Book Commercial - Treasure Island

As Jim Trelease says in The Read-Aloud Handbook, one of Oprah Winfrey's great contributions to a renewed interest in reading in the United States is her ability to function as a commercial for a book. This really struck me, and it's something that I've been endeavoring to do when I read aloud. Build the book up before you begin! I had a recent experience with my own children, who are sometimes reluctant to settle in to listening to a new book if the style is unfamiliar, that shows how “hype” can really make a difference.

My son was given Treasure Island for his 6th birthday last June. At the time, I hadn't read it, and — although I knew it had something to do with treasure (clever) and I thought there were possibly pirates in it — I didn't give my son any introduction. I didn't even know if I would enjoy it myself. I launched straight into it without preamble:

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17--, and go back to the time when my father kept the “Admiral Benbow” inn, and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof (p. 3).

Ninety words in the opening sentence! My 6-year-old balked, and no wonder. But then one day I decided to read Treasure Island to myself. I couldn't put it down. And then I went to the Internet and looked up Robert Louis Stevenson and things like “black spot,” “Davy Jones,” and “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.” Now I was prepared to be a commercial for this book.

Theo had seen me reading Treasure Island, and heard me “oohing” and “aahing” when it got exciting or scary, and he wanted to know what was happening. I showed him the poem “Fifteen men on a dead man's chest,” which was familiar to him from watching Pirates of the Caribbean, and I told him that it was written by the author of Treasure Island. I told him that there were vicious pirates and lots of danger. Now and then I would give him a taste, saying something like: “Oh no! The little boy in this book is making friends with a pirate – but he doesn't know he's a pirate! He should know! He was told to watch out for a one-legged man! And this guy has only one leg, Theo! What is going to happen?!?” When I finished reading the book myself, I immediately started it from the beginning again, this time reading aloud to both of my kids, who were hanging on to every word. And while I did skip over some lengthy descriptive passages, I didn't substitute any of the difficult vocabulary. In that first sitting, I read them eight chapters and they begged for me to go on. We finished the entire book in only five sessions, and it's over 300 pages long. Because I had done a little research, I was able to explain a bit about the black spot and other things that might have otherwise been a bit obscure. I wouldn't have been able to do that if my first reading and theirs had been simultaneous. We're now reading Kidnapped by the same author.

Margot Hanington Obituary Notice

This will appear in tomorrow's newspapers in Vancouver BC, Victoria BC, and Halifax NS.

Hanington, Margot (Wallace)
Margot Hanington passed away swiftly and gracefully in Victoria B.C. on Sunday, June 15. A resident of South Surrey, she was born in New Brunswick in 1923, and grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia where she was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. Pre-deceased by her husband Rear Admiral Daniel Hanington, she leaves four children: Gillian (Bobby Korpi) of Ajijic, Mexico; Mark (Gloria Garvey) of Kailua, Hawaii; Brian (Deborah Johnson) of Ottawa; and Felicity (Larry Dawe) of Texada Island, as well as 10 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. She also leaves one brother, Lt. Cdr. Howard Wallace of Ottawa, Ontario and two sisters: Rosemary McDonald and Isabel Wallace, both of Halifax, N.S. Also surviving is her partner Robert Welland of South Surrey, B.C. and his sons, daughter and their spouses, all dear to her as well. The funeral service will be held at St. Paul’s Church in Esquimalt B.C. on Thursday June 19 at 2 p.m. Reception following at the Union Club, Victoria at 4 p.m.

Two Boasts

Two boasts about my relations' recent press:

My sister, Kyla Hanington, on CBC's The Sunday Edition. Listen to her amazing essay, Making Muffins.

A review of three pieces by my cousin, Crystal Pite, that were performed at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa as part of the Canada Dance Festival. The review appeared in today's Ottawa Citizen (June 16, 2008). Crystal appeared on CBC's The National on Friday, but I can't find a digital clip of it to share.

Phoque

My nearly-6-year-old son loves the A-word. My fault, really, for teaching him and his sister Miss Susie Had a Steamboat:

Miss Susie had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
The steamboat went to Heaven
Miss Susie went to...

Hello operator
Give me number 9
And if you disconnect me
I'll kick you from...

Behind the 'frigerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Susie fell upon it
And broke her little...

Ask me no more questions
Tell me no more lies
Miss Susie's in the kitchen
Making her mud pies

I love that song, and was relieved recently to see it reproduced in The Daring Book for Girls. Now no one will know it came from me.

Other than that, so far the only curse in my children's lexicon has been the I-word: I'm telling.

My daughter told me today, however, that the French word for seal is rather bad in English. This was the rumour on the playground, at least. My French is ghastly, so I just looked it up myself on Bablefish. A little trial and error was required to communicate the correct definition of the word. (I really need my old-fashioned paper-bound French-English dictionary.) I finally tried:

seal (animal)

.... and I see what she's getting at. But I can hardly forbid them to say the French word for seal, can I? I can already see them trying to work it into conversations. Soon they'll want to head to the harbour for "no reason" or make lists of the "cutest animals that swim."

In stuck chins

My daughter is in Grade 2. Today I see that she's written this in her notebook:

In stuck chins for cheese pizza
1. Make the doe
2. Put it in a cercle shape
3. Put the soss on
4. Put the cheese on
5. Put in the oven

Does technical writing run in the family?
I used to write in stuck chins all day long.

Floral delivery

Someone died on my street last year. I saw the makeshift shrine appear on the telephone pole the day after the car accident: flowers, photos, messages, a cross. Over the next couple of weeks the flowers died and the photos became water-stained. One day, as I waited at a bus stop across the street, I saw a Volkswagen beetle with a florist's logo pull up beside the telephone pole. The driver got out with a delivery of fresh flowers. I saw him stop and look at the address on the label, then at the telephone pole, and again at the label. He'd been asked to deliver flowers to a telephone pole.

Minimalism

I attended a seminar on somefink called "minimalism" recently. Naturally, what this is depends entirely on the context. If I were an art historian, you might think I was talking of Stella or Serra. If I were an architect, you might think I was talking of Mies van der Rohe.

But I am a technical writer. (Now, stay awake. I'm not finished yet. You don't want me to tip Tilted Arc [1981] over on you, now do you? It's heavy.) Talk of minimalism in technical writing circles always comes 'round to JoAnn Hackos, technical communications superstar. Yes, we have them too. Superstars, that is. You haven't heard of them, but they're out there. And Hackos is their Queen.

The seminar was unbelievable!

Here are the highlights:
- We write too much; no one reads it. (This manual..., In this chapter..., This document assumes..., Before you begin..., Introduction..., Getting to Know the Product Features..., Navigating the User Interface..., Document Conventions..., Related Publications..., Overview of...Using the Such and Such Feature....) Yawn, yawn, yawn. All a waste of time and space.
- We don't provide what people want. (Just tell me how to increase the volume of my cell phone! Just tell me how to increase the volume on my cell phone! Just tell me how to increase the volume on my cell phone!)

We meticulously document every software feature, yet we're still somehow missing the point.

Why? Because we don't understand what customers are actually trying to do with the product. It's actually easier to write from spec, from talking to engineers, and from looking at the user interface than it is to talk to users. So that's what most of us do. But it won't do. It won't do.

I was pretty inspired to do things differently. Stay tuned. I hope I'll have more to tell you soon.

What do you get when you cut an earthworm in half?

Did YOU think the answer was "two earthworms"?

Sadly, no.

Turns out that the lengthy Death Spasm of the earthworm outlasts the attention span of small children.

SLICE!

You: "Hey! Two earthworms. Cool!"

You: "Hey! Dirt! Cool!"
You: "Hey! Isn't that Jacques Cousteau?! Cool!"
You: "Hey! Ice cream! Cool!"

ZOOM!

Earthworm:


Fact courtesy of Q.I.
Q.I. courtesy of Richard.
Jacques Cousteau distraction courtesy of Scott.

Customs and Immigration

I'm in California at the moment (lunch, Mr. Kite? Monday or Tuesday?). My husband and my two little kids are here too. They decided to come along to keep me company because I am here for a full week. We are lucky to be here. Let me tell you about the nasty thing that happened to me at the Vancouver International Airport.

If you're travelling to the US from Vancouver, you clear (if all goes well) Customs and Immigration in Vancouver. I've never had any problem crossing... until yesterday.

I got a bad feeling from the officer right from the moment we were directed into his queue. He took his time before he looked up from the glow of his computer screen to acknowledge us. I won't say greet us because, um, that didn't happen. (Despite the pure fiction they have displayed on posters in the Customs Zone at the airport: We pledge to greet you with courtesy and welcome you to the United States. Ha! More like, We pledge to get erections while we give you the silent treatment until you start to babble and cry.) Anyway, he asked some questions, and then slowly and deliberately reached for an upsettingly non-handy fat purple felt pen.* I could tell this wasn't his regular pen. He wrote a big letter "H" on my customs card. "H"?? I've never seem that before. What could I have said to give me the worrisome H?

Then he said, "Go in there." And pointed to a set of closed doors. Not a good sign. (Did I mention that it is 4:30 am?) I said, "Is there a problem?" He said, "I don't know."

To make a long story short, we had a long wait in the second room. The clock was ticking (as clocks do), and I was starting to get nervous about missing my flight (the fam was on a later flight so I wasn't as worried about them). Finally, I had some more questions from a slightly nicer person and found out that I am violating NAFTA rules by coming down here to do work. The only reason they finally let me through was because I swore up and down that I was only coming here for training and that I wouldn't do a stitch of work (so help me god). The fact that I work for the same company in Vancouver as the one that I am visiting in the US? Makes no difference. The fact that I am doing the same work in Vancouver as I would do in the US? Makes no difference.

Good to know. Wish my company had given me a heads up (does this take an apostrophe? I've often wondered. I will look it up someday).

They added an annotation to my passport record. I expect that border crossing will get harder from now on.

I ran and made my flight with 2 minutes to spare. I am not in very good cardiovascular shape.

But here we are. We're having a pretty good time.

* Yes, I need that many adjectives.

On Holiday

Not much will happen here for 10 days or so. But rest assured that I will be having a great time playing on the beach, looking for sand dollars, getting my toenails painted**, eating great food, soaking up the sun, singing campfire songs... my husband is practising his guitar as we speak. He's working his way through the set list. I'll ask for Dragostea din tei. Charles will ask for The Battle of New Orleans. (He's American; where you see British in this cheerful little ditty, replace it with Canadian...

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin. There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.We fired once more and they began to runnin' ... down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

OK, it was a long time ago. We'll all sing along and shoot the British for an evening.)

Michele will ask for Radiohead's Pearly. Angela will ask for Fix You by Coldplay. The kids will ask for Baby Beluga (or maybe not, they are getting older) and Lollipop (Mika). Bob and Derek will ask for Pink Floyd (Owen can only play Comfortably Numb, so we'll hear that a couple of times). Strangers on the beach sometimes shout out requests. Things like, "TOM PETTY!!" and "SHUT UP!!" Yes, it will be lovely.

I'll see you in a bit. Be good.

**I know the toenails don't really fit in with all that beach stuff. But there is a spa right by the beach resort! Woo-hoo!

Kid Birthdays

I have a confession. I make it with some hesitation. In my circle of friends, this is like saying "Recycling is stupid!*" or "Omg, like, too bad Stephen Harper is already married!" It's like saying that one loves watching Fear Factor or Blind Date**. It's like installing one of those TOTALLY offensive noisy huge above-ground grass-killing backyard pools (not to be confused with those dear little wading ones that you can fill up with cold water from the garden hose)***.

Here it is: I adore goodie-bags from little kids' birthday parties. I like putting them together and handing them out; I like receiving them (well, I don't receive them, more's the pity, but I do look forward to the moment when we're all in the car on the way home and my kids tell me what they find in the ones they've been given). Yeah, yeah, plastic crap. Yeah, yeah, too much sugar. Yeah, yeah, waste of money. I know what you're thinking; I hear what you're saying. But I like them anyway.

My kids both have birthdays in the spring. This year, we did quite different things for each. For my daughter, we booked a party at... well, I don't think I want to give you the actual name of the venue because I don't want to do it any Google-harm. But I can tell you, small circle that you are, I don't mind you knowing. It was at that large, silver, Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic dome in Vancouver that was built for Expo '86. That should narrow it down sufficiently for you. I love the place, actually, which is why we picked it for the birthday party in the first place. Big Mistake.

Here's what I didn't like:
1. We thought we were getting a decorated party room. The web site assured us we didn't need to worry about our own decorations (unless we wanted "extra".... I guess that was a cue to probe further).

What we got: a cold room with one drooping "happy birthday" banner (lowercase intentional, if not strictly accurate) that had obviously been up for awhile. Two plain brown tables shoved together with no attention to alignment. Stacked chairs.

2. We thought we were getting our own Science Leader, a dynamic person who was to show the kids some age-appropriate science experiments.

What we got: a distracted teenager arrived 15 minutes late, wheeling in a Van de Graaf generator. At that point, I was quite pleased to see him and optimistic about the hour's worth of experiments that we should still have time for. However, after few rounds with the generator (four or five kids got to come up, touch the thing, and have their hair stand up), our leader left to "check on lunch." After lunch (see item 3 below), which was delivered by someone else, there was still no sign of him. I went looking and found him eating his own lunch. I asked if there would be any more experiments. He bounced up. "Sure!" he said, as if this was quite a good idea of mine and he'd be happy to oblige (!!!!). Back in he came and... plugged in the Van de Graaf generator again! I couldn't believe it! I was beginning to view this old dented silver thing much the way a circus visitor, who is wondering where all the lions and tigers are, views a depressed motheaten old goat as it is lead around the ring a few times for the crowd's entertainment. And that was IT! That was it for the "science experiments"!

3. We thought we'd have a decent lunch.

What we got: Utter failure. I take a good portion of the responsibility here because I should have known that pre-made sandwiches are a risky choice for a group of 5- to 7-year-olds. Of course there will be ones who don't like the lettuce or tomatoes. There will be ones who don't like tuna. Yeah... there's a reason that hot dogs are the birthday food of choice. But that big science dome and the BC chain restaurant that has a presence there have to take responsibility for the lack of freshness—even I couldn't choke down one of those sandwiches, and there were a lot of leftovers to deal with. Old lettuce. Can't bear it. (The lemon meringue pie went over very well! We brought that.)

4. We thought we'd have a great time knocking about the place, checking out the exhibits, after the official "hosted" part of the party was over.

What we got: The most terrifying 5 minutes of my life. This is another thing that I take responsibility for. I should have realized that getting 12 5- to 7-year-olds from a party room downstairs to the exhibits upstairs requires more than two adults. We made it, finally, after the longest 5 minutes that I've ever experienced. We got all the kids into one smallish exhibit room and then my husband and I sat outside its entrance to make sure no one left. We spent the entire time counting and re-counting kids until their parents started to arrive for the pick-up. Comparing numbers. Checking lists. Counting again. Oh, the sweet relief when we could start to match up kids with their parents and cross responsibilities off our list.

Compare this with my son's birthday. We had it at home. We planned every detail ourselves: crafts, party games, and make-your-own-pizza. No tired old goats. No fear of losing anyone. No uneaten food. It was great! And a LOT cheaper. We could afford to do more with the goodie bags.

* I shamefacedly admit to being half-hearted about cleaning out the cat food tins.
** Never!!!!!
***Ever!!!!!

Regularly scheduled programming

When I started this, I promised myself that I would not let more than two days go by without a post... and, good christ, it's been SIX! I fear that I've lost my regular readers (i.e., Darren).

Here's what I've been up to:
1. Hosting friends.
2. Working hard.
3. Teaching Sweet Girl to ride her bike (she's the only 7-year-old who is unable to ride a 2-wheeler, tie shoelaces, or swim, but she can play a mean Ode to Joy on the piano, and she's very, very good at Yelling).
4. Avoiding calls from the PAC (that's Parent Advisory Council to you). I'm not one of those volunteering mothers.
5. Planning Dear Boy's 5th birthday. Cutting out donkey shapes, buying plastic crap, etc.

I miss you all, though! Will think of something clever to write soon.

Take your time with lollies

Whenever I go to San Francisco, I stop at the same little airport shop to pick up something for the kids on my way home. I try to get something different each time I go. This time, I was all set to buy a 3-dollar bag of salt-water taffies, each wrapped in its own translucent white paper (I love the paper! I love it way better than I love the taffies!), when the woman behind me in line started talking up the See's Candy Lollipops. They were about 15 dollars, but they did look good! The check-out clerk agreed—they were good! Another person in the line thought they were good too! So I thought, heck, I can part with the extra 12 dollars for something as good as that. I bought them.

And they are so good! Cafe cream, chocolate, vanilla, and caramel. (I think the marketing team was completely out of ideas after naming the coffee one.) I totally recommend them. Keep an eye out next time you're there.

I always, always, crunch hard candy. I can't not crunch it. I'm in a rush, you see. My mother has spoken to me about this many times over the years (quite recently, too), but I never really thought that anything bad would actually happen to my teeth.

(Can you guess what's about to happen?)

So, the other day, I was crunching away on a vanilla one, when I thought, "HEY! There are little ROCKS in this lolly!!!!!" Scenes of legal action started running through my head. Not that I am really the litigating type, but I could be! I COULD BE! What if this isn't rocks? What if it is mouse bones or something?

It wasn't rocks. You know what it was: my molar. Upper right. In bits. Pretty much destroyed. Sad, hey? It didn't really hurt though, and—good news—it got me to the dentist. There was a lot of drilling but it was nothing like what James Frey went through (or did he? Or. Did. He?) in A Million Little Pieces.

I have a temporary crown on that molar at present. I go back next week for the porcelain one. I haven't had a lolly since this happened, but I will. And I will be patient with it.


This is the second in the Challenge category. See what Mark and Zoot have come up with.

Do you get excited when I say "Cray"?

Geek chic. For about a week, I thought I might have invented the term. And then I got around to googling it and, um, no. No. It's been around awhile and seems to be in wide use. It gets nearly a million google-hits, in fact.

Be that as it may, I got a taste of what it is to have this mysterious quality a couple of years ago when I worked for Cray. At parties, rather than leading a conga line (tiring) or tying a maraschino cherry stem in a knot with my tongue (impossible), I found I got quite a respectable circle of admirers when I said these four words:

"I work for Cray."

[Inevitably, this would be received with awe and amazement. And confusion: I live in Canada. It wouldn't have had nearly the same effect in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, where everyone works, or has worked, for Cray.]

Responses were along the lines of:
"You mean, Cray as in the supercomputer company?"
"Oh My God Are You Single?"
"Didn't SGI buy them?"
"You guys running Linux on the dual-core Opterons?"
"How many teraFLOPS are we talking about?"
"Whoa."
"What the hell are you trying to do with that cherry stem?"
...and so on.

I suppose this says something about the type of parties I go to. Everyone always knows who Cray is. Everyone can quote the Dead Parrot sketch. Many prefer to do complex calculations in hex rather than tired old decimal. And many will happily discuss their recent Risk victories in much the way that Rimmer did on Red Dwarf: "Anyway, to cut a long story short I threw a five and a four which beat his three and a two, another double six followed by a double four and a double five. After he'd thrown a three and a two I threw a six and a three."

I'm sorry I don't work for Cray anymore. The technology was cool, the people were amazing, and I loved those trips to the mid-West, but—in all honesty—it's that look of awe from thin bespectacled male strangers that I miss the most. I just don't get the same sort of attention anymore.

P.S.: Did you ever see that Simpson's episode in which Homer is temporarily replacing Smithers as Mr. Burns's assistant? In one scene, Homer is trying to bring Mr. Burns all the things he asks for and failing miserably. Mr. Burns scorns it all:
"You call this breakfast?" [flinging plates to the floor]
"You call this a tax return?" [sweeping papers off the desk]
"You call this a supercomputer?" [using a crowbar to smash a large machine that is very clearly marked CRAY across the top]
...and on and on. I thought it was hilarious.