge isn't directly taught. Rather, it is acquired with each contact with a word, and, as neural network models would argue, each time the word is encountered in context, the meaning of that word is strengthened in memory.

Nevertheless, teachers are urged to continue teaching word meanings and other vocabulary knowledge; however, they should abandon the ineffective practice of having students look up word meanings in the dictionary for a test on Friday. Rather, strategies such as teaching the use of context clues, teaching prefixes, suffixes, and root words, and teaching the etymology of a word are recommended. Also, graphic organizers, such as those found at Inspiration, are particularly effective tools when teaching word meanings. Finally, instructional focus should be on Tier 2 words, words that are content words and are comprised of the 60% of our English words that are derived from Latin.

Drop Everything and Read (D.E.A.R.) and Drop Everything and Write (D.E.A.W.) are two instructional practices that have resulted in vocabulary gains for students involved. Both wide reading (receptive) and wide-writing (expressive) increases vocabulary, a fact I find encouraging, as I LOVE to write and frequently incorporate writing in my classes. Now I have further reason to do so.

Reflection: Connection to Reading Model

In Adams Model, the meaning processor can affect the orthographic processor in that, as a word is read, if it is recognized as a word stored in memory (either orally or in print), it is more quickly activated. If a word is unknown, word recognition is not speeded by the activation of the word. Further, comprehension is hindered because the word's meaning is not activated. Perfetti's Verbal Efficiency Theory and LaBerge and Samuels's Automaticity Theory both also assume automaticity in retrieving word meanings as a condition necessary for skillful reading. The importance of vocabulary was added to Gough's Simple View of reading when it was revised to account for fluency, now known as the Componential Model of Reading and explains that vocabulary is part of the comprehension construct, and "influences comprehension" (p.210). Most models of reading include some sort of "semantic processor," establishing that vocabulary knowledge is, indeed, a key component in reading comprehension.

Question???????
The idea that D.E.A.W. was positively correlated with vocabulary development "suggests a yet-to-be-tested hypothesis--that encouraging writing improves reading comprehension" (p. 215). Has this hypothesis been tested? This is an area of study that I am very drawn to.

Joshi, R.M. (2005). Vocabulary: A critical component of comprehension. Reading &

Writing Quarterly, 21, 209-219.

Putting on my Reading Glasses: A Response to Lenses on Reading (Tracey, D. H. & Morrow, L. M., 2006)

2010-05-17T22:57:00.002-04:00

In this chapter from Lenses on Reading, Tracey and Morrow discuss six of the prominent cognitive processing theories from the 1950s to the 1970s. It is interesting to see how our understanding of cognitive processes in general, and of reading in particular, have become more sophisticated with time, though there is still much we do not know about what occurs in our brain. Each of these models make pretty good conjecture based on the research available to the theorists, and each model helped progress our understanding of the reading process. I particularly like that the authors discuss both the historical significance of these six theories (The Substrata-Factor Theory of Reading, 1953; Information Processing Model, 1968; Gough's Model, 1972; Automatic Information Processing Model, 1974; Interactive Model, 1977; Rauding Theory, 1977) and the parts of the model that are still relevant to researchers and practitioners today. For instance, LaBerge & Samuels' Automatic Information Processing Model first introduced the reading field to the idea that reading is a difficult task that requires a limited amount of attentional resources be allocated to several processes: decoding first and comprehension last. Their model is helpful for figuring out why some students may have difficulty comprehending--if the decoding is too slow, they simply can't focus on making sense of what they have read. Also, automaticity theory has many useful implications for teaching, including the rich practice of guided reading. Stauffer's Directed-reading-Thinking-Activity (DRTA) fits nicely into a guided reading activity. I like that the authors note that round robin reading should be avoided during guided reading, and having brief periods of silent reading when meeting in small groups serves too purposes: to avoid this dreadful practice and to build stamina with silent reading under a teacher's guidance, with questions to follow. For running records, the teacher could even track the rate of different students as they read silently. In terms of research applications and this theory, I agree that "LaBerge and Samuels's conceptualization of internal attention, external attention, and automaticity are still highly applicable to contemporary understanding of the reading process. They are as viable in the 21st century as when they were presented in the early 1970s" (p. 145).

Carver's Rauding Theory differentiates between reading to study (typically involving reading at a slower pace and re-reading), skim reading, and actual reading, where one reads at their optimal reading rate.

Before reading this chapter, I wasn't quite aware of the progression of these models. I was familiar with Carver and LaBerge & Samuels, and of course Rumelhart's Interactive Model, but it was very informative to see how these models progressed from bottom-up models to the interactive, parallel models we have today, such as Adams's (1990) model. I feel that the interactive models, while more elaborate, are also clearer lenses through which to view the reading process. Also, I always enjoy seeing the names researchers attach to their models and methods. In this case, Gough's Model was very rich (while LaBerge and Samuels's was a bit more dry)!

Also, as the reading field tends to be ahistorical (and education, in general), grabbing on to the next new trend without examining the successes and failures of the past, it was refreshing to read the history of reading theories AND to see the current uses of these older models heralded.

Larson Discussion Question Responses

2010-05-15T12:39:00.004-04:00

○ According to Larson, what should be the unit of processing? Letter or word? LETTER

○ What is at stake with a word shape model of word recognition? UMM--it's crazy--the actual process of reading is not understood and would lead people to focus on unrelated features of the word. Our instructional time is limited. Struggling readers need the MOST time to spend reading and they need the highest quality of instruction--teaching word shape is ineffective and muddies the waters. You will have students who can't read because they didn't learn to decode.

○ Should we teach typical eye-movements (of a reader) to struggling readers? I don't know where I stand on this issue. My instincts say---maybe with the most disabled readers. But this seems so instinctual, so tacit. How do you teach it? It's a slippery slope issue. Teaching stuff like eye movement reminds me of having dyslexics focus on strengthening their eyes and their fine and gross motor skills. We DO teach students the conventions of how our print works--to read left to right and so forth.

The Science of Word Recognition

2010-05-15T00:23:00.004-04:00

"The Science of Word Recognition" is a comprehensive rebuttal of the word shape theory of word recognition, as first posited by James Cattell in 1886. At the time, this theory, which explains that words are recognized by their shape rather than by individual letters, was based on 4 experimental findings: 1. the Word Superiority Effect (letters are recognized better in the context of words), 2. the fact that we read lowercase letters at a faster rate than uppercase letters, 3. misspellings are frequently overlooked when the shape of the overall word is not changed by the mistake (tesf vs. tesc), and 4. text that is a mix of upper and lowercase letters is difficult to read. However, these 4 findings have other logical explanations. For instance, the context provided by the word itself is what allows the reader to remember the letters in a word. Take, for example, acronyms. When acronyms are used to study, like KPCOFGS (King Philip Came Over From Geneva, Switzerland: Kingdom, Phylum, Class. Order, Family, Species), it is the meaning associated with the information that allows it to be retained, rather than the shape of the word. Finding 2 is explained by "practice effect"--the idea that we are more practiced, due to our grammatical conventions, of reading mostly lowercase letters. If we were to practice reading in uppercase letters, we would get faster at that over time. Finding 3 is explained by the fact that the effects of letter shape and word shape can't be separated. In other words, in "tesf" the "f" is very similar to "t" (which makes the word have the same shape as the target word "test"). However, this similarity also calls to mind the missed letter, "t." The ability of our minds to make cognitive leaps when reading calls to mind what I do when reading phonetic spellings--I can figure it out when it is close enough, and if it is pretty close, it doesn't slow me down at all, though I do notice the error. Finally, in relation to the 4th finding, I have a friend who makes her facebook status updates in alternating caps, and I often don't read them. They are difficult to read and difficult to look at. I equate this to messy handwriting--unfamiliar variations are a strain.

Larson explains the other major theories of word recognition, one of which I had never heard of before: serial word recognition. This theory (briefly) posited that each letter was read and processed one at a time, from left to right. However, eye movement research put an end to this idea, as researchers realized that the eye actually fixates and saccades in a side to side movement, supporting the current theory of word recognition, Parallel Letter Recognition. This theory, supported by both Perfetti's Verbal Efficiency Thoery(1985) and Adams's (1990) model of reading, explains that the recognition of individual letters occurs in parallel as the eye fixates on several letters (and words) at a time. I am familiar with this information (lengths of fixations, the ways our eyes move when we move, and so forth), but I had not read the research it came out of, so it was interesting to learn about the tests used: The Moving Window Study and the Boundary Study.

I know from the mass email I get that says something like "If yuo cna raed tihs" and is an argument for the idea that we don't read each letter of a word that the idea that we don't read each letter is still alive and well. (This concept is further discussed here.) Spear-Swerling and Sternberg's (1996) stage theory of reading explains that visual-cue readers, who are pre-alphabetic, do somewhat recognize words in this manner; for example, small children will recognize the McDonald's logo. Perhaps this developmental stage and the teaching of sight words to children propagate the myth that we skip letters and even words. However, as Adams (1990) asks, "...Can they learn 50,000 [words]?" (p. 1229).

One question I have: What is the etymology of the phrase "Bouma" used to represent the idea of word shape?

Another question I had regards the functor words Larson mentions. He says that these are sometimes skipped, although they are at least partially read with shorter words in fixations. I wonder if this is one reason these tend to be the words most often missed by (at least older) struggling readers? These "small" words slay my students' accuracy scores. I know part of what makes them difficult to remember is that, although they can carry a lot of meaning in a sentence, these words have less concrete meaning than content words, making them harder to remember.

Finally, if we know that students don't learn words by their shapes, why do some teachers encourage children to learn words this way, as evidenced by the popular worksheets found at abcteach.com and enchantedlearning.com. It infuriates me that there are so many misguided notions regarding learning to read, and that so often those who teach are kids to read don't have proper training. It is our kids who suffer the most.

To Denise! I Love You!

2010-04-26T17:40:00.003-04:00

I Saw Only Thirteen Years

My mind swims with thoughts of Neesie
You would be, what, 26, these days?
A full thirteen
years older than when I last saw you.

You died and left me,
my young playmate& friend—
sister.
Not twins, but closer.

I remember you had gained weight
--a good sign—
You stole my tips &
awaited your period & womanhood.

Now I try to imagine
your kids & mine—

but instead I can only see
your freckles below soft blue eyes.
B. Faulkner

1:20 p.m.

12-11-09

Valdese, NC

She died 13 years ago today!

You Are Not Sick--You Are Nadia!

2010-04-26T17:17:00.003-04:00

You're Not Sick--You're Nadia

We walk so that you may dance
a wild young rhythm on ballerina feet.
We walk so that you may sing
lustily, off-key, about princesses & love
so that you can ask, "Do I get to go to Hollywood?"
so that you can say, "Tell me no, mom, so I can practice crying."

We walk so that your crying will remain just practice.

Girl, you demand life like you demand food
like you command your daddy to rub your feet
like you sass me & say, "I know that" & roll your eyes.

We're here to roll our eyes at cystic fibrosis,
hands on hip, giving it full sass
so that you can continue
your strange way of calling people humans,
your hourly costume changes--

We walk to spread your attitude--like you told Gavin,
"I'm not sick! I'm Nadia!"

My daytime Cinderella,
we walk for you.

B. Faulkner
4-26-2010

Come visit our team web page, Team Nadia Denise, for Great Strides.

Rewriting the Story: Searching for the CF Cure

2010-03-04T18:33:00.001-05:00

Nadia before and after diagnosis: always smiling and STILL GROWING!

I am not trying to write a sob story.

My goal is to NEVER have to do that. My goal is to rewrite my daughter's story, to give her more time for her exposition, time for the rising action that will allow her to learn more about life and herself in the process, time for experiencing life's conflicts (commonly referred to as milestones and experiences). I want the resolution to be a long time coming; I am not interested in penning her epilogue. My dream is that she'll be around to pen mine.

I can not change the fact that my daughter was born with cystic fibrosis. Nor would I have chosen not to have her here living her life, as I could have done had I known after conception that she was sick. In many ways, I am SO thankful that her disease was such a shock to me. Had I known prior to her conception that her father and I were both carriers of the cf gene, I would have felt it unethical to have a child, though I so wanted another (and I still do; being the oldest of six children makes two of one's own seem lonely, somehow). I am sure that I would have held steadfast to the decision I feel certain that I would have made--to have not terminated my pregnancy had I found out she was ill, but I know I would have questioned my ability to be a mother to a special-needs child. I would have had questions about her possible quality of life.

On the other hand,

Nadia spent almost eighteen months dying in small increments before she was diagnosed.

Her early childhood was characterized by an appetite that is now legendary--she ate more than her father and I put together at each mealtime, yet was still hungry just ten minutes later. She would grunt and growl between each bite when she still required us to feed her. Her belly was always rock hard and distended like a starving child from a third-world country. She had that hollow look in her eyes. The Christmas before she was diagnosed, she was so teeny, despite all of the eating. She cried nonstop. Her hair was thin. I told my husband that she was going to die. I felt powerless. Once I daignosed her via Googling her symptoms, and after I got over the trauma of attaching the label of a terminal illness to my daughter, I realized that her diagnosis gave us back some control. I also realized that life itself is terminal, so in that sense, she's not that much different than the rest of us.

I was angry, though. I went through a "Why me" stage. I was angry with the state of North Carolina for not testing for cf with the infant "heel prick" they do at birth. I was angry that my gynecologist hadn't explained what it meant to me that I was a carrier for cf (I had discovered this via routine testing when I was pregnant with my son). I was angry that she didn't explain to me the importance of having my husband tested to see if he, too, was a carrier. I was angry that I had forgone the genetic testing on my husband due to monetary concerns. However, I soon realized that had those things occured, I wouldn't have my Nadia. Nothing can make me regret that she is here. She is not misreable. She is happy most days, except for when her brother is pestering or when we don't let her have her way.

Let me tell you how difficult it is to say no to a child with an illness. I want to give her everything she wants. I want to ensure that she never cries. But I know that I also must prepare her to live as normal a life as possible, and the best gift I can give her is one of normalacy. Besides, it is through this every day parenting that we teach our children values and show them how to make their way in the world. It is through this "home education" that we show our kids that we love them, as cliched as that sounds. When I was growing up, I was a good kid, but I didn't have that constant parental attention I craved, the parents who asked me if I had homework or talked to me about my day at school. I want to provide her with that.

The time has not come yet for me to explain many of the details of cf to Nadia. She knows that she is sick and that she has to take medicine. She knows that she has a team of doctors that she visits, doctors that care a lot about her. She understands that she has to be very careful about germs, and she is a better hand-washer than me. She also understands (and loves) that she gets to eat and drink more than the rest of us; she is quick to ask, "Where's my shake?" as soon as she gets home. These protein shakes have helped us get her to just over 30 pounds, a milestone that forever seemed unreachable. When the time comes for Nadia to learn more about her illness and the implications of it, I would like to be able to tell her that it is not so bad. I would like to be able to tell her about all of the great new medical breakthroughs and treatments available to her, including gene replacement therapy.
You can help make this happen by making donations to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation at http://www.cff.org/. Teams are gearing up nationwide for the annual Great Strides walk. Join a team. Help fundraise. (Visit our team's website to learn more about Nadia and to donate to our efforts). Read about c.f. here so that you know what it is and how it is inherited.

Help us rewrite the story for thousands of children and adults!

Love,
Nadia's Mommy

A Chat With Ginsberg

2010-01-16T09:44:00.001-05:00

"Original exploration of the craft alone expresses a poet's individual soul and conscience" (p. 178, from Ginsberg's Journals: Mid-Fifties 1954-1958).

I agree, Ginsberg! I've spent all of my time until recently exploring poetry alone and have stumbled into my "style" without realizing my cosmic influences, or who it was that paved the way for my eccentricities. However, I feel that because I chose to leave my official English studies after my B.S. that I know nothing of styles, movements, criticisms, all the nuances the literary types pride themselves on (see, here I go, ending sentences with preopositions). But I have always read like reading was a drug, and I learn well on my own. The problem is making the time.

I've loved you, A.G., since my college boyfriend allowed that I could have your book of collected poems after the breakup because I loved it more. And from you--stylistically--I stole the & and your habit of time, date, and place stamping your writing. It was amazing to trace your inner and outer journey, seeing what you wrote and where you wrote.

Recently, I read Plath's unabridged journals and was envious of her black bleakness and poetic prose. I read a biography of E.E. Cummings, though I would have preferred to have read his journals (all poets keep them, right?) You can really get to knowa poet better through his own words. I am so thankful to E.E. for liberating the left margin and for making it okay NOT to capitalize the first letter of every line (why postmodern poets STILL do so is beyond me). Emily Dickinson makes me feel better because she wasn't surrounded by fellow writers and artists like you and Plath and Cummings and Moore and Kerouac and so forth. And who knew Williams was a physician and a writer on the side?

How much better a poet would I be if I had unlimited time to write and explore my psyche? To study all that has ever been said of writing, all that has been writ? My goal is to read biographies, journals, and some poems--of as many as I can stomach--some not being my type at all. I am ashamed to admit that until recently, I have avoided reading poetry, though I profess to love it. From your journals I have now stolen the idea of keeping a continual list of books I have read. That will certainly clear up the question of "What the hell HAVEN'T I read, anyway?" I am also eager to buy your Mexico journals & read ours together. It will be like having a conversation with you, seeing what we wrote while in the same setting--though years & miles apart.

I still like Cummings, even if you did think he was "artificial."

Your mother died on my birthday when you were 30. Now I am 30. Are you with your Naomi now?

Ginsberg, you mad rebel poet, thank you for bringing asshole & fuck & drugs into poetry--for fighting with the censors--though sense in your "cunts" that you disliked women for how they challenged you for your men. Where does that leave me?

My mind burns
does yours burn like this
with words like these?

Until next time, A.G.

Della Grey

2009-12-04T20:25:00.000-05:00

I think, due to the overwhelming popularity/influence of Faulkner, that to use this name for writing is suicide. What do you think of pen names? Are they necessary? I have been toying with this idea for a long time. I like the name Della because it was my favorite, departed grandmother's name. Not sure about the last name. This is the name I had wanted to name the elusive third child, the one my husband won't let me have.

The WTC--WTF?

2009-09-22T08:59:00.002-04:00

(Photo from here.)

This was meant to be a memorial blog. However, a surprising number of my freshmen don't remember the tragic events of 9-11-2001. Therefore, this is more of a WTF lament blog! I mean, what is this world coming to when the most horrible event in their lifetimes is forgettable? Granted, they were 6 at the time, but isn't it part of our duty to remember and to teach them to remember?

(Photo from here.)

Maybe they don't remember this event or haven't learned about it in school because for most of their lives, we have been at war. In a climate of violence and unrest, one event might not stand out as much. When asked what the most important event in their lifetime was so far, one student replied, "Michael Jackson dying has been the most major event so far." This reply was the most common, beating out Obama's presidency, Hurricane Katrina, 9-11, and other such responses. Another major event that was predominate for these 14-year-olds is the swine flu, and some are stressed that the world might end in 2012, "Before I can graduate," notes one student.
Head smack! How do we help our young ones, this next generation, be alert to important events, rather than being diverted by pop culture? This is a very dangerous trend.

Comments from my freshmen on September 11, 2009 from their journals:

Words from some who didn't remember it:
"I don't know nothing about it. I wonder what happen 2001, 09, 11th?"

"I wonder why September 11th is so important? I never heard anything about it before."

"I don't know anything about it. It is emotional. It sound sad. So I feel sorry for them."

"I don't remember anything about it and don't know much about it."

"It was just another day."

"I don't know about September 11th."

"Isn't that a holiday--Patriot Day? Why are we in school?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. Why do I care about New York?"

"I don't think it really happened. It was just a government plot."

Be relieved, many of them, even if they don't remember much, know of the event.

"On 9/11 I remember I was in 1st grade in Mrs. Williams's class. She came into the classroom and turned the t.v. on. The hole class look at the t.v. and was shocked. Some of the kids started crying. So it was a very sad day."

"I was in first grade doing my math homework. And I saw the 2 towers burning on tv."

"September eleven, 2001. I was in first grade. I remember the teacher leaving the room. Then she came back crying. We asked her what's wrong, but she didn't tell us. They didn't tell us anything. Some of my friends checked out, but no one told them anything. I guess they didn't want to scare us, but by them not telling us, by them being so quiet, they did scare us."

"I thought it was the saddest day. People werwe jumping out of the buildings so they didn't get burned."

"I remember it. My dad picked me and my sister up early. We thought it was our grandmother (that something had happened to her). Our dad asked if we watched the news."

"9/11/01 was a terrible day. I remember when I was in 1st grade, and we watched it fall to the ground and it made me mad."

"What I know about 9/11 is that the twin towers got hit by an airplane."

"Why didn't they hit the Empire State Building?"

"All I remember was being in my second grade class. And some teachers were like "Whoa" and everything."

"I remember I was at my grandma's house and we were watching the news and I saw a plane crash in a building smoking and crushed. I asked what it was--it was the terroist attack."

"It was really scary."

"September 11th wasn't the best day ever."

"On 9-11-01, there was something like a plane crash that killed a lot."

"Why did this happen?"

Tranquility before disaster struck.

Signs and Other Such Nonsense

2009-09-20T23:19:00.003-04:00

Someone thinking of doing LSD could see this sign as a "sign"-- the kind we pray for when at that proverbial crossroads muddled by the brainless
Scarecrow.

I got it yesterday, my Stephen King's On Writing. I read this book over the summer and briefly toyed with not returning it to the library, though I knew there were much easier (and more honorable) ways of owning it.

Ever the bargain hunter--and shopper looking for excuses--I spent the rest of the summer wandering the book sections of Goodwills strewn across Western North Carolina. I'd get that familiar tug, that sensation that would tell me to vacate a room RIGHT THEN when I was a child or the bad guy lurking outside the darkened window would get me. This feeling has been a schizoid companion over the years, paronoid, yes, but a saviour nonetheless.

Let's call this feeling intuition. I'll leave the pondering of its meaning and my heeding it to Joesph Campbell or Freud, even. Intuition, that nagging something, was telling me that I would find this book on a Goodwill shelf, languishing forlornly for its true owner, the aging prodigy, me.

Instead, I found both a novel by Maeve Binchy and a collection of her short stories that I had not yet read (more exciting because I thought I'd exhausted her work in a systematic binge the previous summer), a collection of Pablo Nerudo's poetry in hardback, in color, AND in Spanish, a baby-naming book, another copy of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants for my classroom library, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself (by Judy Blume), and the last, a pulp fiction book that had me so terrified last night that I couldn't sleep--and so engaged that I didn't want to.

Ironically (coincidentally?), this novel, The Poet, had an introduction by Stephen King, whick struck me as odd, in the way that Jesus introducing Tammy Faye at a Bible convention would be. Did horror and that other, the IT that reveals other realms, exist before this man, this man that must surely be some kind of messed up himself? (Yes, I know, there was Poe, who is a central character in The Poet). Stephen King made me read this book, the way the devil might. He warned that this novel was a masterpiece of fear, remarking that "...it's genuinely terrifying...I think of myself as relatively case-hardened to make-believe terrors, but the further I followed jack into the Poet's world, the more frightened I became" (p. XII). He boasted that he had turned on extra lights while he read the book.

I rose to the challenge, determined that, although I am a scaredy cat, I would be more logical than Mr. King. After all, it's not "on this world," as my six-year-old son, Gavin, remarks of Zombie films and queries of tornados. Subsequently, I wonder if my heightened awareness of nightime noises didn't arise from the expectation rather than any particular skill on the author's part.

I have been postponing writing, just getting down to it behind closed doors on a schedule as Mr. King does, ever since my office was completed (though technically, I still have no door, so how can I be blamed?) Perhaps because I felt that by merely having this book in the house, I'd have no choice but to get back to finishing Candy, Sweet and Sour. After all, Stephen King is the master of the psyche. If a car can be murderous, a teenager telekinetic, and graveyard soil regenerating, then his book could certainly be equipped with a monitoring device to ensure that I adhere to his principles,or even more sinister, a hypnotic wavelength brainwashing me into a woman slaughtering for the cure to my painful arthritis.

I grudgingly acknowledged that I was unlikely to find this book admidst those other common Goodwill books, the Harlequins, Lavyrle Spencer, Danielle Steele, R.L. Stine, the abandoned and yellowed, and would instead have to buy it online. Sigh. Life is such hard work these days.

I didn't even want to face the possible meaning of not having found this book. Was I not meant to be a writer? Am I not that special? My gut feelings are simply a combo of neurosis and hunger pains fueled by delusions of grandeur? It did occur to me that this book was simply too good to be among the discarded, but that logic did nothing for my ego.

Last weekend, while taking notes in class, I bought On Writing on Ebay. I found a cheaper copy in hard back, but these days, I am drawn to the aesthetics of paperback, no annoyingly-in-the-way-high-gloss facade of a cover for me, thank you very much. Something about a paperback invites the scrawls, the dog-ears, the annotaions--all the hallmarks of a useful book. I can reread these books and reeneter my own mind at that point in time.

Yesterday, delirious from lack of sleep after having read The Poet in its entirety (not in one sitting because I was running from window to door), I came home from class and got my own On Writing in the mail. A cursory glance at the receipt showed that I had unknowingly purchased it from the Goodwill Industries of San Fransisco, and thanks for helping provide jobs for the communities they serve, too.

No, thank you. Had I not preferred soft to hard and the nostalgic cover art to the black and white horror cliche, this, my very own book, would not have come from Goodwill like I knew it would. Chance? I think not. I embrace my destiny.....

The cover I prefer.

The other cover

And finally, the man himself:

Putting Cellulite On Barbie Dolls: The Fat Debate

2009-09-07T16:07:00.014-04:00

If you're thinking of lap band surgery, of stomach stapling, of using Alli, of dieting, or of working out, STOP! Don't act until you read the benefits of being fat! Really! Did you know the fatter you are, the less likely you are to be raped? And you're more likely to "survive malnutrition." That does it. Chocolate cookies, here I come. Bring on the cheese and the Crisco I.V. (Photo from here.)

I read some old National Enquirers and other such enlightening tabs at a friend's house recently (outloud). It made for some fun party talk. Here's a synopsis of an article entitled: "20 Great Reasons to Stay Fat" in the Weekly World News, circa December 5, 2000. It was a good for a few laughs and some, "No they didn'ts!"

Here they are:
1. Beat the cold. Your fat insulates you from the elements. (Blubber!)
2. Ward off malnutrition. As I always say, the upside is that it will take me longer to starve to death.
3. Fight off cancer. Huh? They claim that since chemotheraphy causes malnutrition, the fatter you are, the better your chances.
4. Survive gunshot. I guess the bullet has more to travel through before hitting vital organs.
5. Battle hyperthyrodism. Since this disease speeds up your metabolism and makes you super-skinny, I don't see how you would even BE fat to begin with.
6. Fall safely. Ha. Ha. I guess a fat ass is good for something.
7. Live through car wreck. "A car wreck is more survivable if you have a protective layer of fat" Seeing a theme here? I'm protected. Wow. It sure feels nice! And they don't tell you that you are more likely to kill other people in your car if you're fat and unbelted. It almost happened to my daddy years ago when this bigger lady we'll call Snow Lady was thrown onto him from the backseat as they plummeted down an embankment.
8. Fend off rape. My favorite "No they didn't." As you can imagine, the argument goes that the fatter you are, the less attractive you are to members of the opposite sex, and the less likely you are to be raped! What? Is that legal to print? Wow. There goes my self-esteem. Guess I'll cuddle with my fat!
9. Avoid pedestrian injuries. "A big person can sometimes deliver more damage to some of today's cars than vice vers." This quote from a DOCTOR--Dr. Holwood. What? I guess a motorsit will think twice before purposely running you down, too.
10. Stay out of jail. They say that some people are just too big to fit into a cell. My question is what kind of crime can you get up to if you are that big?
11. Beat stress. According to this article, people stress themselves out over dieting. Their flawed logic explains that if you are fat, you must be avoiding dieting stress. Right.
12. Survive knife wounds. Much like the gunshot reason, the fatter you are, the harder it will be for an assailant to puncture vital organs via knife.
13. Star in Sumo wrestling. If you aspire to this career, you definately need some extra weight. I can't argue with this one.
14. Win at tug-of-war. Again, it's true. But how many of us play tug-of-war outside of elementary school field days?
15. Live through a plane wreck. "If you go down in a plane crash, pray that you look more like Rosie O'Donnell than Christina Aquilera. The flab will absorb some of the impact." (p. 43). That's what I'm banking on. I'm storing all of this fat to survive a plane crash! Maybe I can wander around with hottie Jack, Lost and half-nekkid...Yum!
16. Prevail in brawls. The bigger you are, the harder you hit, right?
17. Resist being pushed off cliffs. How obscure! WTF.
18. Avoid sexual harrassment. Another favorite "No they didn't!" Because fat women aren't likely to be hit on....
19. Survive poisoning. A lot of toxins are fat-soluable, so the fatter you are, the more poison it takes to kill you. Proceed with your arsenic salad.
20. Overcome boa constrictors. Yep. We fight boa constrictors on a daily basis. "...if you're too fat for one to wrap around, let alone swallow, you don't have to worry." (p. 43). Now all us fatties can rest easy.

Funny? Yes. Accurate? Not so much.

In a perfect act of synchronicity or just plain coincidence, I happened upon another article, quite the opposite, several days later, in Health. Mind you, neither of these magazines are common reading material for me.

Fat: 19 New Reasons to Keep it Off Your Belly, Hips, Thighs--and Everywhere Else. by Ginny Graves. Health. May, 2009. pp. 109-113.

1. Fat rachets up your risk for cancer. Because fat produce hormones, women are especially at greater risk for cancers like breast cancer and endometrial cancer. And men can get breast cancer, too!
2. It can make cancer treatment and recovery difficult. More women tend to die from cancer if they're obese because it takes higher dosages of drugs to be effective. But doctors tend to give them lower dosages than needed because they are afraid of overdosing. Guess this is the downside to number 19, above.
3. It's hard on your heart. Is this because you are so unattractive that you constantly find your love life lacking? Nah. It's because being fat carries with it other "cardiac risk factors"--you know, high cholestrol, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Hmm...I was expecting to see that the heart had to work harder to pump all that blood through such a big body...But anyways, statistics show that fat people tend to die of heart attacks 12 years earlier than skinny bitches, er, people.
4. It makes exercise unappealing. Is that a bad thing? Graves explains that exercise clothing (skinny lycra tops, etc.) aren't the only things keeping fatties out of the gym. We also suffer from more aches and pains, which could be alleviated if we went to the gym, but we JUST DON'T FEEL LIKE IT! I can attest to the truthfulness of this one. It is a horrible catch-22.
5. Fat is bad for your brain. Scary. The fatter you are, the more likely you are to succumb to dementia. Aw, man. And when I read the title of this one, I was all ready with my standard, "That will level the playing field; I'm already so smart." But dementia frightens me. What would I be without my mind? Lifeless fat?
6. It doesn't do much for your mood. "Is being fat depressing or is depression fattening," Graves queries. Whatever the case, it doesn't leave you feeling good, unless you are one of those men that like "more to hold." But even then, the fat is on someone else most of the time, and hopefully, you're smart enough to get on top.
7. Fat takes a toll on joints. Yep, please don't sit on that before I have a toke. What? Oh yeah. The other joints. I can attest to this, too. I have arthritis, and the fatter I get, the more my joints ache.
8. It puts pressure on your bladder. If you have ever been pregnant, you KNOW this!
9. It isn't good for your other organs. Fat is specifically hard on your kidneys...wonder why? I got nothing.
10. Fat may produce a backlash in the bedroom. That's too funny. Is this like that old joke, "Smack her belly, and ride the waves in?" Apparently, the bigger you are, the less people want to have sex with you. And then the less sexy you feel.... I guess this is a throwback to numbers 8 and 18 from the previous article.
11. It makes some medical tests tricky. You might not fit into that MRI machine, that wheelchair, etc. Not to mention the poor folks who will have to lift you if you are unable to move on your own.
12. It may affect your medical care. Apparently, doctors have their own prejudices and may "associate obesity with unpleasant character traits, like hostility, dishonesty, and poor hygiene..." (p. 112). I am glad that this issue is turning up in the research because I have certainly felt some negative undercurrents as a result of my weight, and I'm not even that big. But I feel that my doctors think my medical conditions are my fault because I am so slovenly.
13. It can interfere with your fertility. No problems there for me. Maybe that's a reason to get bigger. Hell, if a man can have a baby, if a 60-year-old woman can have a baby, if a woman can have 8 babies at a time, then surely a fat woman can have a baby or two. In fact, I recently read that one danger of being fat and pregnant is that it is easier for you to not know you're pregnant. Strange...that's not mentioned here.
14. It makes pregnancy riskier. Yep. A larger friend of mine had gestational diabetes, and her pregnancy was very misreable. Also, her babies were LGA--large for gestational age.
15. It may even affect your baby's health. Very sad. No joking matter.
16. It may make asthma harder to treat. I think this goes back to the poison thing...the bigger you are, the harder it is for drugs to work effectively.
17. It keeps you up at night. Sleep apnea is not funny, either.
18. It makes you less likely to be hired. WOW! Again, at least this is coming to light. I guess that non-discrimination clause is just for looks.
19. It can affect your bottom line. Yep. Your underwear certainly do get bigger as your waist expands. Oh. They mean how much money you earn. Not fair, unless you get paid for being skinny. But you also have to spend more money on medical bills, and if you yo-yo diet like me, you have to buy lots of clothes in lots of sizes. The good news is that you can conceal a shopping binge under the guise of "nothing fits."

These two articles, though one is obviously a farce, highlight the problem of the contradictory messages we are bombarded with in regards to our health. Who knows what is best?

I have been consumed by thoughts of weight for as long as I can remember, really. No matter how successful I am in other areas of my life, I have a deep hatred for my appearance, particularly my weight, which makes functioning rather difficult at times. Sadly, this state of affairs is the norm for most of us, especially females.

Here's a poem I wrote on the matter:

A Friend of Barbie
There’s nothing quite like starting

really committing suicide.

At an age when many

advocate for the pleasures,

I, the friend of Barbie,

realize the futile symbolic battles we fight.

I am a woman on the edge

with nothing left to prove.

I don’t want to be scared of a grapefruit,

and I’m craving for a treat.

The little ones, they are embraced

by members of the opposite sex

as dainty, frail, and lovable.

They are full of the giddy joy of being

the smallest slice.

I refuse to be a bird watcher anymore,

and I will not have lettuce guilt.

I’m quite beyond the enormous

as I consider a new vendetta:
breaking free of intravenous tubes.

Surveying this scene of self-imposed starvation

that is becoming a national trend,

I feel the pain of weight.

As our bodies dissipate,

I intone a chant that will perhaps sustain the less resilient.

Women seem strong

but we hoard food

like some kind of junkies.

We feel true hunger

as we undergo a full withdrawal

from nourishment.

Counting caloric intake

helps digest the need to eat.

I’ve spent most of my life

arranging my thigh fat,

and I’ve never slept in the nude.

I’ve had it really lucky.

Of some two dozen girls,

three died of starvation.

In that endless human stupidity,

women get caught in the silly lie

that bone skinny is gorgeous

and retraining the size of body parts

is a priority that is emergency.

As we start to nibble,

women should actually unite and try

to escape the pubescent mantra

that one size should fit all

and understand

that the world is a wide

assortment of people.

So, your thighs might look like cottage cheese.

But I, the friend of Barbie,

plead to have cellulite put on Barbie dolls.

We deserve to eat,

and have our pictures taken, too.

Boone, NC Fall, 1997

B. Faulkner

Click here to read the article about the controversial ad, above, aimed at reducing childhood obesity.

Weigh in. Do you think fat people choose to be fat?

Click here to visit the Fat Barbie Doll Fantasy Fan Club: really, there's a club for EVERYONE!

Urine Dreams and Pee Streams

2009-09-05T10:29:00.005-04:00

PEE Urine streams and fluid dreams.

A public urinal in Amesterdam. Would you use it?

I have to pee. It's an entirely human thing, but I find it annoying. It's such a hassle to stop what I'm doing just to urinate! No wonder young children just keep playing and pee on themselves. They've got their priorities straight! I'm seriously thinking about getting cathetirized just so I only have to worry about changing a bag every now and then.

I guess I dislike peeing because I rarely get to do it at work. Every stolen moment in my classroom is used to futiley try to catch up. And the bathrooms are so far away. And if I leave the room, even during class change or break, the kids go ape nuts.
It's just easier to hold it.

When I was pregnant, I peed every 10 seconds. Especially when I was
dancing, which I did rather often.

If you are still reading, you deserve this.
Knock Knock.

Who's there?

Smell mop.
Smell mop who?

HA HA HA HA
Let me know if you get it. It took my husband a good 5 minutes. He just thought it was another one of my made up jokes with no punch-line, the kind I laugh incessantly at.
Hmmmm. Hmmmm. Hmmm. I'm mediatating.

Pee Pee Pee dance.

Last semester, I showed a graphic that illustrated each step of the pee-pee dance. I used it to show how detailed they should be in their how-to speeches. It was funny.

Okay then. I shall pee.

Oh, yeah. Pee.

**Urine (vulgar slang piss[1]) is liquid waste product of the body secreted by the kidneys by a process of filtration from blood and excreted through the urethra. Cellular metabolism generates numerous waste compounds, many rich in nitrogen, that require elimination from the bloodstream. This waste is eventually expelled from the body in a process known as urination, the primary method for excreting water-soluble chemicals from the body. These chemicals can be detected and analysed by urinalysis. In pregnant women, amniotic fluid is closely related to urine, and can be analysed by amniocentesis.(Wikipedia)

If you're still reading, you deserve this:
urine therapy:
Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. (The Book of Proverbs 5:15)*

But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? (Isaiah 36:12)* (See also 2 Kings 18:27)*
More than three million Chinese drink their own urine in the belief it is good for their health, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

WHAT THE HELL!!!
Drinking your own piss is a form of therapy?
Have any of
you done this????

Click here to see urine therapy in action.

For further information on pee drinking, see http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vc2tlcGRpYy5jb20vdXJpbmUuaHRtbA==
Folks, you heard it here first!

As a side note, "Unfortunately, however, not everybody can just jump right in and start drinking their own urine without negative side effects."
REALLY???
Ok. I might pee now.

Oh,
You can be PISSED oFF, But ThAt's better than Being Pissed ON! Though they both can lead to the other.

Other ways to delicately speak of this topic, also known as euphemisms:

making water
number 1
pee pee
tinkle
piss
urinate
golden shower
drain the lizard
wee wee
piddle
puddle
micturate
make water
relieve oneself
take a leak
spend a penny
pass water
Operation GoldenFlow
drain the main vein
going peeps
watering the flowers
diddling
take a wiz (and a drug test is aka the wiz quiz)
going to the used beer department
shaking the snake
take a slash
drain the weasel
liquid excretory product
making yellow snow
egest

view public art to pee on

I leave you with this, to be sung to the tune of Lean on Me:

Pee on me when you need somebody to pee on!
Cause we all need somebody to pee on.
Pee on me brother....

Star Wars, Football, and Apple Pie: How I Became American

2009-09-04T11:32:00.015-04:00

Me--thrilled to be a spectator

When I was in college, a boy who will remain nameless (a.k.a. the Italian Stallion) heartfully proclaimed me un-American because I had never watched Star Wars. He even went so far as to say I was communist! Everyone I met those days seemed scandalized by the fact that I had not, would not, watch these films. They just wouldn't take my word for it--I detest(ed) science fiction. It is based on the fantasies of geeks with limited imaginations--ones who base their projections of futuristic people on what they know of life today. Great. What else is there to go on, right?

Urggghhh. There's enough going on in reality to occupy me, thank you very much, like which serial killer is on the loose and coming for me, or, back then, whether or not Bill Clinton did, indeed, have sexual relations with that woman. There was the Columbine tragedy to watch on CNN, over and over, and later, there was the whole 9-11 trauma that kept me, like almost everyone I know, locked into their t.v.s like air strike missiles. Who has time for such old and lame movies like Star Wars?

A retarded one month old chimpanzee could create better graphics.

So what if they were revolutionary for their time? They are unstimulating now, in my time--on my time! I just can not suspend my disbelief. Yeah, I went there.

I did. I somehow knew I wouldn't make it through college without losing my innocence, and my instincts were golden. As soon as my friends discovered that I had grown up virtually without t.v. and knew nothing about popular culture (and recovered from the shock), they gleefully indoctrinated me. Every evening was an opportunity for furthering my education (and for drinking, but we won't go there). The Princess Bride, E.T., The Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, those freaking Ape movies that I am surprised to say I enjoyed, some movie about a girl who saw faeries, Stand by Me, Ferris Bueler's Day Off, Dazed and Confused, My Girl, Karate Kid, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the old ones), Rainbow Bright, Punky Brewster, 90210, Saved by the Bell, Melrose Place, X-Files, Friends---I could go on and on. They educated me but good. However, I still refused, like a kid with teeth firmly clenched shut against the looming spoonful of Castor oil, to watch Star Wars! Didn't they know I was a pacifist?

Wasn't enough that we had wars on Earth? Did they have to continue in outer
space?

Like most stories go, I met a hot guy (at least, I thought so, but my friends tell me he is dorky). We dated (a whole month), and when we broke up, I was grasping at straws to keep him at my side. After all, how could I marry the guy if we weren't dating, right? Being the sly female creature that I am, I said, "If we break up, how can I ever watch Star Wars? I don't have a t.v.!" Being the psychology major that he was, he just looked at me and shook his head, refusing to be "got." The next day, his t.v. was in my apartment, as was his stack of Star Wars VHS tapes. But no him. I nursed my bleeding, broken heart watching those stupid movies, and by the end of the third one, I had gotten past the horrible staging, setting, costuming, camera work, and dialogue to the heart of the matter, to the story. To the love story. To the humanity of it all. I caved. And that was the beginning of the end for me.

After that, you couldn't get me out of in front of the t.v. (unless you bribed me with the prospect of hiking or live music). Instead of painting and writing and reading and otherwise being neurotic, I was hooked up to my entertaining life support, getting brain deader by the minute (I think Ray Bradbury had it right). Jerry Springer, South Park, the Simpsons, dumb late night shows and stupid people on Comedy Central....the programing was obviously so riveting and vital that 8 years later, I just can not recall. Is that a proper defense?

Then I met my husband. Actually, I already knew him. We were good friends. Let me rephrase. Then my husband and I decided to kiss at a party one night in Spartanburg where our friends' band was playing and where he was supposed to be running lights. And where I was kinda sorts with the drummer. And where his friend (the drummer's) Boner took revenge and tackled me into a brier bush. Ah, those were the days....My husband is a Star Wars geek. Are there names for those, like the Trekkies have? So it is a good thing that horrible guy broke my heart all those years ago because I would never have understood his desire to watch these movies all the time and to own and play with light sabres. It's a good thing we had a kid. A boy.

Now my husband can dress up and pretend to be a Jedi without looking insane.
Which he is.

Which brings me to my point. Now I am a communist because I hate football. I wouldn't go as far to say I hate it: I've just never enjoyed it. Heck--I had a Superbowl party last year. Aren't those commercials great? I've always been a soccer girl myself. It's one or the other, right? Well, I got free tickets to a Panther's game last night, so we went. WOW! Had I known that so many hot guys went to those games, I woulda been in long ago. Before the husband. Geez. Man legs, abs, sweat, guttural grunts, yum yum! Oh, and the team--cute little butts and all that touching. Who cares about the game? I think they should hire me to do girl commentary at these events. I'm hilarious. Like when one guy fell down, I said, "Someone should help him up," didn't I Star-Wars loving honey? I never could figure out which side was ours because they kept switching goals, but I do know that first downs are good. I think I could definitely do more of this football game thing. It was breathtaking to walk into the stadium so jammed full of people, lit up like it was day. I was momentarily catapulted back to the days of junior high cheerleading and the time I spent with footballs.......sigh. Memory lane. Two high school kids did offer to beat up the people who were in our seats, and they were trying to decide if they should skip Physics today (I'll never tell you my response!).

Apple pie--I just threw that in there. Who doesn't like it? A la mode. Hot. All American Pie style. Those guys almost (almost) ruined it for me. It's not my favorite, but if you handed me an apple pie, I'd eat it.

A poem written back when I was still on my high-horse about TV:

Television--my generation’s “Howl”

I stood by as the best brains of my generation rotted,
maggot-infested mush,
roving in a frenzy through the wasteland channels at 2 a.m.
Searching for a mirror of themselves,
fat couch potatoes hunting the lost remote control,
too lazy to get up and turn the television off,
content to stare at the blue scrolling screen of the preview channel,
sat up empty-eyed,
listening to their god Jerry Springer
preach from his final thoughts soap box,
who opened their minds to South Park on Comedy Central
and saw fat guys farting & eating cheesy poofs
while the bastards killed Kenny,
who passed through life with hollow eyes
hallucinating truth and reason among the artists of TV.....

09-08-1998 Boone, NC

Telecommuting: Good for the Environment

2009-08-30T11:23:00.006-04:00

Who wouldn't want to work from home, especially when surrounded by such breathtaking views? If you live in an industrialized dump, you may want to travel to work just to stave off insanity and depression. Otherwise, this posting is for you!

Need a job? Got a computer and Internet? I am in need of part-time work myself, so I've been diligently searching Craigslist (my first time!). I got the bright idea to search in bigger cities for jobs doing what I love most--writing--since we all know that North Carolina is a bit too provincial to have many of those types of jobs. While broswing the New York postings, I was thrilled to notice that several promising jobs were offered via telecommuting. So I searched other large cities around the US. Then I got to thinking that it would be neat if there were a telecommuting job database somewhere, but I didn't find one. As much power as we have these days with the Internet, the overload of info available online is still largely unorganized (and thus overwhelming and at times obscure). Therefore, I am listing links to telecommuting jobs here, in no particular order. I hope this compilation is useful to someone. Let me know! May the best person get the job.

Writers needed for political news org http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/wri/1338618451.html

Intern for Green Social Website http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/wri/1327616550.html

Parenting & Relationship Writer Needed http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1347148845.html

Therapeutics Editor-fulltime http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/wri/1345550930.html

Writer / Editor (Online) http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1345217231.html

freelance writer for magazine http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1344189954.html

Online Women's Travel Magazine Accepting Submissions http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1344164869.html

Senior Editor http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1342447481.html

PartTime Editor Oncology Competitive Intelligence Reports http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1340421992.html

GMAT/GRE Prep Material Developer http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1340160449.html

Internet researcher/book reviewer http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/wri/1336303923.html

Bloggers/Contributors needed for new blogging network http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1333499611.html

STYLE & FASHION - writers/photographers http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1321730920.html

Copy Editor - Training and Certification http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1316215006.html

Writers Wanted for On-Line Mag http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/1314606944.html

Freelance Writers http://newyork.craigslist.org/fct/wri/1312628089.html

Senior Editor http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/wri/1342333837.html

Looking for Writers on Marriage & Relationships http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/wri/1339737404.html

online writing internship http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/wri/1339344549.html

Transcriber http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lgb/wri/1332741460.html

German Voice Over Talent with ISDN Hook Up Needed (Global) http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/wri/1331794786.html

Executive Editor/Blogger/Editor Needed for Pet Loving Startup http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/wri/1329850762.html

Freelance Technology Writers Needed http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/wri/1329431763.html

ManagingEditor, start up, local family travel website http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/wri/1328494958.html

Internet Sales Development/Social Network writer and placement http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/wri/1328426679.html

Fashion, Beauty, Health, Career, Lifestyles & Relationship Editors http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/wri/1319825275.html

Home Based Monthly Article Writer http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/wri/1317811040.html

Environmental Research http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/wri/1315529002.html

Write about your Perfect Day! http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lgb/wri/1311720674.html

Looking for Freelance Travel Writers http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/wri/1305931625.html

Pet Writers http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/wri/1305368743.html

Looking for Guys to Blog About Dating http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/wri/1297301879.html

Mobile User Experience Designer Wanted http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/web/1346928858.html

Web designer needed http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/web/1328827934.html

Need expert HTML email programmer http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/web/1321553488.html

Health & Wellness Freelance Writers Needed http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/wri/1305807171.html

Freelance HTML/CSS programmer http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/web/1331492638.html

Reliable, Professional & Skilled Webmaster http://miami.craigslist.org/pbc/web/1322887079.html

Bi-Lingual Yahoo Store Webmaster Part time http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/web/1306211545.html

SOCIAL NETWORK GURU http://miami.craigslist.org/pbc/web/1305260735.html

Senior PHP Developer-Contract http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/web/1303813363.html

Tutoring Company seeks new Tutors http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/edu/1311090760.html

Writer needed ASAP http://orlando.craigslist.org/wri/1340184991.html

iPhone App Reveiwers Needed http://orlando.craigslist.org/wri/1330116574.html

ExtJS Developer http://orlando.craigslist.org/sof/1323713591.html

Experienced PHP developer Needed http://orlando.craigslist.org/eng/1297233682.html

For more jobs like this, see http://www.google.com/search?q=telecommute&btnGNS=Search+craigslist.org&oi=navquery_searchbox&sa=X&as_sitesearch=craigslist.org&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us%3AIE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7ADBS_en

And I never mentioned the words "In this economic climate!" Aren't you proud?