From boggles at earthlink.net Wed May 1 00:06:41 2002 From: boggles at earthlink.net (Jennifer Boggess Ramon) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 19:06:41 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Meet me in St. Looey? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 7:30 PM +0000 4/30/02, judyserenity wrote: > >Well, I had a boyfriend who went to Washington U., and he dumped me. >Does that entitle me to insult St. Louis? No, I guess not. Small world. My Imzadi (first sweetheart, for those not Trekkies) broke up with me because he was going to Washington U. and I wasn't. (And I'm probably going to see him again this Saturday, for the first time in nine years. High school reunions are scary . . .) -- - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at earthlink.net === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From starling823 at yahoo.com Wed May 1 02:01:55 2002 From: starling823 at yahoo.com (starling823) Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 02:01:55 -0000 Subject: Fourth of July Message-ID: Ooooh, my favorite holiday...anyone else on the list immediately start thinking of Shiel Silverstein's wonderful little poem on the fourth after reading Tabouli's post? teehee...that man was a genius. He'd have made a wonderful wizard. Anyway -- Tabouli, as for places to be on the Fourth: my first recommendation would be rather biased, as it is what I do with my family every year: barbeque and fireworks at Jones Beach, on Long Island (that big thing to the east of NYC). The Grucci family, who also do the Macy's fireworks on the East River in NYC, put up a wonderful display and hanging out on the beach for the day and then watching the fireworks is just the coolest. Unless the weather gets in the way, like last year... and make sure you find a local driver, as getting out of Lot Five afterwards is interesting, to say the least... NYC's performance, as I said, also kicks, although I've only seen it on TV -- driving to Jones Beach is scary enough. Everyone and their grandmother is driving on the Fourth, so we tend to avoid driving into Manhattan. If you're already there, though... ;-). I'm sure the Manhattanites on the list would know the best places to set up shop for that. DC always puts on a good show, being the capital and all, with fireworks and shows and the armed forces bands and all sorts of good stuff. If you do that you also have the monuments and smithsonian and all that fun stuff to see -- although I suspect security, like everywhere else, will be stiff. Stick to plastic drink containers. My personal wish list is Boston, where the wonderful Boston Pops orchestra does their annual Pops goes the Fourth Concert, which A & E kindly broadcasts and rebroadcasts (so I can see it that night when I get home from the beach!). It's another of those wonderful big outdoor parties with all sorts of guest performers and it always ends with the 1812 Overture -- done with live cannons, and then they go straight to the fireworks over the Charles River...mmmm. Seeing that concert is on my List of Things To Do Before I'm Old. (not that old is bad...it's just harder to travel!) I know nothing about St. Louis, other than that my family still has the towel my parents "liberated" from the Adam's Mark hotel they stayed at for a fire dept. convention once. ::looks innocent:: But the arch does look pretty cool. Tabouli, after your globe-crossing expedition, you will put up pictures, right? ::winks:: we'll have a virtual bon voyage party before you leave. Abbie, who is too broke to travel, and plans to live vicariously thorugh Tabouli. From ameliagoldfeesh at yahoo.com Wed May 1 09:45:36 2002 From: ameliagoldfeesh at yahoo.com (ameliagoldfeesh) Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 09:45:36 -0000 Subject: Decreased post traffic, St. Louis, Misadventures Message-ID: Grey Wolf asked: Am I the only one who's concerned over the >paulatine decrease in posts in both the main list and the OT chatter >list? I'll do my bit to help slow the decrease and try to set your mind at ease. Some of the decrease in posting on the main list I think is from the lack of new material. I'm still surprised at the different views and angles brought up which I never would have even considered. I'm one who hardly ever posts on the main list since I don't have anything new to add to the discussion. If I think I do have something to add, I usually read a few more posts down and find someone else has it covered much more eloquently than I could. What I'm nearly worried about will be the amount of posts when Book 5 does come out. I suspect it will nearly be like a job to keep up (if only we could get paid for this...) Tabouli asked about the "Place To Be" on the 4th I'd think St. Louis would have a pretty good 4th of July. I'd base this guess on the fact it is a big city plus it has the Arch. (I'm imagining they most likely work the Arch into the fireworks show somehow). The biggest fireworks display I've been to in person is the one in Des Moines, Ia, in front of the beautiful capital building. I'd also like to say that St. Louis is far from boring. For spring break a few years back two friends and I went to St Louis for a couple of days. We didn't get to go up in the Arch as it was too late in the day, but we visted the museum there. The next day we went to the St. Louis art museum (which was an adventure in itself as my best friend tripped in an itty bitty pothole and twisted her ankle and so had to use a wheelchair in the museum...oh the memories . Speaking of misadventures I had an embarrassing one last weekend which I thought I'd share- especially since practically everyone who knows me in real life has heard it unfortunately. To set it up: I live north of Des Moines, in central Iowa, while my parents (where I grew up) live in south western Iowa, near Council Bluffs. I've driven home probably a good 80 times (at a minumum) over basically the same route. The easiest way to get home is to go down to DM and get on Interstate 80 which runs east and west across the state. I drive down to Des Moines, take what I think is the right exit, drive along listenin' to Dylan's Love and Theft, being a nerd (and knowing it) by noticing how beautiful Iowa is in the spring, looking at the fields and rolling hills...not paying attention to the road signs. Until one catches my eye- I think to myself "That DID NOT say Missouri! Did it?" I don't know how I did it...but I took the wrong exit and went south instead of west...a good *hour* south. I turned around at the first opportunity and grabbed out my map to make the best of this otherwise pleasant drive. I decided it'd be more entertaining to get back on track by going along the highways in southern Ia than going back north to I-80. Along the way I stopped at a little town called Mount Ayr to use the restrooms and get a pop. I went back to my car and it was locked...and guess where my keys were. Yep, in the ignition. I don't know why I even locked the car in the first place (being that I was at a gas station in a small town). Luck was on my side however that the sheriff's office sent a cop over to unlock the car for me in a half an hour. Needless to say when I got home I was on the recieving end of a lot of teasing- especially since my mom had been calling my friends wondering where I was (I had tried to call her but kept getting a busy signal because she was calling my friends). Plus I got to tell my siblings my story. *L* I sincerely hope this has been my dumb action for this year... A Goldfeesh (btw, if anyone gets to Omaha- go to the Henry Doorly Zoo. The Desert Dome is open now, it is the biggest indoor desert in U.S. I believe. Even better is the indoor Jungle. In addition the imax movie playing was about Lewis and Clark- two of my favorite explorers. In fact, when on roadtrips with my best friend we joke that she's Clark and I'm Lewis-I certainly needed my Clark this last trip!) Now the Missouri is a mighty river Look away, you rollin river. Indians camp along her border Look away. Were bound away Across the wide Missouri -a Dylan version of "Shenandoah" From moongirlk at yahoo.com Wed May 1 18:05:00 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 18:05:00 -0000 Subject: Colourful capers, forthcoming trip In-Reply-To: <006501c1effc$bb73a580$342adccb@price> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Tabouli" wrote: > > How about everyone here? What are your favorite colours, and have you shifted your preferences from the red end to the blue end of the spectrum as you've grown older? This is really interesting. I have two groups of favorites, one decidedly warm, the other cool as cool can be. I tend to like things that are not too eye-poppingly bright. As a kid my favorite colors were defined mostly by Crayola. I loved this weird orangey-pink color I had, but I can't remember the name of it. Other favorites included Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber and Orange-Red, but they were nearly as much about the texture of the color as it went onto the paper as they were about the color itself - sort of rich feeling. My favorites now are divided, like I said. In my house, I prefer the more relaxing blues and silvers and purples and greens. Light, floaty blue is my favorite color to immerse myself in for calming peace (my bedroom is painted in a shade of cool, crisp blue with clean white trim, I walk in and feel cool and relaxed, almost immediately). But, as far as colors I like to wear, blue is WAY down on the list. Because of my coloring, the Umbers and Siennas of my youth are still among my favorites to wear, along with various shades of olive-y green, which I like to imagine helps my eyes be a less boring light brown and a more interesting hazel color. These are the colors of the outdoors that I love, too. These are the colors that bring to mind the smell of the earth and the feel of damp grass and rough bark and the squish of the mud at the bottom of the lake. They're the colors of life, the others are more the colors of rest. > > The conference goes from the 29th to the 2nd of July, after which I >might hang around another day or two in St Louis (American >listmembers... any thoughts about the 4th of July? What happens? >Where's the Place To Be?) Actually, downtown St. Louis is a pretty good Place To Be on the 4th of July. We have one of the biggest Independence Day celebrations in the country all around the arch at the riverfront. There's a parade and bunches of booths with food and games and junk to buy, there's the air shows, which I hate (really loud), but they're well-liked by many, there are usually two or three different stages with entertainment. I just checked - the only acts I can tell for sure are booked already are Smokey Robinson (Tracks of my Tears), George Thorogood (B-b-b-bad to the Bone), Kool & the Gang (Get Down on it) and Lee Greenwood (no idea who that is). There are usually lots of lesser-known and/or local groups and acts in between the "big" (everything's relative) names. I worked at a friend's booth at the fair every year in high school - was great fun. Especially the year we were next door to the Chippendales dancers. Saw lots of interesting behavior that year, and the guys were always coming over to break $100 bills with us. Women are just as crazy as men when it comes to half-naked members of the opposite sex. Just a little something I learned at 15. May I just say that your itinerary sounds like you're about to embark on the Amazing Race? Yes, I too have become hooked by a reality TV show. kimberly excited because the Amazing Race is on tonight! From editor at texas.net Wed May 1 18:15:39 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 13:15:39 -0500 Subject: Fw: English Noun Genders Message-ID: <004801c1f13c$33b95400$ba7763d1@texas.net> I just got this from an old friend...hadn't seen it before. I apologize if you had, but some of these are priceless. And ingenious. --Amanda ----- Original Message ----- Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 5:01 PM Subject: English Noun Genders > > Subject: Assigning Genders To Nouns > > > >From the Washington Post Style Invitation, in which it was postulated that > English should have male and female nouns, and readers were asked to assign > a gender to a noun of their choice and explain their reason. > > The best submissions: > > ZIPLOC BAGS - male, because they hold everything in, but you can always see > right through them. > > SWISS ARMY KNIFE - male, because even though it appears useful for a wide > variety of work, it spends most of its time just opening bottles. > > KIDNEYS - female, because they always go to the bathroom in pairs. > > SHOE - male, because it is usually unpolished, with its tongue hanging out. > > COPIER - female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warm up. > Because it is an effective reproductive device when the right buttons are > pushed. Because it can wreak havoc when the wrong buttons are pushed. > > TIRE - male, because it goes bald and often is over inflated. > > HOT AIR BALLOON - male, because to get it to go anywhere you have to light > a fire under it... and, of course, there's the hot air part. > > SPONGES - female, because they are soft and squeezable and retain water. > > WEB PAGE - female, because it is always getting hit on. > > SUBWAY - male, because it uses the same old lines to pick people up. > > HOURGLASS - female, because over time the weight shifts to the bottom. > > HAMMER - male, because it hasn't evolved much over the last 5,000 years, > but it's handy to have around. > > REMOTE CONTROL - female... Ha! You thought I'd say male. But consider, it > gives man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always > know the right buttons to push, he keeps trying. > > > > > > From emmbp at yahoo.com Wed May 1 18:52:17 2002 From: emmbp at yahoo.com (emmbp) Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 18:52:17 -0000 Subject: Journal articles about Harry Potter Phenomenon! Message-ID: Hey.. The name's Brady, I've been a groupie for a few months now, and I'm studying business finance at the University of Wyoming. I'm working on a research paper for my spanish class and I chose to write about the Harry Potter "phenomenon" I want to write about the different reactions that have happened, etc... I'm looking for some scholarly articles, journals or books that I might reference. If anyone knows of anything of interest, please email me at emmbp at uwyo.edu Thanks! May you live in interesting times! Brady From greywolf1 at jazzfree.com Wed May 1 19:18:59 2002 From: greywolf1 at jazzfree.com (grey_wolf_c) Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 19:18:59 -0000 Subject: Journal articles about Harry Potter Phenomenon! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "emmbp" wrote: > Hey.. The name's Brady, I've been a groupie for a few months now, > and I'm studying business finance at the University of Wyoming. I'm > working on a research paper for my spanish class and I chose to > write about the Harry Potter "phenomenon" I want to write about the > different reactions that have happened, etc... I'm looking for some > scholarly articles, journals or books that I might reference. If > anyone knows of anything of interest, please email me at > emmbp at u... Thanks! > > May you live in interesting times! > Brady I wondered if I should've asked this privately, but then I thought that, as my techers use to say, "Ask aloud; maybe someone else is wondering the same". Brady, you give us quite a bit of extra information, and I'm not sure of how much of it is relevant. The paper (I assume you've got to write it in Spanish), is it based in any way in bussiness finance? Or, rather, the other way round: Do you want the articles/journals/books to concentrate in the bussines part of the HP phenomenon? Do they have to be in spanish? If you want either, I think I can comply... if I've got time to look for them. So, it would be useful if you told us how much time we've got. Hope that helps, Grey Wolf PD: I'm very good at Spanish. If you wish, you can send me the paper for corrections (only if it's not too long, of course). If interested, mail me. From moongirlk at yahoo.com Wed May 1 19:26:27 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 19:26:27 -0000 Subject: Defending my hometown Message-ID: Hey gang, I posted the response to Tabouli's question about the 4th of July before reading all the other responses, both dissing and promoting St. Louis. Have to say - you're all right. St. Louis can be dull, if you spend a lifetime here and you run out of imagination. But for a visit, or if you don't mind improvising, there's tons to do. I already sent Tabouli an email on the subject long ago when she first announced her upcoming visit, and I like you guys, so I won't subject you to my St. Louis travellogue, but I will say if you're prone to boredom, you'll get bored, pretty much anywhere you go, but if you get a local with some imagination and energy, a few days in St. Louis should be entertaining. And I did already volunteer, if any of you want to come along! :D Oh, just looked at the official website. Fair St. Louis (the 4th of July celebration) is the "largest three-day Fourth of July festival in the United States." Don't know how that happened, but while I'm at it, I might as well mention that we also have the second-largest Mardi Gras celebration in the US, which takes place within smelling- distance of the A-B brewery in an old French neighborhood. From judyshapiro at earthlink.net Wed May 1 20:34:10 2002 From: judyshapiro at earthlink.net (judyserenity) Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 20:34:10 -0000 Subject: Making Amends Message-ID: OK, ok, just about everyone has corrected me for my "St. Louis sounds dull" remark. I confess that I didn't realize how much there was to do in St. Louis. I didn't even know the Arch had those neat elevator-things. I thought one just stood outside and gawked. However, I have come up with the perfect way to make amends. Yes, that's right. The St. Louis contigent should send me on a trip to St. Louis. Hmmm, airfare, hotel -- will I need a rental car? July 4th would be good, because I could see all the great Independence Day celebrations *and* get to meet Tabouli. I will do my best to enjoy myself, at others' expense, and then I will report what a great time I had. I'm not sure about going to the Chippendale's thing, though. DH might object. I hope my generous offer sets things right. Judy, who was much more diplomatic during her trip to England, where she described Manchester as "not a big tourist destination" as opposed to calling it "really boring." (Manchester actually wasn't that bad. Stockport, on the other hand, was *really* dull.) From rhiannon333 at hotmail.com Thu May 2 05:33:49 2002 From: rhiannon333 at hotmail.com (rhiannon333au) Date: Thu, 02 May 2002 05:33:49 -0000 Subject: Tabouli's Travel Plans In-Reply-To: <001201c1f024$74a2cdc0$8b50dccb@price> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Tabouli" wrote: > Ha! Just found a travel agent (a reputable one, even) who can sell me the trip as laid out for $2900 on a four continent deal, and (this is the good bit) the cost actually includes four one way flights within Europe and *six* one way flights within the US! The eastern states may not be closed to me after all! I *can* go to that wedding, and even fly from Geneva to Paris if necessary at no extra cost! Well done Tabouli! As a fellow Oz denizen, I can vouch for these as great fares - and if only we did not posses a third world currency ( yep, the banana republic lives!) we could have an even better time O/s! The itinerary sounds fab - I was in Paris a few months ago, and it remains a wonderful, walkable city. London is fantastic except for the cost of everything (worse, courtesy Oz dollar). Euros are neat for everywhere else, saves the endless changing of currency. Re the trip down the west coast USA, do you plan to hire a car? Very economical in the USA, as is petrol (compared to Oz and Europe/UK), and nice scenic driving. Lots of B&Bs and charming places to stay esp if you have time to do some research before you go. Re other travel things - as a fairly regular traveller, I am happy to share handy hints for Oz travellers - such as - using the Thomas Cook Visa debit card instead of travellers cheques or your usual debit cards - much cheaper and safer (two cards each with separate PIN number). Just LMK if I can be of any help. And Bon Voyage in anticipation! Megan From HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Thu May 2 07:20:33 2002 From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com (HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com) Date: 2 May 2002 07:20:33 -0000 Subject: Poll results for HPFGU-OTChatter Message-ID: <1020324033.26.55523.m11@yahoogroups.com> The following HPFGU-OTChatter poll is now closed. Here are the final results: POLL QUESTION: Supposedly, someone will gain magical powers "late in life." Who do you think it will be? CHOICES AND RESULTS - Filch, 8 votes, 19.05% - Petunia, 16 votes, 38.10% - Dudley, 8 votes, 19.05% - Someone else (who??), 10 votes, 23.81% For more information about this group, please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter For help with Yahoo! Groups, please visit http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/ From maryblue67 at yahoo.com Thu May 2 15:13:46 2002 From: maryblue67 at yahoo.com (Maria) Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 08:13:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: On the topic of St. Louis In-Reply-To: <1020323014.844.44552.m12@yahoogroups.com> Message-ID: <20020502151346.47048.qmail@web11102.mail.yahoo.com> Hello! finally, there is a conversation in which i have something to say ;) I lived in Saint Louis for two years and a half, when i went to college in St. Louis U. As a young European who lived in midtown (where the school is), i found it dull, yes. Very dangerous, without a lot to do. But if you go for a few days, perhaps you can have a good time. No more than 3, i would say. My parents came to my graduation and in a couple of days we saw most of what there is to see, and had time to get bored and attend all the graduation events as well. I recommend you visit the Arch, of course, and also the Union Station. They have a nice mall inside, but still it has some attractive. Then i would go to Forest Park, a very large park (kind of like Central Park in NY). Not only it is nice, but also it contains the zoo (pretty good), the art museum (decent) and other thing to do. Next to it also is the Science Center (which i like, but i'm an engineer, anyway), and the Botanical Garden. Along the river there are lots of casinos on boats. The Landing next to the river is a nice place to go out at night or to eat ( i don't find the night life there very interesting, but that is because i have a particular taste in that). Near midtown you can go to the Central West End, also a nice neighborhood with cafes and stuff. Farther from downtown, there is also St. Charles, with a few nice old streets, and other things like that. Good luck, hope you enjoy it. Tell me if you need to know more! Maria P.S. And be careful where you go, there are some pretty dangerous areas, like East St. Louis. ===== Maryblue ---------------------------------------------------------- "Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love" - Eistein __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com From aprilgc at ivillage.com Fri May 3 01:14:41 2002 From: aprilgc at ivillage.com (ladylprekaun) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 01:14:41 -0000 Subject: Spell in my inbox Message-ID: Hello all, How's this for weird? I subscribe to the digest version of OT chatter. In today's digest, a lot of people seemed to have responded in italics. Since a lot of the messages were replies to/questions from Tabouli, I just assumed that someone had used italics and everything else was just a function of "reply" (using the same font as the original writer. Part of the way into message 16, however, the words were not only italicized, but strike-through. From message 16 to the end of the messages (and even the little Yahoo groups disclaimer)are lined through, as if someone were changing their minds about what was written. I haven't cast any email spells lately, and don't believe I am responsible for this. As far as I know, Gilderoy Lockhart is still indisposed. I don't know the source of this spell - or even if it's actually a mistake, or if it was intended. Did anyone else have this problem? I checked the group web site, so I know the problem didn't originate there (no italics or strike-throughs on the site). Anybody got any suggestions or ideas about who (or what) did this? Magically confused, Lady Leprechaun From s_ings at yahoo.com Fri May 3 02:23:56 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 22:23:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Happy Birthday, Dazzed Warlock Message-ID: <20020503022356.48924.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> I know it's very late in the day to be sending birthday wishes out. Sincere apologies, I is a v. v. bad Birthday Elf today! Today is Dazzed Warlock's birthday. Birthday owls can be sent to this list or directly to dazzednow at hotmail.com. I hope the day has been filled with magic and joy. Happy Birthday! Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Games, Movies, Music & Sports! http://entertainment.yahoo.ca From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Fri May 3 02:51:09 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 19:51:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday, Dazzed Warlock In-Reply-To: <20020503022356.48924.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020503025109.62054.qmail@web13703.mail.yahoo.com> Sheryll Townsend wrote: Today is Dazzed Warlock's birthday. Birthday owls can be sent to this list or directly to dazzednow at hotmail.com. I hope the day has been filled with magic and joy. Happy Birthday! Sheryll Just adding our wishes along with the Birthday Elf who really isn't bad! Happy Birthday and hope it was loaded with goodies! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere, Massachusetts and Her Very Merry Band of Muggles 100% aka 3 Stooges "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From catlady at wicca.net Fri May 3 02:54:25 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 02:54:25 -0000 Subject: Country music (was: Colourful capers, forthcoming trip In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "moongirlk" wrote: > there are usually two or three different stages with > entertainment. I just checked - the only acts I can tell for sure > are booked already are Smokey Robinson (Tracks of my Tears), George > Thorogood (B-b-b-bad to the Bone), Kool & the Gang (Get Down on it) > and Lee Greenwood (no idea who that is). Lee Greenwood won the CMA (Country Music Awards) Best Male Vocalist a couple of times in the 1980s. I know that because in those days I had a roommate who tuned the radio to a C&W station. We agreed on hating Lee Greenwood -- I know nothing about him as a person, but his singing style was crooning, not country, and he had a big hit with a totally cliched and badly orchestrated song "God Bless the USA" that he wrote himself. From ms_petra_pan at yahoo.com Fri May 3 08:02:57 2002 From: ms_petra_pan at yahoo.com (Petra Pan) Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 01:02:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Archetypal Arachnid Message-ID: <20020503080257.41630.qmail@web21109.mail.yahoo.com> Just saw "Spider-Man" and was struck by how much Harry Potter and Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) have in common. Both raised by an aunt and uncle instead of birth parents, had greatness thrust upon them early in life, and are as unassuming as their archenemies are self-centered and arrogant, yet they are just as powerful in their own ways...just to name a few similarities. Spider-Man is a bit further along in his character arc, though. I'll try to avoid spoiling the movie in making my points... There's a temptation scene in which the Green Goblin forces an impossible choice. I dare say that Harry will experience a similarly wrenching choice...though what he will have to choose between is not yet evident. In "Spider-Man" this theme of choice is handled with a complexity that again, is reminiscent of JKR (and a few other writers too). How Peter Parker responds to the Green Goblin's test of Peter's desire to do good sets up the last scene of the film very well...a little bit of well-placed angst goes a looong way. Complex villains too - the Green Goblin has one helluva exit line...one that I keep hearing coming out of...of all people...Snape's mouth. No, I don't know why. < head a-scratching > Leaving on a jet plane - don't know when I will post again, Petra a n :) P.S. Soooo, if Spider-Man shoots a web at the same object that Harry was trying to accio...who'd win? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com From tabouli at unite.com.au Fri May 3 08:12:45 2002 From: tabouli at unite.com.au (Tabouli) Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 18:12:45 +1000 Subject: The insane itinerary! Message-ID: <007901c1f27b$9703ea80$b350dccb@price> Just back from the travel agency, and I now have the certifiable schedule resting on my very mouse pad. Not that this is *final* or anything, no, no, just today's version! May try to juggle a day here and there to reduce the insanity level, but I suspect it's a lost cause. It's, er, three pages long, not including the pricing page. My travel agent assured me that she's seen worse, (not much worse, but worse), but I think she was just being polite. Depart Melbourne 4:15pm 11th June Arrive London (Heathrow) 6:20am 12th June (see Neil, David, Mary Ann, other London listmembers, penfriend, old school friend, Japanese friend now resident in Surrey. Hopefully squeeze in some slaking of my Celtic craving, perhaps in Cornwall) Depart Heathrow 18th June 6:35pm Arrive Zurich 9:25pm (visit the Goat)(may juggle this to the morning of the 19th instead) Depart Zurich 20th June 7pm, change at London Arrive Paris 11:05pm (attend wedding) Depart Paris 23rd June 12pm, change at NYC Arrive Montreal 6:05pm (organise conference presentation) Bus to Ottawa, morning of the 27th June (visit Sheryll) Depart Ottawa 28th June 3:44pm, change at Chicago Arrive St Louis, 7:43pm (attend conference, meet Kimberly?) Depart St Louis 2nd July 3:42pm Arrive NYC La Guardia 7:21pm (visit Jenny from Ravenclaw and other NYC listmembers) Depart NYC 5th July 7:19am Arrive Portland 1:04pm (visit Elkins) Overnight train down Pacific coast to Albion 8th Julyish (note to self: go online & check timetables) (visit Catherine Keegan) Continue down coast to San Francisco evening 9th Julyish (visit friend from Adelaide now resident in Palo Alto) Depart San Francisco 5:30pm 12th July Arrive LA 6:56pm (visit Pippin and Catlady) Depart LA 15th July 1:20am (ouch) change at Taipei (wince), change at Hong Kong with 4 hr wait (cringe) Arrive Bangkok 4pm (visit old friend from Adelaide and wife) Depart Bangkok 19th July 5:40pm change at Sydney Arrive Adelaide 20th July 8:45am (recuperate at parents' house, give Working with Asian names presentation morning of the 23rd) Depart Adelaide 3:05pm 23rd July Arrive Melbourne 4:45pm (give Life in Australia presentation morning of the 24th, then crawl home to die). Judy: > Judy, who now wishes she hadn't posted here lately O dear, I'm sorry... I do appreciate your efforts to help me cut costs! (hey, if you think the itinerary is insane, you should see the pitiful amount of money I have to spend on this trip!). Having seen the plan in all its gory glory, though, it's really not bad for US$1500, is it? Everything included in the ticket price except the bus to Ottawa and the train down the Pacific coast. Neil: > Tooly! I hope we'll be able to meet up when you're in London (or even in the vicinity). I owe you at least a day's steerage around the trendier quarters of London town in return for the good time you showed me in Melbourne. Let's see: when my heart-shaped lollipop glows red, I'll know your plane has touched down.< (er, I ate my lollipop...) Sounds great... what exactly are the trendier parts of London? Not too sure what my movements will be in the UK, but I've been plotting with David to visit him in Surrey, and hope to nip west to see Mary Ann and perhaps go on to Cornwall to slake my Celtic craving. (I am thirsting for stone circles and mossy ruins and I've had intriguing reports of the Minack theatre on the Cornish coast, which sounds worth a look...) My immediate quest, judging by the unholy hour I'll be arriving in London after a 24 hour flight (and I can *never* sleep on aeroplanes) will be finding a quiet place to collapse, but no doubt I'll emerge eventually for some Londonian lolloping. Oddly enough, on the other two occasions I've done the killer UK flight from Australia, I've arrived manic and hyperactive for another 24 hours, to the bewilderment of English friends who assumed I would be comatose. Body clock on strike, perhaps? Has anyone ever taken those melatonin tablets for resetting the ol' Circadian rhythms? Abbie, who is too broke to travel, and plans to live vicariously thorugh Tabouli: > Tabouli, after your globe-crossing expedition, you will put up pictures, right? ::winks:: we'll have a virtual bon voyage party before you leave.< In terms of scenic photos, sure, why not, if people are interested enough! In terms of photos of me, I've been striving to maintain the mystery here, what with the pseudonym and no photo clause and all, but after visiting all these HPFGU types all over the world, I think the mystique will be beyond salvation. On the subject of money, er, if you saw my budget, you might reconsider whether you're too broke to travel... I've just spent nearly a year without a full-time job (living off profits from my business and a paltry business grant), and my but the coffers are gaping. I prudently accepted a recent offer of a credit limit increase (banks! Fools, fools) and fully expect to arrive home over the limit anyway, but never mind. I control my unease by reminding myself that I'm arriving home in peak training season, and can probably get the debt down to a manageable level quickly enough. And my grant will keep being paid in while I'm away. Kimberly: > May I just say that your itinerary sounds like you're about to embark on the Amazing Race? Yes, I too have become hooked by a reality TV show. < Re the reality TV shows, yes, my shameless addiction to Big Brother continues (hides face). On the subject of the itinerary, the madness of it is rather ironic. As I've mentioned off-list to a few people, in years gone by I *sniffed* at the sort of jolly backpacker who claims to have Done Europe in two weeks. I snorted. I even sneered. How, I sniped, do they think they can get *any* sort of a feel for a country if they spend one day there seeing the tourist sites? Ludicrous. Foolish. Contemptible. Hmmmmmm. If anyone needs me, I'll just be off scrubbing my black pots, reinforcing the walls of my glass house, and having the mote in my eye removed at the optometrists... Tabouli. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From dradamsapple at yahoo.com Fri May 3 05:00:20 2002 From: dradamsapple at yahoo.com (dradamsapple) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 05:00:20 -0000 Subject: new to the group; I have so much to say!!! Message-ID: Hello! Just joined the group tonite and did some quick lurking. I joined because I *needed* to post something about a movie I saw last night. (I really wasn't aware of this group so I posted it on PoU and kinda got "redirected", as Carole said. Anyhow, I'm Anna, I live in southeastern Massachusetts (Wanda the Witch, we're practically neighbors!!; well, I guess in the grand scheme of things . . .)( and yes Tabouli, Boston is the ONLY place to be on the Fourth of July!! )I got three kids, a dog, a turtle, work part time, you know, the usual. I'started reading the Psychic Serpent trilogies and then Pou, and Draco series, and now I'm just as hooked as everyone else. What a great group of people though, I have to say! It's been a rough six months or so dealing with sick parents and in- laws and this has been my escape! Now, on to my purpose here. Last night I caught the tail end of a movie (as my husband was channel surfing) called "Dogma", starring the one and only Alan Rickman. I think he played some sort of deity that came down to earth to help some woman who is pregnant with the last of the "Zions". Alanis Morissette plays God, but she doesn't seem to speak; Chris Rock is in it, and also plays some sort of "angel" or "heavenly creature". The credits also stated that Selma Hyack (spelling?), George Carlin and the wonderful boys of Boston, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were in it as well. Don't ask me the plot; it's all very wierd. All I remember is when God!Alanis opened her mouth to "sing", she blew someone's head off (I mean literally, like blood and guts kind of explosion messy stuff!!) But I recognized the talented Mr. Rickman right off the bat because he rather looked like Snape trying to look like a rock star: jet black spiked hair, black clothing (?leather?), etc., etc. I'm not much of a Snape fan myself, but I thought all of you Alan Rickman fans (which I am slowly becoming) would enjoy seeing him in different role. Has anyone seen this movie?? I'm just curious! Happy viewing! Anna . . . From keegan at mcn.org Fri May 3 13:26:40 2002 From: keegan at mcn.org (Catherine Keegan) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 06:26:40 -0700 Subject: Dogma & Tabouli In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20020503062054.00b36810@mail.mcn.org> I loved this movie on a multitude of levels. The angry angels, God's love of sports, the unhappy combination Madonna/heir, the sexless angels... Loved it. It is weird but I love weird. I'm not sure if you need to be a Catholic to get all of the jokes. I had a chat with a friend who isn't and she didn't get some of the scenes that I howled over. They just released a director's cut/special edition DVD of this and, now that I'm reminded of how much I loved it, maybe it's time to get my very own copy. Catherine in California Tabouli - the train doesn't come into Albion. I'm not even sure where the closest train station is. Maybe Santa Rosa? I know it goes into Oakland/SF. Redding? Maybe flying into Oakland and having me pick you up would work better. Albion isn't close to anything. Part of its charm. From john at walton.vu Fri May 3 13:56:31 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 14:56:31 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Dogma In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20020503062054.00b36810@mail.mcn.org> Message-ID: Catherine Keegan wrote: > I loved this movie on a multitude of levels. The angry angels, God's love > of sports, the unhappy combination Madonna/heir, the sexless > angels... Loved it. It is weird but I love weird. I'm not sure if you > need to be a Catholic to get all of the jokes. I had a chat with a friend > who isn't and she didn't get some of the scenes that I howled over. Dogma is one of my favorite movies! Then again, I love Kevin Smith, so... But yes, Anna, if you haven't seen it all the way through, rent it. You won't be disappointed. And was I the only person to think that Alanis Morissette as God was a little (dare I say) Ironic? *ducks tomatoes* > They just released a director's cut/special edition DVD of this and, now > that I'm reminded of how much I loved it, maybe it's time to get my very > own copy. The Special Edition is *fantastic* -- buybuybuy! --John, whistling the Mooby World tune ____________________________________________ "Oh my god! You killed...er...God!" -one of John's friends, after reading Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy John Walton || john at walton.vu ____________________________________________ From jenP_97 at yahoo.com Fri May 3 15:18:55 2002 From: jenP_97 at yahoo.com (jenP_97) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 15:18:55 -0000 Subject: Shades of imperius?? Message-ID: Uh, not sure of the spelling of the Imperius curse. Imperious? Hrm, I think I'll stick with my original impulse. Anyway, my husband read me this article last night and the first thing I thought of was "That sounds like the work of evil dark wizards!" Wonder if I'm crazy. I *know* I'm obsessed. Tell me what you think. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020501/ ap_on_sc/remote_controlled_rats_2 I'm sure you'll have to reconstruct the link. Sorry bout that. Jen, who used to own a nice neurotic white rat... From bray.262 at osu.edu Fri May 3 11:34:32 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 11:34:32 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: Yay, Dogma!!! Message-ID: <18EC1F0216@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> >And was I the only person to think that Alanis Morissette >as God was a little (dare I say) Ironic? *ducks tomatoes* Boooooo. That was bad, John. :-) I love Dogma. It's easily one of my favorite movies. And Kevin Smith is a wonderful writer. I'm not Catholic, either, and I was a bit hesitant to suggest it to my Catholic friends. But when they finally did see it, they sang its praises. Excellent, excellent movie. And yes, the Director's Cut is a must-have. Metatron: Human beings have neither the aural nor the psychological capacity to withstand the awesome power of God's true voice. Were you to hear it, you're mind would cave in and your heart would explode within your chest. We went through five Adams before we figured that out. Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements "And in more news today, a local official was beaten severely with a door after resigning. Strangely, nobody will come forward as a witness." From moongirlk at yahoo.com Fri May 3 17:08:58 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 17:08:58 -0000 Subject: Country music (was: Colourful capers, forthcoming trip In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "catlady_de_los_angeles" > Lee Greenwood won the CMA (Country Music Awards) Best Male Vocalist a > couple of times in the 1980s. I know that because in those days I had > a roommate who tuned the radio to a C&W station. We agreed on hating > Lee Greenwood -- I know nothing about him as a person, but his > singing style was crooning, not country, and he had a big hit with > a totally cliched and badly orchestrated song "God Bless the USA" > that he wrote himself. Oh no - he's that guy? Ugh. That has to be the most Ugly American song I've ever heard. Poor poor St. Louis. Why would the fair subject us to that? kimberly hoping for a temporary sound-system failure. From moongirlk at yahoo.com Fri May 3 18:02:32 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 18:02:32 -0000 Subject: The insane itinerary! In-Reply-To: <007901c1f27b$9703ea80$b350dccb@price> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Tabouli" wrote: > Depart Ottawa 28th June 3:44pm, change at Chicago > Arrive St Louis, 7:43pm > > (attend conference, meet Kimberly?) I certainly hope so! I'll try to finagle a day off to show you the (perfectly charming and hardly ever life-threatening, dammit!) sights, if you like. You'll miss out on the fair, but now that I've been told who Lee Greenwood is, it's just as well. sigh. If money really is tight, I bet I can give you a pretty decent tour for next to nothing. We're the only city I know where the major museums and the zoo are still free, plus there's the brewery tour (free tour *and* free beer tasting), and various other fun things. > Kimberly: > > May I just say that your itinerary sounds like you're about to embark > on the Amazing Race? Yes, I too have become hooked by a reality TV show. < > Tabouli: > Re the reality TV shows, yes, my shameless addiction to Big Brother >continues (hides face). Don't worry, I've given up reading the main list here for the last couple of weeks in favor of the Television Without Pity site's boards about the Amazing Race. I'm thoroughly embarrassed, but I seriously am so smitten with the show - mostly because if I could, I'd make a life out of visiting all of these great places, but since I can't make a living doing that, I'm enjoying it vicariously. And I was shocked to find that one of the teams impressed me so much I'm wondering if I can get the Mrs. Norris treatment and go be their pet. It never occurred to me that clever, charming, gracious people would be willing to go on a reality show. Who knew? >On the subject of the itinerary, the madness of it is rather >ironic. As I've mentioned off-list to a few people, in years gone >by I *sniffed* at the sort of jolly backpacker who claims to have >Done Europe in two weeks. I snorted. I even sneered. How, I >sniped, do they think they can get *any* sort of a feel for a >country if they spend one day there seeing the tourist sites? >Ludicrous. Foolish. Contemptible. Hey, if it's all you've got, you take the opportunity. Sure, it would be far better to spend a few weeks in each place and really get the feel so you know which ones you want to spend even *more* time in, but there's no shame in doing the quick-tour if that's all you can manage. Better than missing out alltogether, isn't it? From cindysphynx at comcast.net Fri May 3 20:25:29 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 20:25:29 -0000 Subject: The insane itinerary! In-Reply-To: <007901c1f27b$9703ea80$b350dccb@price> Message-ID: Tabouli wrote: > Depart St Louis 2nd July 3:42pm > Arrive NYC La Guardia 7:21pm > > (visit Jenny from Ravenclaw and other NYC listmembers) > > Depart NYC 5th July 7:19am What? You're going to NY? I might, just maybe, just might be in NY in early July! Er, if I can swing it, can I horn in on the fun? I mean, I won't hog all the food, and I'll buy everyone drinks with umbrellas in them. I'll wear black from head to toe. I'll keep my voice down, I swear! Cindy (who was thinking of going to visit her sister in Denver but thinks this sounds like way more fun) From cindysphynx at comcast.net Fri May 3 20:31:40 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 20:31:40 -0000 Subject: The Amazing Race! (WAS The insane itinerary!) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Kimberly wrote: > > > May I just say that your itinerary sounds like you're about to > embark > > on the Amazing Race? Yes, I too have become hooked by a reality TV > show. < What is it about the Amazing Race that has me thoroughly hooked? I don't have the TV on much, except for that show. I guess the problem is that I know I'd get completely slaughtered on a show like that. What? I'm supposed to *run* past some of the world's great travel destinations to try to win a race? Huh? Cindy (pulling for Cha Cha Cha) From lupinesque at yahoo.com Sat May 4 01:40:37 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 01:40:37 -0000 Subject: Yay Celtics! Message-ID: Happy happy joy joy! Just needed to overflow somewhere as my team has just won their first playoffs round . . . thanks for listening, Amy Z From amy at pressroom.com Sat May 4 01:58:42 2002 From: amy at pressroom.com (Amy Gourley) Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 21:58:42 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Yay Celtics! References: Message-ID: <019f01c1f30f$382e4520$b17ba8c0@amy> Amy, I am so excited too! I used to be a big Celtic fan back in the day (Bird, Ainge, Parrish, etc) but haven't followed so closely lately. But I was so happy to see them advance! It's fun to see them winning again. Amy From moongirlk at yahoo.com Sat May 4 02:39:38 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 02:39:38 -0000 Subject: The Amazing Race! (WAS The insane itinerary!) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "cindysphynx" wrote: > > What is it about the Amazing Race that has me thoroughly hooked? I > don't have the TV on much, except for that show. I guess the > problem is that I know I'd get completely slaughtered on a show like > that. What? I'm supposed to *run* past some of the world's great > travel destinations to try to win a race? Huh? > > Cindy (pulling for Cha Cha Cha) Cindy! Are you my long lost twin? I mean didn't we just bond over figure skating a few months ago? And now this? Seriously, I hope that I'm half as good a friend to the people I love as Danny and Oswald are to each other. I was literally laughing *and* crying when they did the bungee jump, and kept laughing through the whole sheep thing. If they go next week, I'll have to seek therapy. It was hard enough when the beautiful twins went, I can't go on without the CHA. Do you see?!? I'm not just hooked, I'm emotionally involved in a reality TV show. Oh the shame! kimberly, Dreading having to work at 7:00 am on a Saturday. Stupid job. From meckelburg at foni.net Sat May 4 08:25:22 2002 From: meckelburg at foni.net (mecki987) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 08:25:22 -0000 Subject: The insane itinerary! In-Reply-To: <007901c1f27b$9703ea80$b350dccb@price> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Tabouli" wrote: > > Depart Heathrow 18th June 6:35pm > Arrive Zurich 9:25pm > > (visit the Goat)(may juggle this to the morning of the 19th instead) > > Depart Zurich 20th June 7pm, change at London > Arrive Paris 11:05pm > Errr... what about Depart Zurich 19th June; Arrive Hamburg(Germany) and visit Mecki??? come on, you can't come flying so close by and not stop to have a look at Germanys most pretty city (only 50km away from the little village where Mecki lives!) > (attend wedding) > > Depart Paris 23rd June 12pm, change at NYC > Arrive Montreal 6:05pm > or fly via Hamburg, before flying to NYC? Have fun with your trip Mecki > From s_ings at yahoo.com Sat May 4 12:24:44 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Sat, 4 May 2002 08:24:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: The Amazing Race! (WAS The insane itinerary!) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020504122444.34053.qmail@web14601.mail.yahoo.com> --- moongirlk wrote: > --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "cindysphynx" > wrote: > > > > > What is it about the Amazing Race that has me > thoroughly hooked? I > > don't have the TV on much, except for that show. > I guess the > > problem is that I know I'd get completely > slaughtered on a show > like > > that. What? I'm supposed to *run* past some of > the world's great > > travel destinations to try to win a race? Huh? Nope, I couldn't do that. I'd have to stop and look at everything. Guess I'd be eliminated on the first round. :) > > > > Cindy (pulling for Cha Cha Cha) > > Cindy! Are you my long lost twin? I mean didn't we > just bond over > figure skating a few months ago? And now this? > Seriously, I hope > that I'm half as good a friend to the people I love > as Danny and > Oswald are to each other. I was literally laughing > *and* crying when > they did the bungee jump, and kept laughing through > the whole sheep > thing. If they go next week, I'll have to seek > therapy. It was hard > enough when the beautiful twins went, I can't go on > without the CHA. Add me to the family as well. Danny and Oswald just seem to be having so much more fun than any of the other teams. And they're so nice to everyone they meet. > > Do you see?!? I'm not just hooked, I'm emotionally > involved in a > reality TV show. Oh the shame! Don't feel bad, there are lots of us out here. Some are just too ashamed to confess. :) > > kimberly, > Dreading having to work at 7:00 am on a Saturday. > Stupid job. > Seven am on a Saturday is no fun. I'll trade you. I'm working 11-7 selling tickets at a local theatre. And Spiderman opened yesterday. Care to trade for endless line-ups of people? People who always ask for the number of tickets they want, but never tell you for which time? Or for which movie? Yesterday, the opening of Spiderman, they had me on box office ALONE! I figure it's one of two things. Either they think I'm competent enough to handle the crowd, or management hates my guts. Haven't decided which yet, ask me when I recover from yesterday. Sheryll, who at least will have help today ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Games, Movies, Music & Sports! http://entertainment.yahoo.ca From nethilia at yahoo.com Sat May 4 13:14:40 2002 From: nethilia at yahoo.com (Nethilia) Date: Sat, 4 May 2002 06:14:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Yay, Dogma! In-Reply-To: <1020454298.536.94009.m12@yahoogroups.com> Message-ID: <20020504131440.84236.qmail@web14604.mail.yahoo.com> Rachel: > Boooooo. That was bad, John. :-) > > I love Dogma. It's easily one of my favorite > movies. And > Kevin Smith is a wonderful writer. I'm not > Catholic, > either, and I was a bit hesitant to suggest it to my > > Catholic friends. But when they finally did see it, > they > sang its praises. Excellent, excellent movie. And > yes, > the Director's Cut is a must-have. Me and my friends watched the director's cut recently, and all the cut scenes. Our favorite was the expansion on the fact that Mary wasn't a virgin. Doubly Hilarious because in our group we've nicknamed one the Virgin Mary. --Neth (10 people in my group, 2 brains for us all.) ===== --Nethilia de Lobo-- 79% obsessed with Harry Potter Wand: Dragon Heartstring, Ash, 7 inches **Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus.** http://ww.cepheid.org/~marshmallow Spenecial.com. Two girls. One Website. Total Chaos. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Sat May 4 13:24:40 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Sat, 4 May 2002 06:24:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Yay Celtics! and William's Surgery Day In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020504132440.27753.qmail@web13702.mail.yahoo.com> lupinesque wrote: Happy happy joy joy! Just needed to overflow somewhere as my team has just won their first playoffs round . . . thanks for listening, Amy Z It's about time! It gets so depressing not see local teams win but struggle! The Pats one! Bruins are out of it, I think, minds been else where. Now if the Red Sox win this year! Will make James feel great and my Dad! Keeping fingers and toes crossed! And tons of wishful hoping and dreaming! Now onto a serious matter. We got the phone call about William's Surgery. He goes to pre-op on the 16th and the 17th is the big day! He is taking the news very well! He goes into Willie World, playstation games! But we talk and have been watching his favorite movies, mostly comedys. But of course, watch his favorite shows! Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the cartoons on Cartoon Network! So, if I vent here now and then it is because Super Mom needs refuelling! Everybody take care and love good news! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and Her Band of Merry Muggles 100 % "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From catlady at wicca.net Sat May 4 15:37:17 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 15:37:17 -0000 Subject: Shades of imperius?? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "jenP_97" wrote: > Anyway, my husband read me this article last night and the first > thing I thought of was "That sounds like the work of evil dark > wizards!" > http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020501/ > ap_on_sc/remote_controlled_rats_2 When I heard it on news radio (sorry, I haven't checked your link for yahoo!news's spin), my first thought (laptop computer and all) was: "Does he move his rat with a mouse?" Very early in the story, it was explained that the left and right electrodes in rat's brain give him the feeling of being tapped on the left or right side of his face, not take over his muscles from his will, and when the newsreader asked the researched how he rewards the rats, the researcher brushed past the "reward center" electrode to say he thinks the rats enjoy this work because they get to go outside. He said the first time the rats were taken from their cages and taken outside, they went crazy having fun playing on the grass. From pennylin at swbell.net Sat May 4 18:08:23 2002 From: pennylin at swbell.net (plinsenmayer) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 18:08:23 -0000 Subject: Need a copy of an Article published in the UK Message-ID: Hi everyone -- If any of our British members have the time to dig this up and send it off to me, I'll be happy to pay the copying and post fees. Edis Bevan posted a long while ago about the existence of this then- upcoming article, and I saved the message, intending to find it at my library once the issue was released. Well, my library doesn't subscribe to this journal, so I placed an interlibrary loan request. It came back denied! This *never* happens; I use ILL frequently. It seems that the subscription to this journal is very expensive, so my guess is that none of the subscribing libraries were willing to copy it for me. The request just came back "No library could supply." I looked up the journal on the internet, and it seems it's published in the UK and is, as I said, quite pricey. So .... "Heroes and Heroines: Myth & Gender Roles in the HP Books" by Michele Fry. Dec 2001 issue of New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship. Many thanks if anyone can help! Penny From Joanne0012 at aol.com Sat May 4 21:17:57 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 21:17:57 -0000 Subject: Need a copy of an Article published in the UK In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "plinsenmayer" wrote: > Hi everyone -- > > If any of our British members have the time to dig this up and send > it off to me, I'll be happy to pay the copying and post fees. > "Heroes and Heroines: Myth & Gender Roles in the HP Books" by Michele > Fry. Dec 2001 issue of New Review of Children's Literature and > Librarianship. Michele Fry is originally from Stroud, Gloucestershire and is now at Oxford; perhaps you could contact her directly for a copy. IIRC, the "New Review . . ." is one of those publications that calls itself a journal but actually comes out once a year, every year. http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/michele.htm http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/rso/staff.shtml http://www.forwriters.com/archive/writers_archive32.html From catlady at wicca.net Sat May 4 22:28:41 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 22:28:41 -0000 Subject: ""OMG We're in the NY TIMES!"" Message-ID: Heidi has posted this information and the URL on the FictionAlley Point Me! page. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/books/05HARR.html HP and low gossip are the ONLY thing that could make me break down and actually REGISTER on the NY TIMES site (which is free but requires people to register). The article is really about the prolonged wait for Book V. It attributes HP websites and fanfic to people getting bored or desperate during the wait. It goes so far as to say: "It took decades of "Star Trek" reruns to inspire a genre of "fan fiction," but just two years without a Harry Potter book." They should have checked their facts better: I PERSONALLY remember reading and writing Star Trek fanfic during the third season, and it seems there were HP websites with fanfic before PoA was published: I only found it for myself after PoA but before GoF. It did get some facts right: It mentions Steve by name and his Lexicon by URL and Heidi by name and her FictionAlley by URL. Without names, it states: " In one popular story, Harry Potter and his schoolboy nemesis, Draco Malfoy, grow up to be gangsters and gay lovers in London." From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Sat May 4 23:18:12 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 23:18:12 -0000 Subject: The insane itinerary! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "cindysphynx" wrote: > Tabouli wrote: > > Arrive NYC La Guardia 7:21pm > What? You're going to NY? I might, just maybe, just might be in NY > in early July! > Cindy (who was thinking of going to visit her sister in Denver but > thinks this sounds like way more fun) Yes indeed. It's so unfair that Tabouli's coming to Britain *first* - we want her to apply her sinister social scientific skills and tell *us* about *you*, not the other way round! David From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Sat May 4 23:35:53 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 23:35:53 -0000 Subject: ""OMG We're in the NY TIMES!"" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "catlady_de_los_angeles" wrote: >They should have checked their facts better: You missed out the biggest calumny of all: people are getting bored re-reading the first four books. > > It did get some facts right: Without names, it states: " In one popular story, Harry Potter and > his schoolboy nemesis, Draco Malfoy, grow up to be gangsters and gay > lovers in London." Go on, tell us fanfic ignorami: which one is that? David From john at walton.vu Sun May 5 00:59:59 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 01:59:59 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: ""OMG We're in the NY TIMES!"" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In response to Rita, >> It did get some facts right: Without names, it states: " In one popular >> story, Harry Potter and his schoolboy nemesis, Draco Malfoy, grow up to be >> gangsters and gay lovers in London." David wrote: > Go on, tell us fanfic ignorami: which one is that? The wonderful Snitch!, by Al, whose birthday it is! Happy birthday, Alex! Make his (birth)day and read & review at http://www.schnoogle.com/authorLinks/Al Cheers, --John From coriolan at worldnet.att.net Sun May 5 03:44:55 2002 From: coriolan at worldnet.att.net (coriolan_cmc2001) Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 03:44:55 -0000 Subject: ""OMG We're in the NY TIMES!"" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "catlady_de_los_angeles" wrote: > HP and low gossip are the ONLY thing that could make me break down > and actually REGISTER on the NY TIMES site (which is free but > requires people to register). Especially since some civic-minded individuals have called for a boycott of the NYT due to their overly-exurberant support of some real-life Death Eating factions: http://www.nypost.com/business/46889.htm - CMC Some of the more recent gems discovered by MEMRI have been reports in the Iraqi press of Saddam Hussein meeting with members of the "Iraqi nuclear industry," and the head cleric for the Palestinian Authority stating on local television, "We're going to win because just as much as you [Israel] love life, we love death." - Cheryl Kane http://www.israelinsider.com/channels/diplomacy/articles/dip_0165.htm From macloudt at hotmail.com Sun May 5 08:15:01 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 08:15:01 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: ""OMG We're in the NY TIMES!"" Message-ID: John wrote: >The wonderful Snitch!, by Al, whose birthday it is! Happy birthday, Alex! :::::big schnoogle::::: Happy Birthday, Alex! So how many bumps will we be giving you during Chat tonight? Have a great day but remember, no butterbeer before noon. That's right, be much more restrained than me ;) Cheers! Mary Ann :) _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. From s_ings at yahoo.com Sun May 5 12:37:21 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 08:37:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Happy Birthday, Alex! Message-ID: <20020505123721.98555.qmail@web14603.mail.yahoo.com> *bounces into the room, flinging confetti and letting loose multitudes of coloured balloons* You already know it's who's birthday it is, right? Before I even started this email. I know, some of you are ahead of me, but, hey, I'm allowed to sleep in a bit on my day off, right? What, no? Not on Alex's birthday? Sorry. :-D Birthday owls for Alex can be sent to this list or directly to Alex at dracos_boyfriend at yahoo.co.uk Alex, I hope it's a magical day, full of everything you've wished for. Happy Birthday! Schnoogles, Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Games, Movies, Music & Sports! http://entertainment.yahoo.ca From heidit at netbox.com Sun May 5 12:49:22 2002 From: heidit at netbox.com (heidit at netbox.com) Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 08:49:22 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday, Alex! In-Reply-To: 0 Message-ID: <16600080.1889907395@imcingular.com> **Alex, I hope it's a magical day, full of everything you've wished for.** Well, how many authors can say their story was in a front-page-of-the -nytimes article on their 20th birthday? Happy Birthday, woobie! Heidi From cindysphynx at comcast.net Sun May 5 15:54:35 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 15:54:35 -0000 Subject: The insane itinerary! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: David wrote: > Yes indeed. It's so unfair that Tabouli's coming to Britain *first* - > we want her to apply her sinister social scientific skills and tell > *us* about *you*, not the other way round! What!?! All you have to do is pump Neil for information! ;-) Cindy (who got nowhere pumping Neil for information about the London crowd) From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 18:37:16 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 11:37:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday, Alex! In-Reply-To: <20020505123721.98555.qmail@web14603.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020505183716.62306.qmail@web13705.mail.yahoo.com> Sheryll Townsend wrote: *bounces into the room, flinging confetti and letting loose multitudes of coloured balloons* HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALEX! Sheryll has the right idea! Having fun on your special day! Hope it is! Eat plenty of cake and icecream! May you get your Birthday wish too! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere, Massachusetts and Her Very Merry Band of Mugglews 100% aka 3 Stooges "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From dizzylizzy182 at yahoo.com Sun May 5 21:53:52 2002 From: dizzylizzy182 at yahoo.com (Elizabeth Sager) Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 14:53:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Happy Birthday In-Reply-To: <1020619714.342.7847.m12@yahoogroups.com> Message-ID: <20020505215352.64125.qmail@web20407.mail.yahoo.com> Happy Birthday, Alex! Many more! Liz __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com From meboriqua at aol.com Mon May 6 01:17:57 2002 From: meboriqua at aol.com (jenny_ravenclaw) Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 01:17:57 -0000 Subject: Finally saw that Buffy episode! Message-ID: I am a bit embarrassed to admit this, knowing there are a number of Buffy fans here, but tonight I *finally* was able to see the episode where everyone lost their voices and The Gentlemen showed up - it's called "Hush", right? I started avidly watching Buffy on the FX channel and I kept missing this one episode - the one everyone always talks about. Oooooh, I had goosebumps the whole time. Even in the opening credits I thought those men had terrifying faces, but seeing them glide throught the town... scary! Now I have to go and find the fairy tale that this episode was based on. I thought I knew them all, but this one eludes me. Has anyone ever heard of a fairy tale about gentlemen who steal voices so no one can scream while they cut hearts out? I'll have to check my Grimms Brothers. --jenny from ravenclaw, who will be thinking about this episode all night ************************************************** From nobradors at hotmail.com Mon May 6 13:25:19 2002 From: nobradors at hotmail.com (nuriaobradors) Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 13:25:19 -0000 Subject: Fw: English Noun Genders In-Reply-To: <004801c1f13c$33b95400$ba7763d1@texas.net> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amanda" wrote: > I just got this from an old friend... > > >From the Washington Post Style Invitation, in which it was postulated> that English should have male and female nouns, and readers were asked to assign a gender to a noun of their choice and >>explain their reason.> The best submissions: Funny enough, quite a few of the proposed genders are equivalent to those of Spanish (where all nouns have gender) > > ZIPLOC BAGS - male Hmmm... bags are feminine (bolsas) in Spanish, but IIRC I've some time heard masculine when referring to Ziploc specifically > > SWISS ARMY KNIFE - male, Though knife is Male in Spanish too, at least in my country Swiss Army knifes are referred to in feminine, because we use the fem. word "navaja" (pocketknife) to name them. > > KIDNEYS - female, Nope. Male in Spanish. ("ri??n", pl. "ri?ones") > > SHOE - male, Male in Spanish too! ("zapato") > > COPIER - female, and so in Spanish! ("copiadora") > > TIRE - male, and so in spanish ("neum?tico"), though sometimes we also use the fem. word "goma" (rubber) to refer to it. > > HOT AIR BALLOON - male, Male in Spanish too! ("globo aerost?tico") > > SPONGES - female, and so in Spanish! ("esponjas") > > WEB PAGE - female, and so in Spanish! ("p?gina web" - we don't translate "web") > > SUBWAY - male, and so in Spanish! ("subte", short for "subterr?neo" in Argentina, "metro" everywhere else) > > HOURGLASS - female, but male in Spanish. We call it "reloj de arena" ("sand clock"), and "reloj" ("clock") is male. > > HAMMER - male, and so in Spanish! ("martillo") But "maza" (sledge hammer) is female > > REMOTE CONTROL - female... Male in Spanish. ("control remoto") Hope you like it! Nuri From boggles at earthlink.net Tue May 7 02:04:05 2002 From: boggles at earthlink.net (Jennifer Boggess Ramon) Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 21:04:05 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Dogma In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 2:56 PM +0100 5/3/02, John Walton wrote: > >Dogma is one of my favorite movies! Then again, I love Kevin Smith, so... I'm generally _not_ a Kevin Smith fan, and I loved it anyway. :) And yes, Alan Rickman as the Metatron, the Voice of God, was . . . amazing. (Who was it who called him "Roast Sex on a Stick" about a month ago?) >But yes, Anna, if you haven't seen it all the way through, rent it. You >won't be disappointed. Watch the cut scenes on the DVD, too; the extra exposition makes things make much more sense. -- - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at earthlink.net === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From boggles at earthlink.net Tue May 7 02:30:20 2002 From: boggles at earthlink.net (Jennifer Boggess Ramon) Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 21:30:20 -0500 Subject: Reunion Blues Message-ID: For those of you who I haven't told yet, I'm a high school math teacher. I've been feeling rather old this year, trying to keep up with my students - smarter than they are, to be sure, but old. I went to my 10-year high school reunion this past weekend. Ai ai ai. About a third of my classmates are having children or have already had theirs. Another third are postponing both marriage and family until their careers are established. One of my peripheral friends from back then, whom I've lost track of, has lost about thirty pounds and gone completely bald. His best friend got religion, had four kids, and became a fundamentalist preacher (although, I have to say, he was remarkably nice to me anyway, including doing a picture-you picture-me gag with our digital cameras). My best two female friends are knee-deep in motherhood on the one hand and getting an MBA on the other. On the good side, I met the spouses of both the Imzadi and the friend who used to captain our Science Bowl team. They've paired up with good folks; I'm thrilled. I also got the nerve up to do some karaoke at the formal party, and got a couple of compliments. But oh, mother of memory, do I feel old! Over the next three books, Harry and the crowd are going to be in what would be high school in the US. So far, I haven't been made to feel ancient reading their exploits - maybe because the limited dates available in the canon set CoS in 1992, which would make Harry the same age as some of my college friends (who don't make me feel nearly as old). I wonder how much I'm going to be aware of their age as they approach ages I remember clearly, though . . . -- - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at earthlink.net === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From dradamsapple at yahoo.com Tue May 7 03:42:50 2002 From: dradamsapple at yahoo.com (dradamsapple) Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 03:42:50 -0000 Subject: Dogma In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Jennifer Boggess Ramon wrote: > I'm generally _not_ a Kevin Smith fan, and I loved it anyway. :) > And yes, Alan Rickman as the Metatron, the Voice of God, was . . . > amazing. (Who was it who called him "Roast Sex on a Stick" about a > month ago?) > > >But yes, Anna, if you haven't seen it all the way through, rent it. You > >won't be disappointed. Anna replys . . . "Roast Sex on a Stick"????? Well, that does make for some interesting imagery, doesn't it? So, you've all convinced me that "Dogma" is worth seeing in it's entirety. I knew I wanted to see it just to clarify the weirdness I witnessed in the last twenty minutes of the movie (like God!Alanis standing on her head against a tree??!!), but now you have just re- affirmed my intention. I'll be in touch when I've been "Dogma"'d. Thanks so much for all your responses. What a great group!! Anna . . . ' > - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at e... > === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === > GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ > c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ > ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From moongirlk at yahoo.com Tue May 7 04:58:44 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 04:58:44 -0000 Subject: Finally saw that Buffy episode! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "jenny_ravenclaw" wrote: > I am a bit embarrassed to admit this, knowing there are a number of > Buffy fans here, but tonight I *finally* was able to see the episode > where everyone lost their voices and The Gentlemen showed up - it's > called "Hush", right? I don't know what it's called, but I saw it the other night, too. Was seriously spooky watching them move and the huge grins on their faces and everything being all quiet. Shudder. Did it remind anyone else of Tim Burton? It had a very Nightmare Before Christmas sort of look to it. kimberly From editor at texas.net Tue May 7 19:25:07 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 14:25:07 -0500 Subject: To the book 5 whiners..... Message-ID: <00f901c1f5fc$e6893540$877c63d1@texas.net> Just to make everyone realize things could *always* be worse....I have just finished The Shelters of Stone, book 5 of the Earth's Children sequence by Jean Auel (the first was Clan of the Cave Bear, anyone remember that...?). It just came out. For us anthropology-types, it's been a long wait.....I believe when I moved in with Jan, I brought all four of the first books with me, which was about 12 years ago. If my count is off and book 4 came out after we were married, it's still easily been a decade. Of waiting. So chill, you weenies. Order of the Phoenix will be out soon! Not a marriage and three children from now! --Amanda From macloudt at hotmail.com Tue May 7 19:51:49 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 19:51:49 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Shelter of the Stone (and whiners) Message-ID: >Just to make everyone realize things could *always* be worse....I have just >finished The Shelters of Stone, book 5 of the Earth's Children sequence by >Jean Auel (the first was Clan of the Cave Bear, anyone remember that...?). Amanda, how was the book? I don't have "my" copies of the Clan books anymore as they were actually my mothers, and I had the decency to leave them behind when I moved to England (wasn't so decent with other books, but never mind). I heard book 5 was *finally* out, and you're right about the 12-year wait. Anyway, I was wondering whether it was worth my while to book onto the library waiting list for this book. What's your opinion? I read Clan of the Cavebear loads of times and it was by far my favourite book of the four. As fond as I am of Jondalar, he reminds me a bit too much of a prehistoric Ken doll, except that Jondalar actually has working "aching loins". Boy, do they work. I studied anthropology so I'm really interested in Auel's interpretation of Homo Sapiens Sapiens/Neandertal interaction. I haven't read any of the books for 7 years, since I moved here, so maybe I'll reread the first 4 as the library waiting list is bound to be huge. Something to look forward to? But we're *still* going to whine about OoP, so there ;) Mary Ann (who remembers the Clan of the Cavebear movie as being really, really bad) _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From s_ings at yahoo.com Wed May 8 00:27:20 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 20:27:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Belated Birthday Wishes In-Reply-To: <00f901c1f5fc$e6893540$877c63d1@texas.net> Message-ID: <20020508002720.49423.qmail@web14610.mail.yahoo.com> *The Birthday Elf peeks around the corner and slinks into the room. "I missed a birthday," she howls.* I confess, I did miss a birthday. Yesterday was Suzanne's birthday and I was off at work, paying no attention to my calendar whatsoever. Belated birthday wishes can be sent to this list or directly to Suzanne at rainy_lilac at yahoo.com. Suzanne, my sincere apologies for being late with your birthday greeting. I hope the day was filled with wonder and magic. Happy Birthday! Sheryll, off to slam her ears in the oven door ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Games, Movies, Music & Sports! http://entertainment.yahoo.ca From dradamsapple at yahoo.com Wed May 8 01:23:46 2002 From: dradamsapple at yahoo.com (dradamsapple) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 01:23:46 -0000 Subject: Reunion Blues In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Jennifer Boggess Ramon wrote: > For those of you who I haven't told yet, I'm a high school math > teacher. I've been feeling rather old this year, trying to keep up > with my students - smarter than they are, to be sure, but old. > > I went to my 10-year high school reunion this past weekend. Ai ai ai. > But oh, mother of memory, do I feel old! > - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at e... > === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === > GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ > c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ > ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! Anna writes . . . J.C.B., you want to feel old?? How about having your son be the same age as *Harry* and the gang? The wierd thing is, my son's birtday is only a few days off from Harry's (and JKR's)! And I won't even tell you how many years I have been out of College!! It's really amazing how people change. I went to a proffesional convention today and have seen people I haven't seen in years. *Unbelievable*!! Enjoy! Anna . . . From catlady at wicca.net Wed May 8 02:20:29 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 02:20:29 -0000 Subject: Belated Birthday Wishes In-Reply-To: <20020508002720.49423.qmail@web14610.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Sheryll Townsend wrote: > Yesterday was Suzanne's birthday and I was off at work, paying no > attention to my calendar whatsoever. Hey, Suzanne Rainy Lilac! Here's wishing you a belated birthday cake with Sirius jumping out of it! > Sheryll, off to slam her ears in the oven door Don't do that! Surely you can find someone to write you a medical excuse for failing memory. From virtualworldofhp at yahoo.com Wed May 8 02:22:00 2002 From: virtualworldofhp at yahoo.com (virtualworldofhp) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 02:22:00 -0000 Subject: To the book 5 whiners..... In-Reply-To: <00f901c1f5fc$e6893540$877c63d1@texas.net> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amanda" wrote: > Just to make everyone realize things could *always* be worse....I have just > finished The Shelters of Stone, book 5 of the Earth's Children sequence by > Jean Auel (the first was Clan of the Cave Bear, anyone remember that...?). > It just came out. For us anthropology-types, it's been a long wait.....I > believe when I moved in with Jan, I brought all four of the first books with > me, which was about 12 years ago. If my count is off and book 4 came out > after we were married, it's still easily been a decade. Of waiting. Haha, funny thing, because I was going to post something of the same after I finished reading SOS (and, I think, in this case, time does takes it's toll--12 years is too long, and the books just aren't as good. But don't worry, I don't think this will happen to HP! :-D) From kerelsen at quik.com Wed May 8 02:53:40 2002 From: kerelsen at quik.com (Bernadette M. Crumb) Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 22:53:40 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] To the book 5 whiners..... References: <00f901c1f5fc$e6893540$877c63d1@texas.net> Message-ID: <00e501c1f63b$907b7d40$eb21b0d8@kerelsen> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amanda" To: Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 3:25 PM Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] To the book 5 whiners..... > Just to make everyone realize things could *always* be worse....I have just > finished The Shelters of Stone, book 5 of the Earth's Children sequence by > Jean Auel (the first was Clan of the Cave Bear, anyone remember that...?). > It just came out. For us anthropology-types, it's been a long wait.....I > believe when I moved in with Jan, I brought all four of the first books with > me, which was about 12 years ago. If my count is off and book 4 came out > after we were married, it's still easily been a decade. Of waiting. Katherine Kurtz fans had to wait over a decade to get KING KELSON'S BRIDE too. And we've been waiting for the Childe Morgan trilogy for even longer, since Katherine told us about it before the Histories of King Kelson trilogy was finished... "Patience is a virtue." Harrumph! Patience is nigh near impossible sometimes! :) I guess we can all say that we are having our moral fiber strengthened with the wait for OOP. *grin* Bernadette "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." -- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Wed May 8 03:31:10 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 20:31:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Belated Birthday Wishes In-Reply-To: <20020508002720.49423.qmail@web14610.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020508033110.85647.qmail@web13705.mail.yahoo.com> Sheryll Townsend wrote: Suzanne, my sincere apologies for being late with your birthday greeting. I hope the day was filled with wonder and magic. Happy Birthday! Sheryll, off to slam her ears in the oven door Hi, Suzanne! I want to add my Birthday wishes too! Hope it was fun and you got plenty of goodies! May your Birthday wish comes true and many HAPPY BIRTHDAY presents! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and Her Very Merry Band of Muggles 100% "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From starling823 at yahoo.com Wed May 8 05:40:45 2002 From: starling823 at yahoo.com (starling823) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 05:40:45 -0000 Subject: Alan Rickman nominated for a Tony! Message-ID: according to an article from the AP on my local paper's website, Alan Rickman has been nominated for a Tony award for best actor in a play for his work in "Private Lives." full list, for any other theatre junkies like me, can be found at http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/stage/ny-tonylist0506.story. Alan's up against Alan Bates, Billy Crudup, Liam Neeson and Jeffrey Wright. I hereby propose the NY group have a tony party, stand outside the red carpet, and drool on Alan. We will, of course, bring a cloth so he can make himself presentable before accepting his award. ::crosses fingers:: Abbie, who feels quite put out that she did not get to see any live theatre this year, being away at school From bray.262 at osu.edu Wed May 8 10:22:04 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 10:22:04 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: I feel so old.... Message-ID: <72C6EC31A6@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> I was humming The Shot Heard 'Round the World from Schoolhouse Rock and one of my student employees asked me what it was I was humming. I told him....got a blank look....I explained it was from Schoolhouse Rock.....got another blank look..... He'd not heard of Schoolhouse Rock. And neither had three other of my students. I didn't realize they didn't play them anymore. They were such a staple in my childhood. Saturday mornings, on ABC. Interjection.....Lolly, Lolly, Lolly.....I'm Just A Bill....Conjunction Junction....etc. I really learned quite a bit from those cartoons. The little songs reinforced everything I learned at school. I remember in the 5th grade we were learning the Constitution, Bill of Rights and the such and the whole class sang the Preamble. Miss Hammond (my teacher) was so tickled over it that she wrote ABC and told them how much she appreciated Schoolhouse Rock. I should bring in my Grammar Rocks or History Rocks videotapes and make these guys watch them! Oh well. Then again, this is the same guy who said "I wasn't born when Return of the Jedi came out. So Star Wars didn't form my childhood like it did yours." Gee....where's the line to pick up my Social Security check? Wait...can't find my walker. So nevermind. :-/ Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements LORD OF THE SNITCH Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly One is the dork Ref all on his own On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it One game may take three months, or may take but a minute On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Wed May 8 16:09:12 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 09:09:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] I feel so old.... In-Reply-To: <72C6EC31A6@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> Message-ID: <20020508160912.99823.qmail@web13703.mail.yahoo.com> Rachel Bray wrote: Then again, this is the same guy who said "I wasn't born when Return of the Jedi came out. So Star Wars didn't form my childhood like it did yours." Gee....where's the line to pick up my Social Security check? Wait...can't find my walker. So nevermind. :-/ Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements Rachel, next time you see these kids, you can tell them to go back to class and learn something from History of TV shows and rent some classic movies such as the first 3 Star Wars movies! I guess their parents did have much to teach these kids in the way of the World! My boys are hooked on The Beatles, Boston, Journey, Billy Squire and loads of other classic rock music groups! Not a day goes by they hear Beatles music! They love both live action Beatles movies, have to find Yello Submarine! Kids learn from their parents. Those kids must have had a boring life thus far! I plan on getting those videos for my boys too! Class never gets old only better! Your young at heart and still have class! Form what line? I'm 49 and still love my Looney Toons! heck, we watch the 3 Stooges on American Movie Classics! Now, there is a class act that is hard to follow! Schoonoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and Her Very Merry Band of Muggles 100% aka 3 Stooges(they are a class act themselves) "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From Joanne0012 at aol.com Wed May 8 16:40:34 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 16:40:34 -0000 Subject: I feel so old.... In-Reply-To: <72C6EC31A6@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Rachel Bray wrote: > I was humming The Shot Heard 'Round the World from > Schoolhouse Rock and one of my student employees asked me > what it was I was humming. I told him....got a blank > look....I explained it was from Schoolhouse Rock.....got > another blank look..... > > He'd not heard of Schoolhouse Rock. And neither had three other of my > students. Rachel, honey, I am trying to feel sorry for you for feelling so old, but since the series debuted when MY daughter was young, it's kinda tough. From macloudt at hotmail.com Wed May 8 16:52:07 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 16:52:07 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] I feel so old.... Message-ID: Rachel wrote: >He'd not heard of Schoolhouse Rock. And neither had three >other of my students. > >I didn't realize they didn't play them anymore. They were >such a staple in my childhood. Saturday mornings, on ABC. >Interjection.....Lolly, Lolly, Lolly.....I'm Just A >Bill....Conjunction Junction....etc. I really learned >quite a bit from those cartoons. :::::bounces up and down::::: Ooh, freaky! I was describing these cartoons to an English friend just the other day. I watched Saturday morning cartoons on American channels (from Plattsburg and Vermont, I think) when I was a kid in Montreal. You're right, they were just wonderful, though the American history ones didn't help me any in school, of course. Imagine what kids today could learn from these. >I should bring in my Grammar Rocks or History Rocks >videotapes and make these guys watch them! They'll learn more from these than any textbook! >Then again, this is the same guy who said "I wasn't born >when Return of the Jedi came out. So Star Wars didn't form >my childhood like it did yours." I'll tell you how I found out the hard was that I was no longer a teenager...I heard a song on a Golden Oldies radio station that I can clearly remember being in the charts. It was "When Will I See You Again" by the Three Degrees, and I can still see myself sitting next to our huge wooden radio listening to this song. I was about 25 when I heard it as a Golden Oldie, and I was thoroughly depressed for the rest of the day. >Gee....where's the line to pick up my Social Security >check? Wait...can't find my walker. So nevermind. And then we can go shop for some nice cardigans and woollen pleated skirts, OK? By the way, I love your blue rinse ;) Mary Ann (only 33 but going grey already...and proud owner every Abba record...original, of course) _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From kerelsen at quik.com Wed May 8 17:28:50 2002 From: kerelsen at quik.com (Bernadette M. Crumb) Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 13:28:50 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] I feel so old.... References: Message-ID: <000b01c1f6b5$d35bb240$b921b0d8@kerelsen> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mary Jennings" To: Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 12:52 PM Subject: Re: [HPFGU-OTChatter] I feel so old.... > :::::bounces up and down::::: Ooh, freaky! I was describing these cartoons > to an English friend just the other day. I watched Saturday morning > cartoons on American channels (from Plattsburg and Vermont, I think) when I > was a kid in Montreal. You're right, they were just wonderful, though the > American history ones didn't help me any in school, of course. Imagine what > kids today could learn from these. Some kids must be learning from them because everytime I go to the video place to rent them, they are out with another customer! I suppose I should really just go ahead and buy them outright! Who put them out anyway? > >I should bring in my Grammar Rocks or History Rocks > >videotapes and make these guys watch them! Yeah! :) "I'm Just a Bill" is what got me interested in how government works... and I still hum "Conjunction Junction" from time to time when I'm writing a research paper for college (I'm a non-trad student... a senior at 41 years old!) > They'll learn more from these than any textbook! > > >Then again, this is the same guy who said "I wasn't born > >when Return of the Jedi came out. So Star Wars didn't form > >my childhood like it did yours." Heck, Star Wars had nothing to do with my childhood.. I was already 15 when the first one came out. But I must say that I'm enjoying my second childhood with Harry Potter! But, honestly, I sometimes wonder whether my children are having as fun a childhood as I had... looking at some of the kids, teenagers and college students I know, I begin to doubt it and I feel bad for them not having had the GOOD Saturday morning cartoons, and the thrill of staying up all night to get to see the opening performance of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and being able to run around all over the neighborhood without having to worry about predators of various types and and being able to trust their neighbors and all. > I'll tell you how I found out the hard was that I was no longer a > teenager...I heard a song on a Golden Oldies radio station that I can > clearly remember being in the charts. It was "When Will I See You Again" by > the Three Degrees, and I can still see myself sitting next to our huge > wooden radio listening to this song. I was about 25 when I heard it as a > Golden Oldie, and I was thoroughly depressed for the rest of the day. Oddly, I felt more like I was an old person when I was in my 20s and hearing songs I sang and danced to being called "oldies" (and mine were country music, which doesn't get as old as fast as pop music does) than I do now that I'm a full time mom with five kids and am meeting with traditionally aged college students on a daily basis. I'm twice as old as they are, but somehow I think I'm having a LOT more fun with life than they are... these "kids" are all so blinking serious about everything and it seems wierd to me! I suppose it might be because they are all heading out after graduation into a bad job market and are worried that they might never make their dreams happen. But somewhere along the last four or five years, I came back into the belief that I CAN make my dreams happen and that I don't have to be like grumpy Severus Snape while I'm doing so! :) Perhaps C.S. Lewis was right in his idea that we get to a point in our lives that we are ready for fairy stories once more... > >Gee....where's the line to pick up my Social Security > >check? Wait...can't find my walker. So nevermind. > > And then we can go shop for some nice cardigans and woollen pleated skirts, > OK? By the way, I love your blue rinse ;) Nah... make them khaki capri pants, with vibrant aloha shirts with jet skis and speedboats and surfboards waiting for us! :) Or mountain climbing gear, or rainforest hikewear, or wizards robes and magic wands. :) Bernadette (glad to be of a generation that still seemed to know how to have fun, despite what the rest of the world was doing, and hopes to be as lovely as Minerva McGonnagle when she finally, REALLY gets old...) From bray.262 at osu.edu Wed May 8 13:29:28 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 13:29:28 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: I feel so old.... Message-ID: <75E6AD2A21@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> Wanda said: Kids learn from their parents. Yes! I was weaned on the Beatles! I just saw Paul McCartney last week in Cleveland. And Yellow Submarine and A Hard Day's Night are on my Top Movie list! Joanne said: Rachel, honey, I am trying to feel sorry for you for feelling so old, but since the series debuted when MY daughter was young, it's kinda tough. HAHAHAHAHAA! O.K. :-) Mary Ann said: And then we can go shop for some nice cardigans and woollen pleated skirts, OK? By the way, I love your blue rinse ;) Why, thank you! And yes, let's meet up for shopping this weekend once my Geritol kicks in. I actually did a bad thing and made my boss feel old a minute ago.....she was saying she was a junior in college when Star Wars came out. I said "I was in the first grade." A paper wad came flying over the cubicle at my head. :-) True, young at heart is what matters. Chronological age doesn't have anything to do with it. My mother just turned 52 and still does 100 mile hikes with her boy scout troop all the time. On her 50th birthday she and some friends did 350 miles of the Appalachian Trail. So to me, she's in her 20's. Harry is keeping me young. :-) That and Star Wars, my koala collection, Duran Duran, Star Wars, Harry, concert- going, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Harry, Star Wars, The Powerpuff Girls, yearly trips to Disney World, my rollercoaster fetish, Star Wars, Harry.... Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements LORD OF THE SNITCH Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly One is the dork Ref all on his own On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it One game may take three months, or may take but a minute On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm From bray.262 at osu.edu Wed May 8 15:01:58 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 15:01:58 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: Is anyone at the London launch? Message-ID: <77712D086A@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> I'm watching the DVD launch right now and just curious if anyone on the list went. It looks like it's pretty crowded. Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements LORD OF THE SNITCH Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly One is the dork Ref all on his own On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it One game may take three months, or may take but a minute On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm From catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk Wed May 8 20:31:25 2002 From: catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk (catorman) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 20:31:25 -0000 Subject: Shelter of the Stone (and whiners) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Mary Jennings" wrote: > Mary Ann > (who remembers the Clan of the Cavebear movie as being really, really bad) They made a movie?! That really surprises me, considering that most of the dialogue was done via sign language - how did they do it? Subtitles? Anyway, onto Book 5 whining, I have yet another rumour. I posted last week about Waterstones' order forms, despite them not knowing when the release date is. Waterstones staff have now been told that they are to tell all customers that the book is out in July, although they don't know when in July. I'm very sceptical about this, but I still find it strange that the UK's largest bookstore chain is handing out order forms and telling us that it will be released in July if it won't be. Catherine, who is rereading all of Jean Auel's Earth's Children books before the latest, and also - Jenny - Hush is one of my favourite episodes. I'd also like to know what fairy tale that was based upon. From kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk Wed May 8 20:42:13 2002 From: kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk (Kathryn) Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 21:42:13 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Shelter of the Stone (and whiners) References: Message-ID: <3CD98DA5.000001.42191@monica> That's really odd because the guy in my local Waterstones agreed with me that the order forms were daft and said he'd been told it would probably come out at Christmas. K -------Original Message------- From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Date: 08 May 2002 21:38:01 To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Shelter of the Stone (and whiners) Anyway, onto Book 5 whining, I have yet another rumour. I posted last week about Waterstones' order forms, despite them not knowing when the release date is. Waterstones staff have now been told that they are to tell all customers that the book is out in July, although they don't know when in July. I'm very sceptical about this, but I still find it strange that the UK's largest bookstore chain is handing out order forms and telling us that it will be released in July if it won't be. From the_little_catboy at yahoo.ca Wed May 8 23:03:11 2002 From: the_little_catboy at yahoo.ca (Caleb Williamson) Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 19:03:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] I feel so old.... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020508230311.26977.qmail@web11402.mail.yahoo.com> This is Caleb for the younger than 30 croud. First things first, if you you think that knowing SR is a twit, but can any one else remember the origanl Tom & Jerry show with the black lady's legs. And all of my supervisors at work are less then two year younger than me. Caleb 'The old odd guy' Ps Mary Ann if you think going grey at 33 is bad you could have gone grey at 22 like I am now. ______________________________________________________________________ Games, Movies, Music & Sports! http://entertainment.yahoo.ca From dradamsapple at yahoo.com Wed May 8 23:52:03 2002 From: dradamsapple at yahoo.com (dradamsapple) Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 23:52:03 -0000 Subject: I feel so old.... In-Reply-To: <72C6EC31A6@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Rachel Bray wrote: > I was humming The Shot Heard 'Round the World from > Schoolhouse Rock > > Gee....where's the line to pick up my Social Security > check? Wait...can't find my walker. So nevermind. > > :-/ > > Rachel Bray > The Ohio State University > Fees, Deposits and Disbursements > > LORD OF THE SNITCH > Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky > Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood > Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly > One is the dork Ref all on his own > On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. > One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it > One game may take three months, or may take but a minute > On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. > > http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm Anna says . . . Ok, so now I have to put MY two gray hairs in!! For those of you that missed my reply to "reunion blues" message# 10651, I told Jennifer that I felt old because my son is the same age as Harry and the gang. What I was too embarressed to really tell her was that she didn't have anything to feel "old" about going to her 10 year high school reunion, because my 20th COLLEGE reunion is comming up!!! AAAAAAAGGGHHH!!! I've been sent lists of people who are working on the reunion and I can't even REMEMBER some of these people!! And I only had about 125 people in my graduating class!! (yes, very small school). I guess memory is one of the first things to go, right?? I guess memory is one of the first things to go, right?? Oh, I already wrote that. . . (:O Anna . . . From Joanne0012 at aol.com Thu May 9 12:43:51 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 12:43:51 -0000 Subject: I feel so old.... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "dradamsapple" wrote: > I told Jennifer that I felt old because my son is the same > age as Harry and the gang. What I was too embarressed to really tell > her was that she didn't have anything to feel "old" about going to > her 10 year high school reunion, because my 20th COLLEGE reunion is > comming up!!! AAAAAAAGGGHHH!!! Would you all please cut this out? I'm the same age as Rachel's mom and my older DAUGHTER is going to her 10th college reunion next week. From moongirlk at yahoo.com Thu May 9 14:15:48 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 14:15:48 -0000 Subject: I feel so old.... In-Reply-To: <20020508160912.99823.qmail@web13703.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Wanda said: >Children learn from their parents. Yes! And aunts like me! My sister is a bit older than me, so we had different things to introduce my niece to. She introduced her to the Steve Miller Band, and me? Duran Duran. We both made sure she got to see School House Rock, though. And me being from that Brat Pack generation, when she was old enough I made sure she saw The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. But I was still amazed last weekend when we were talking about Soap - apparently this isn't shown on any cable channel or anything, because she'd never heard of it. I tried to explain about Billy Crystal's early years and the stuffed dog and how Richard Mulligan thought he was invisible, but it's not the same. Sigh. kimberly who'd be willing to (gulp!) join a Columbia-House kind of club if she could get Soap and all the seasons of MASH on DVD. From ComtessadeChats at cs.com Thu May 9 14:28:32 2002 From: ComtessadeChats at cs.com (ComtessadeChats at cs.com) Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 10:28:32 EDT Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] I feel so old.... Message-ID: <157.da40cfb.2a0be190@cs.com> In a message dated 5/8/02 11:20:28 AM Mountain Daylight Time, kerelsen at quik.com writes: > But, honestly, I > sometimes wonder whether my children are having as fun a > childhood as I had... looking at some of the kids, teenagers and > college students I know, I begin to doubt it and I feel bad for > them not having had the GOOD Saturday morning cartoons, and the > thrill of staying up all night to get to see the opening > performance of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and being able to run > around all over the neighborhood without having to worry about > predators of various types and and being able to trust their > neighbors and all. I agree!! When I was a kid, wew used to play "kick the can" until "late" (10:00) and a Star Wars movie premeire was a major deal! The theatre was huge and old fashioned with curtains and everything. It was beautiful! But we have the ultra-modern ten plex now. I love it, but its just not the same. We live in an awwesome neighborhood, but I don't think I'd let my kiddos play outside until 10:00, not wiothout me, anyway! I need to get a game of "kick the can" started this summer. The exact rules escape me. Anyone else remember it? ~~~LYSA~~~ From ch001d4564 at blueyonder.co.uk Thu May 9 18:11:45 2002 From: ch001d4564 at blueyonder.co.uk (Martin Hooper) Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 19:11:45 +0100 Subject: Article re Oop Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20020509191129.00a4c2f0@pop3.blueyonder.co.uk> http://msn.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/top_story.html?in_review_id=579852 Article on the new book... Martin J Hooper http://www.martinjh.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk AIM: Martinjh99 ICQ: 43933602 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From katzefan at yahoo.com Thu May 9 19:39:20 2002 From: katzefan at yahoo.com (katzefan) Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 19:39:20 -0000 Subject: Reunion Blues In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Jennifer Boggess Ramon < boggles at e...> wrote: > For those of you who I haven't told yet, I'm a high school math > teacher. I've been feeling rather old this year, trying to keep up > with my students - smarter than they are, to be sure, but old. > I went to my 10-year high school reunion this past weekend. Ai ai ai. > > On the good side, I met the spouses of both the Imzadi and the friend who used to captain our Science Bowl team. They've paired up with good folks; I'm thrilled. I also got the nerve up to do some karaoke at the formal party, and got a couple of compliments. > > But oh, mother of memory, do I feel old! Jennifer, if it makes you feel any better, I went to my 25-year high school reunion ... in 1997. My best friend has changed only slightly since high school days; I wish I could say the same about myself. Having said that, though, be of good cheer - the reunions get more interesting as time goes by. From s_ings at yahoo.com Thu May 9 23:47:19 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 19:47:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] I feel so old.... In-Reply-To: <157.da40cfb.2a0be190@cs.com> Message-ID: <20020509234719.28083.qmail@web14606.mail.yahoo.com> --- ComtessadeChats at cs.com wrote: > I agree!! When I was a kid, wew used to play > "kick the can" until "late" > (10:00) and a Star Wars movie premeire was a major > deal! The theatre was huge > and old fashioned with curtains and everything. It > was beautiful! But we > have the ultra-modern ten plex now. I love it, but > its just not the same. > We live in an awwesome neighborhood, but I don't > think I'd let my kiddos play > outside until 10:00, not wiothout me, anyway! I > need to get a game of "kick > the can" started this summer. The exact rules > escape me. Anyone else > remember it? > > ~~~LYSA~~~ I can't help commenting on the bit about the old-fashioned theatres and such. I work in one of those modern theatres and while it's nice, it's just not the same. I get into price discussions with lots of people who come in to buy tickets. The conversation usually starts with them bemoaning the cost of their tickets, to which I always ask how cheap they recall tickets being when they were younger. I usually win on this one, unless I'm talking to seniors, because I grew up on overseas Air Force bases and only paid the equivalent of 25 cents for movie + popcorn + drink. Anyone else remember when they used to show serials before the Saturday matinees at the movies? Anyone remember when they used to play the national anthem and all the kids would stand up and be quiet? Anyone else old enough to remember that? :-D Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Games, Movies, Music & Sports! http://entertainment.yahoo.ca From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Fri May 10 09:49:09 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 09:49:09 -0000 Subject: Alley-Oop In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20020509191129.00a4c2f0@pop3.blueyonder.co.uk> Message-ID: Martin Hooper wrote: > http://msn.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/top_story.html? in_review_id=579852 > > Article on the new book... It sounds as if Bloomsbury have made another pronouncement, then. Their website has also changed slightly, to wording similar to that of their spokesman in the article: "When will the fifth book be published? JK Rowling is happily writing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and we anticipate that we will be publishing later this year." (from their FAQ, General Queries: http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/harrypotter/muggles/faq/faq.asp? pageNo=15 or go to http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/harrypotter/muggles_index.html and click on F.A.Q. then General Queries) Until recently it something like: "In an ideal world we would announce a date in early autumn 2002, but we have to wait and see" This feels like a further delay, but just possibly slightly increased confidence that it really will be out this year. David From catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk Fri May 10 11:13:17 2002 From: catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk (catorman) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 11:13:17 -0000 Subject: Alley-Oop In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "davewitley" wrote: > Martin Hooper wrote: > > http://msn.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/top_story.html? > in_review_id=579852 > > > > Article on the new book... > > It sounds as if Bloomsbury have made another pronouncement, then. > Their website has also changed slightly, to wording similar to that > of their spokesman in the article: > > "When will the fifth book be published? > JK Rowling is happily writing Harry Potter and the Order of the > Phoenix and we anticipate that we will be publishing later this year." > > (from their FAQ, General Queries: > http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/harrypotter/muggles/faq/faq.asp? > pageNo=15 > > or go to > http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/harrypotter/muggles_index.html > > and click on F.A.Q. then General Queries) > > Until recently it something like: "In an ideal world we would > announce a date in early autumn 2002, but we have to wait and see" > > This feels like a further delay, but just possibly slightly increased > confidence that it really will be out this year. > > David I'm still unsure why some of the major bookstores in the UK are advertising the new book if they haven't been given official information on a release date, or at least month. In response to my last post on the subject, Kathryn said that a sales assistant in her local Waterstones said that having the pre-order forms out was "daft." This is the response I got last week, but it seems that in the meantime (ie, a couple of days ago) this story has changed, and they are being advised by Head Office to say July. I honestly think that they're all playing with us. I'm hoping that they know exactly when it is going to be out, but have decided to have a short a time as possible between announcement and actual release date. Why, I don't know, but the information currently flying around just doesn't make sense. Catherine, who is living in hope From naama_gat at hotmail.com Fri May 10 12:34:15 2002 From: naama_gat at hotmail.com (naamagatus) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 12:34:15 -0000 Subject: Alley-Oop In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "catorman" wrote: > > I'm still unsure why some of the major bookstores in the UK are > advertising the new book if they haven't been given official > information on a release date, or at least month. In response to my > last post on the subject, Kathryn said that a sales assistant in her > local Waterstones said that having the pre-order forms out > was "daft." This is the response I got last week, but it seems that > in the meantime (ie, a couple of days ago) this story has changed, > and they are being advised by Head Office to say July. > > I honestly think that they're all playing with us. I'm hoping that > they know exactly when it is going to be out, but have decided to > have a short a time as possible between announcement and actual > release date. Why, I don't know, but the information currently > flying around just doesn't make sense. To me, it sounds as though JKR is really still writing (happily or otherwise) and that the publishers really have no idea when the manuscript will be ready. The rumours are the product of wishful thinking, probably. Naama, the pessimist > > Catherine, who is living in hope From naama_gat at hotmail.com Fri May 10 12:51:01 2002 From: naama_gat at hotmail.com (naamagatus) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 12:51:01 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV Message-ID: Hi, I have a question to the Americans amongst you. I couldn't help noticing that on practically all the American TV shows (sitcoms, dramas, soaps) there are no mixed - black and white - couples. I know it's not an expression of racism - these shows are all mainstream and seem to bend over backwards to be PC. I also remember a few years ago, that Eric la Salle (Benton in E.R.) was uncomfortable with his character having an affair with a white woman (Elisabeth), and because of that the romance between them was ended. Since when - and WHY - has it become the bon-ton in the US for "racially pure" couples? (I have to say, that I personally find this racial exclusiveness disturbing, but maybe I'm not getting something?) Naama Naama From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Fri May 10 13:07:42 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 13:07:42 -0000 Subject: To our UK friends Message-ID: I am hoping that none of you have been struck in the train-accidnet which apparently has taken place in Hertfordshire, shortly North of London. As I am typing this, news are just breaking, but they are talking about "unconfirmed reports of deaths" and that the train exploded after the crash. The train apparently was a GNER Express- service between London Kings Cross and King's Lynn, Norfolk. The crash occured two miles South of Hatfield, where four persons were killed in an October 2000 when a GNER Express came off the tracks. Best regards Christian Stub? From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Fri May 10 13:19:27 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 13:19:27 -0000 Subject: A cautionary tale Message-ID: When I was in my teens, my Dad took us to see a film he had seen at 14 when it came out, assuring us it was the most hilarious thing we would ever see. The film was Hellzapoppin, and it came out in 1940. After we'd seen it, even my father admitted it was dire. The moral? Why should our kids take any interest in what we did when young, unless we show appreciation of what our parents' generation liked? As long as we lap up entertainment celebrating the youthful overthrow of a stuffy older culture, we will end up being overthrown - and probably rightly. David List elf, HPformidlifecrisispeople From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Fri May 10 13:24:10 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 13:24:10 -0000 Subject: The Order of the Phoenix Message-ID: I have recently been reading an encyclopaedia of flags that I got out of the library. In it I found this: "The national emblem of Vanuatu is a pair of crossed Namele leaves (Phoenix sylvestris) surrounded by a boar's tusk. The 39 fronds of the leaves represent the 39 members of the Representative Assembly. The boar's tusk is a symbol of prosperity." (We have no way of knowing whether the tusk comes from a boar with wings.) So, perhaps the Order of the Phoenix is all those people who have an internet domain name registered in Vanuatu? David From john at walton.vu Fri May 10 13:34:31 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 14:34:31 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] The Order of the Phoenix In-Reply-To: Message-ID: David wrote: > "The national emblem of Vanuatu is a pair of crossed Namele leaves > (Phoenix sylvestris) surrounded by a boar's tusk. The 39 fronds of > the leaves represent the 39 members of the Representative Assembly. > The boar's tusk is a symbol of prosperity." > So, perhaps the Order of the Phoenix is all those people who have an > internet domain name registered in Vanuatu? Why, you little vexillologist, you! Curses, foiled again. And if it wasn't for you pesky LOONs... --John ____________________________________________ Soldiers who are not afraid of guns, bombs, capture, torture or death say they are afraid of homosexuals.? Clearly we should not be used as soldiers; we should be used as weapons.? ~Letter to the editor, The Advocate John Walton || john at walton.vu || johnwalton.livejournal.com ____________________________________________ From kerelsen at quik.com Fri May 10 14:45:50 2002 From: kerelsen at quik.com (Bernadette M. Crumb) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 10:45:50 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] To our UK friends References: Message-ID: <002001c1f831$62259280$5421b0d8@kerelsen> ----- Original Message ----- From: "pengolodh_sc" > I am hoping that none of you have been struck in the train-accidnet > which apparently has taken place in Hertfordshire, shortly North of > London. According to the BBC website, there are 3 confirmed deaths. The crash occurred at the Potter's Bar station and one of the coaches apparently rolled over onto the platform. Here's the link to the article on it http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/england/newsid_1979000/197967 7.stm This really saddens me. I remember riding from Kings Cross through the Potter's Bar station when I took the train up into the midlands to visit my husband back when we were dating. I sincerely hope that none of our friends on this list was affected by this. Bernadette "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." -- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). From mcritelli at mindspring.com Fri May 10 18:18:24 2002 From: mcritelli at mindspring.com (Melissa Critelli) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 11:18:24 -0700 Subject: new book References: Message-ID: <000f01c1f84f$42667400$acbf56d1@pavilion> I found out why HP #5 will NOT be out until next year. Apparantly JK hasnt even finished half of the book yet! WHAT IS SHE DOING WITH HER TIME, I ask you? She said that this book is proving much harder to composed then the other four, could this be writers block? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From macloudt at hotmail.com Fri May 10 15:31:36 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 15:31:36 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] A cautionary tale Message-ID: Head Midlife Crisis Elf David said: >The moral? Why should our kids take any interest in what we did when >young, unless we show appreciation of what our parents' generation >liked? As long as we lap up entertainment celebrating the youthful >overthrow of a stuffy older culture, we will end up being overthrown - >and probably rightly. My daughter is 5 and is just learning to read. In her bookcase are lots of my old books that I loved as a kid. These include the Little House series, several Judy Blumes, lots of Famous Fives, Little Women, Charlotte's Web, and so on. At times I've wondered whether Beth will actually enjoy *any* of these books. I reread these books myself sometimes, and while I still think the most of them are still very good, some, like the Famous Fives, really are embarrassingly corny. Just because a lot of them are classics doesn't mean she'll like them. And the mere fact that they're Mum's old books could automatically render them Totally Uncool, or whatever the modern slang is. Two more useless titbits...I went to the library today, and I'm number 22 on the waiting list for the latest Jean Auel book. Also I got an email this morning to say that my copy of the HP video has been dispatched :::::bounces up and down with glee::::: Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow night? Mary Ann (sure to have lots of friends around next week for a movie night) _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com From mcritelli at mindspring.com Fri May 10 18:54:41 2002 From: mcritelli at mindspring.com (Melissa Critelli) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 11:54:41 -0700 Subject: chelsea clinton Message-ID: <000a01c1f854$25c826e0$acbf56d1@pavilion> does anyone else find it slightly odd that Chelsea Clinton is like all of a sudden famous? She is making headlines everywhere, being featured in magazines, and hanging out at the celebrities parties. She also went out with Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna recently. I heard this morning that she is like the new JFK Jr, a real sex symbol. I completely disagree............. Anyone? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From Klara.Sjo at student.uib.no Fri May 10 11:43:33 2002 From: Klara.Sjo at student.uib.no (Klara Sjo) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 13:43:33 +0200 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Alley-Oop In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20020510133426.00a066e0@pop.student.uib.no> >Well, yesterday it was said in the news (at the Norwegian State >Broadcasting - is it really that important?? ) that the book wouldn't be >published until next summer. A friend of mine who buyes in foreign book >(which Harry P is)for a bookshop says that she'd certainly know if it'd be >comming this summer. Klara, lurking back to patient lurkdom > > "When will the fifth book be published? > > JK Rowling is happily writing Harry Potter and the Order of the > > Phoenix and we anticipate that we will be publishing later this >year." > > > > (from their FAQ, General Queries: > > > http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/harrypotter/muggles/faq/faq.asp? > > pageNo=15 > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Fri May 10 16:45:35 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 16:45:35 -0000 Subject: new book In-Reply-To: <000f01c1f84f$42667400$acbf56d1@pavilion> Message-ID: Melissa Critelli wrote: > I found out why HP #5 will NOT be out until next year. > Apparantly JK hasnt even finished half of the book yet! > WHAT IS SHE DOING WITH HER TIME, I ask you? > She said that this book is proving much harder to composed then the other four, could this be writers block? How do you know? Where does this come from? David From Joanne0012 at aol.com Fri May 10 16:56:41 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 16:56:41 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "naamagatus" wrote: > Hi, > > I have a question to the Americans amongst you. I couldn't help > noticing that on practically all the American TV shows (sitcoms, > dramas, soaps) there are no mixed - black and white - couples. Heck, there aren't even that many mixed-race SHOWS! Lots of very popular programs, especially comedies, have casts that are either all-black or all-white (viz Friends, Frazier, etc.). The recent PBS (Public Broadcasting System) mini-series, "Frontier House," which took 3 families back to a 1883 Montana lifestlye for 5 months, did feature a mixed-race couple -- it even featured their wedding, which took place during the filming. (And if you looked closely at the wedding itself, you saw that the black groom had a white mom -- just like Halle Berry.) From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Fri May 10 16:58:54 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 16:58:54 -0000 Subject: No news is no news Message-ID: The BBC is doing what it does best: saying nothing at all at great length. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/arts/newsid_1977000/197 7856.stm Just once, just once, I would like to hear the following on the main news broadcast: Anchor (say, Peter Sissons): Orla, what's the latest out there? Reporter: Nothing's happened. Anchor: But surely, negotiations must be continuing. Doesn't the fact that they're taking so long tell us something? Reporter: Nope. Anchor: How would you summarise the effect these tragic events will have on the future direction of the peace process? Reporter: None. Anchor: What have you done with your BBC book of cliches? How about 'Nothing will ever be the same again'? Reporter: But it will be the same. Anchor: Or 'One thing is certain: there are no easy options for the Special Envoy', or 'The two sides are as far apart as ever' or 'With so much history against them, the outlook is bleak? Reporter: I already used those in my recorded report Anchor: Orla Guerin reporting. And now to our expert in the studio. John, would you say that, with so much history against them, the outlook is bleak? etc. David From Joanne0012 at aol.com Fri May 10 16:59:54 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 16:59:54 -0000 Subject: chelsea clinton In-Reply-To: <000a01c1f854$25c826e0$acbf56d1@pavilion> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Melissa Critelli" wrote: > does anyone else find it slightly odd that Chelsea Clinton is like all of a sudden famous? > She is making headlines everywhere, being featured in magazines, and hanging out at the celebrities parties. > She also went out with Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna recently. > I heard this morning that she is like the new JFK Jr, a real sex symbol. > I completely disagree............. I'll admit that she's not quite as cute as John-John. But remember that she's the product of not one but two celebrity parents, and that the press had an unwritten moratorium on covering her adolescence during her dad's administration. Now that she's an independent adult, it's no wonder that she has entered the celebrity lifestyle just a bit and the press, for now lacking scandals to report about her parents, is using its pent-up Chelsea energies. From kerelsen at quik.com Fri May 10 17:31:46 2002 From: kerelsen at quik.com (Bernadette M. Crumb) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 13:31:46 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] new book References: <000f01c1f84f$42667400$acbf56d1@pavilion> Message-ID: <003901c1f848$90535a40$5421b0d8@kerelsen> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Melissa Critelli" To: Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 2:18 PM Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] new book > I found out why HP #5 will NOT be out until next year. > Apparantly JK hasnt even finished half of the book yet! > WHAT IS SHE DOING WITH HER TIME, I ask you? > She said that this book is proving much harder to composed then the other four, could this be writers block? Have you ever tried to write a full length novel? How about a GOOD full length novel? How about a GOOD full length novel that is probably going to be read by some of the most critical people on the face of the earth? If she has writer's block, well, damn... it happens... That's why I only have six chapters of my own Magnum Opus done so far--and I don't have half the pressures on me that JKR has on her. Her publishers are saying that she is currently writing OOP. So what if she's only halfway done with it so far. Good grief. I'm sure she could get it finished really fast "if she tried" and nine times out of ten, it would probably be crap. I'm anxious to read what happens next to Harry and company, but I am certainly not so impatient that I want JKR to produce an inferior product. If she needs another six months or a year to get it "right" then that's fine with me. Besides, professional writer or not, she has a LIFE, a husband, a daughter... a home to deal with... she has to deal with the public and all the garbage that being famous brings to her. There are going to be days when she'll be lucky to get even two double spaced pages typed out because of all the other demands on her time. I'm friends with another fantasy author and between what I've seen with her experiences, and my own writing experience, you can't treat writing a novel the same way that you treat a car being built on an assembly line. it doesn't work that way. For the love of Mike, people, give the woman a break and be patient! If she ends up with a nervous breakdown because of the stress we'll never get years five, six and seven... Sorry to sound snappish, but I am SOOOOO sick of the wailing I'm hearing about the novel's delay. What's one more year? I've waited over 15 years for a book to come out from one of my favorite authors and over a decade for another... and they were both worth the wait! Have faith in JKR and cultivate patience... OOP will be worth the wait too. Bernadette "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." -- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). From cindysphynx at comcast.net Fri May 10 17:44:34 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 17:44:34 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Naamagatus wrote: > I couldn't help > noticing that on practically all the American TV shows (sitcoms, > dramas, soaps) there are no mixed - black and white - couples. I'd guess there are several reasons for this. First, although interracial dating and marriage are more common now than many years ago (when it was forbidden by law in some states), they are still the minority of marriages. Second, and sadly, there are still *a lot* of people in this country who are quite uncomfortable with the idea of interracial marriage. A lot. Did I mention there are *a lot* of people who feel that way? It varies regionally, and it varies with what kind of couple you're talking about, but it is still much more controverial than it needs to be. >I know > it's not an expression of racism - these shows are all mainstream >and > seem to bend over backwards to be PC. Um, well, I can only speculate here, but I would assume the writers/producers either have their own hang-ups, or more likely, simply don't want to do anything that might cause viewers to tune out. >I also remember a few years > ago, that Eric la Salle (Benton in E.R.) was uncomfortable with >his > character having an affair with a white woman (Elisabeth), and > because of that the romance between them was ended. Yes, I recall that. I don't recall his specific reasons, but I suspect that particular plot line wasn't winning him any friends. Based on what I've seen, relationships between African American men and white women are the least accepted in the U.S., and African American men who date outside their race can take quite a bit of heat for it in the community. > Since when - and WHY - has it become the bon-ton in the US for > "racially pure" couples? (I have to say, that I personally find this > racial exclusiveness disturbing, but maybe I'm not getting > something?) Since when? Forever. Why? Well, we have a long, sad history of race relations in this country, and we have a long way to go. 'Nuff said about *that*. I recall years ago that I took a marketing course for some reason, and one of the studies I saw investigated the reactions of consumers to interracial ads. In other words, what sells the product better: using actors entirely of one race or using a variety of actors? The study found that people reacted more favorably to less racial mixing. This was true of the two racial groups studied -- African Americans and whites. Note: I'm no expert on this sort of research, and I don't know the name of the study, and this was many years ago. Maybe the study's observations are no longer valid. But it did make me say, "Hmmmm." Cindy (flying the Midlife Crisis Banner with David) From kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk Fri May 10 18:02:46 2002 From: kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk (Kathryn) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 19:02:46 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] To our UK friends References: Message-ID: <3CDC0B46.000001.51245@monica> I figured I could add to this thread since I've been watching it on News 24 and make a few minoe corrections. First it was a WAGN train not GNER (irrelevent I know, but still). Second there are now 6 reported deaths a dozen or so seriously injured and 70 walking wounded. The train didn't explode - the explosion-like noise people heard was the fourth carriage jumping in the air turning through 90 degrees, sliding along the platform and demolishing the waiting room. It is currently sat off the ground with one end on each platform. It's in Potter's Bar, btw. It also partially demolished a bridge over the High Street so I guess it's a miracle only 6 people died. I shudder to think what the figure would have been if it had happened during rush hour when the station would be packed instead of lunchtime. Frankly I'm sitting here being incredibly grateful that I'm a lazy sod since I was supposed to be going home today and that might well have been my train As it was I hadn't even managed to leave Windsor when the news broke. Most of my thoughts are with the families etc etc, but there is one, relatively small, and incredibly selfish part of my brain, which is bemoaning the fact that it's my birthday this weekend and I want to go home damn it. Instead I m stuck here till someone can come and get me. However, things could be much worse so I'll just have to stop being such a brat and get over it. K -------Original Message------- From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Date: 10 May 2002 14:21:31 To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] To our UK friends I am hoping that none of you have been struck in the train-accidnet which apparently has taken place in Hertfordshire, shortly North of London. As I am typing this, news are just breaking, but they are talking about "unconfirmed reports of deaths" and that the train exploded after the crash. The train apparently was a GNER Express- service between London Kings Cross and King's Lynn, Norfolk. The crash occured two miles South of Hatfield, where four persons were killed in an October 2000 when a GNER Express came off the tracks. Best regards Christian Stub? Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT Height: 4567 ft 01234567891011 in Weight: Sex: F M ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. From Joanne0012 at aol.com Fri May 10 18:04:56 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 18:04:56 -0000 Subject: No news is no news In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "davewitley" wrote: > > Just once, just once, I would like to hear the following on the main > news broadcast: > > Anchor (say, Peter Sissons): Orla, what's the latest out there? > > Reporter: Nothing's happened. Reminds me of an episode of the TV series "Barney Miller," back in the 1970s. Some guy had amnesia and couldn't remember anything that had happened in the previous 4 years. The cast started trying to bring him up to date: they mentioned trouble with the economy, trouble in the Middle East. The guy said, "But what's NEW?" Finally, someone said, "They've invented gum that won't stick to your dental work," and the guy was impressed. THAT was news. From kerelsen at quik.com Fri May 10 18:31:38 2002 From: kerelsen at quik.com (Bernadette M. Crumb) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 14:31:38 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] To our UK friends References: <3CDC0B46.000001.51245@monica> Message-ID: <009701c1f850$edc271e0$5421b0d8@kerelsen> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kathryn" > I figured I could add to this thread since I've been watching it on News 24 > and make a few minoe corrections. SNIP > Frankly I'm sitting here being incredibly grateful that I'm a lazy sod since > I was supposed to be going home today and that might well have been my train > As it was I hadn't even managed to leave Windsor when the news broke. Most > of my thoughts are with the families etc etc, but there is one, relatively > small, and incredibly selfish part of my brain, which is bemoaning the fact > that it's my birthday this weekend and I want to go home damn it. Instead I > m stuck here till someone can come and get me. However, things could be much > worse so I'll just have to stop being such a brat and get over it. I hope you have a Happy Birthday and that it won't be too long until you get fetched home. Thanks for the additional information. I keep going back to the picture of the carriage on the platform and I wonder that there were so few deaths out of it. I don't recall the railways being anywhere near that bad when I lived in London back from '85 through '88... The biggest thing we had was the Kings Cross Tube Station fire... (another event that could have been so very much worse than it was!) Bernadette "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." -- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). From catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk Fri May 10 20:05:39 2002 From: catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk (catorman) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 20:05:39 -0000 Subject: No news is no news In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "davewitley" wrote: > The BBC is doing what it does best: saying nothing at all at great > length. > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/arts/newsid_1977000/197 > 7856.stm > > Just once, just once, I would like to hear the following on the main > news broadcast: > > Anchor (say, Peter Sissons): Orla, what's the latest out there? I know this wasn't specifically Peter Sissons, but does anyone else have the impression that he's always drunk when he reads the news? Catherine From michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk Fri May 10 20:10:10 2002 From: michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk (Michelle Apostolides) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 21:10:10 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: No news is no news References: Message-ID: <002d01c1f85e$b14fdd20$bd8801d4@john> I know this wasn't specifically Peter Sissons, but does anyone else have the impression that he's always drunk when he reads the news? Well in my opinion I'd rather have anyone BUT Peter Sissons on a big story ! Michelle [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From pennylin at swbell.net Fri May 10 21:25:17 2002 From: pennylin at swbell.net (plinsenmayer) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 21:25:17 -0000 Subject: new book In-Reply-To: <003901c1f848$90535a40$5421b0d8@kerelsen> Message-ID: Hi all -- Bernadette wisely said: > publishers are saying that she is currently writing OOP. So what > if she's only halfway done with it so far. Good grief. I'm sure > she could get it finished really fast "if she tried" and nine > times out of ten, it would probably be crap. I'm anxious to read > what happens next to Harry and company, but I am certainly not so > impatient that I want JKR to produce an inferior product. If she > needs another six months or a year to get it "right" then that's > fine with me. I couldn't agree more. I know she's undoubtedly been feeling some "external edge of pressure" as she mentioned in a post-GoF interview, and that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If I had *millions* of people waiting with bated breath for my next novel, *I'd* be a bit stressed too. I'd also want to be sure it was the best product it could be & that I was as happy with it as I wanted to be. And, as an avid fan, I want it to be the best it can be. I don't want to harp on the problems with GoF, but it really does have more inconsistencies than the other 3 books (and of course, there's the Wand Order debacle). If it requires more time to get it right, then she should take all the time she needs (likewise, I hope the publishers won't unduly rush the editors). > > Besides, professional writer or not, she has a LIFE, a husband, a > daughter... a home to deal with... she has to deal with the > public and all the garbage that being famous brings to her. > There are going to be days when she'll be lucky to get even two > double spaced pages typed out because of all the other demands on > her time. I'm friends with another fantasy author and between > what I've seen with her experiences, and my own writing > experience, you can't treat writing a novel the same way that you > treat a car being built on an assembly line. it doesn't work > that way. Yep. I'm ...er...*trying* to be a professional writer. Since having a baby, I'm *far* less productive. Right, Nancy?! > Sorry to sound snappish, but I am SOOOOO sick of the wailing I'm > hearing about the novel's delay. What's one more year? I've > waited over 15 years for a book to come out from one of my > favorite authors and over a decade for another... and they were > both worth the wait! Have faith in JKR and cultivate patience... > OOP will be worth the wait too. I agree with this too. Been waiting on Robert Caro's latest installment in his multi-volume biography of LBJ since *1991* & it just came out. I used to wonder why it took him 10 yrs to write each volume, and having spent some time researching a biography subject myself, I can *completely* understand why it would take so long. So far, the latest Caro was worth the wait. I have faith OOP will be too. Penny From mcritelli at mindspring.com Fri May 10 21:41:55 2002 From: mcritelli at mindspring.com (mcritelli at mindspring.com) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 17:41:55 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: new book Message-ID: Hello! Sorry I said anything about the book being late! I will NEVER mention anything like that on here again. Just thought people might be interested, didnt really think anyone would freak out about it On Fri, 10 May 2002 21:25:17 -0000 plinsenmayer wrote: Hi all -- Bernadette wisely said: > publishers are saying that she is currently writing OOP. So what > if she's only halfway done with it so far. Good grief. I'm sure > she could get it finished really fast "if she tried" and nine > times out of ten, it would probably be crap. I'm anxious to read > what happens next to Harry and company, but I am certainly not so > impatient that I want JKR to produce an inferior product. If she > needs another six months or a year to get it "right" then that's > fine with me. I couldn't agree more. I know she's undoubtedly been feeling some "external edge of pressure" as she mentioned in a post-GoF interview, and that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If I had *millions* of people waiting with bated breath for my next novel, *I'd* be a bit stressed too. I'd also want to be sure it was the best product it could be & that I was as happy with it as I wanted to be. And, as an avid fan, I want it to be the best it can be. I don't want to harp on the problems with GoF, but it really does have more inconsistencies than the other 3 books (and of course, there's the Wand Order debacle). If it requires more time to get it right, then she should take all the time she needs (likewise, I hope the publishers won't unduly rush the editors). > > Besides, professional writer or not, she has a LIFE, a husband, a > daughter... a home to deal with... she has to deal with the > public and all the garbage that being famous brings to her. > There are going to be days when she'll be lucky to get even two > double spaced pages typed out because of all the other demands on > her time. I'm friends with another fantasy author and between > what I've seen with her experiences, and my own writing > experience, you can't treat writing a novel the same way that you > treat a car being built on an assembly line. it doesn't work > that way. Yep. I'm ...er...*trying* to be a professional writer. Since having a baby, I'm *far* less productive. Right, Nancy?! > Sorry to sound snappish, but I am SOOOOO sick of the wailing I'm > hearing about the novel's delay. What's one more year? I've > waited over 15 years for a book to come out from one of my > favorite authors and over a decade for another... and they were > both worth the wait! Have faith in JKR and cultivate patience... > OOP will be worth the wait too. I agree with this too. Been waiting on Robert Caro's latest installment in his multi-volume biography of LBJ since *1991* & it just came out. I used to wonder why it took him 10 yrs to write each volume, and having spent some time researching a biography subject myself, I can *completely* understand why it would take so long. So far, the latest Caro was worth the wait. I have faith OOP will be too. Penny Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT Height: 4 5 6 7 ft 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 in Weight: Sex: F M ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Fri May 10 22:13:02 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 15:13:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: For our UK members Message-ID: <20020510221302.66376.qmail@web13702.mail.yahoo.com> Hey you all over there! Hope all is well! My saddness goes to all of the families who might have lost someone in that train. I haven't seen or heard any updates. I have been watching videos with William. Keeping his mind busy until next Friday, operation day! I just hope no more bad or sad news. Everybody over there just letting you know We Care! Schnoogles, wanda the Witch of Revere, Massachusetts and Her Band of Muggles 100 % and worried about everybody in the UK "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Mother's Day is May 12th! [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From starling823 at yahoo.com Fri May 10 22:31:18 2002 From: starling823 at yahoo.com (starling823) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 22:31:18 -0000 Subject: interracial couples on TV and chelsea Message-ID: howdy, all...popping in with my 2 knuts... Naama was asking about interracial couples on TV...well, there's a very good reason you don't see much of that: the networks. American TV is a whole bunch of the same thing. If the execs think it will offend Ma and Pa Jones in Kansas (or wherever the Joneses are these days) then it won't make it to prime time. Television takes a long time to catch up to what is going on in society, IMO. I personally have known several interracial couples, only one of whom is still together. But even so, a lot of people aren't used to the idea, it makes them uncomfortable. ::shrug:: I have a mental image of American society as a very lazy tortise. As for Chelsea... The media thinks she's important and exciting. The rest of the world couldn't care, especially after her embarassing whine post 9.11 ("everyone hates me! everyone hates americans! everyone hates everything!) gah. spare me. i will continue to get my news from places that do not include pictures of celebrities. Although, to be honest, better Chelsea than her mother...::shudders:: Pity my poor state, victim of her carpetbagging. Abbie, who is eating tuna helper, the college student's best friend. From SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com Fri May 10 23:12:51 2002 From: SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com (kelleyelf) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 23:12:51 -0000 Subject: ADMIN: Politics, nipping this thread in the bud... Message-ID: Hello everyone-- Just a reminder: discussion of political topics is not allowed in the little HPfGUs world. Many of you may recall the downturn discussion took after the last US presidential election, and for that reason, we've placed the discussion of muggle politics on our banned topics list. (And yes, the banned topics are banned on all our lists, even OTC.) Our group is very diverse, and for every opinion one list member has, another person will have an opposing view. So, rather than let things start to head in a flamey direction, we're posting this little reminder. Any questions or comments should please be sent to the mods at mods at hpfgu.org.uk. Thanks everyone! Kelley, for the Mod Team From dicentra at xmission.com Fri May 10 23:14:38 2002 From: dicentra at xmission.com (dicentra63) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 23:14:38 -0000 Subject: new book In-Reply-To: <003901c1f848$90535a40$5421b0d8@kerelsen> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Bernadette M. Crumb" wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Melissa Critelli" > To: > Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 2:18 PM > Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] new book > > > > I found out why HP #5 will NOT be out until next year. > > Apparantly JK hasnt even finished half of the book yet! > > WHAT IS SHE DOING WITH HER TIME, I ask you? > > She said that this book is proving much harder to composed then > the other four, could this be writers block? > > Have you ever tried to write a full length novel? How about a > GOOD full length novel? How about a GOOD full length novel that > is probably going to be read by some of the most critical people > on the face of the earth? Me, I have another theory: Book 5's taking so long because she's working on more than Book 5. It wouldn't surprise me if she were also writing Important Scenes from Books 6 and 7 to make sure they're all Flint-free. Which could mean that we'll get Books 5, 6, and 7 in fairly quick succession. --Dicentra, hoping against hope From nee1 at worldnet.att.net Sat May 11 00:41:06 2002 From: nee1 at worldnet.att.net (Renee Gunn) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 19:41:06 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: new book References: Message-ID: <000b01c1f884$8a33b2e0$ac7afea9@oemcomputer> Unfortunately, until the publisher of JK herself makes an announcement, we shouldn't really fall prey to any of this. Last year a release date was sent to bookstores saying it was to be out in July 2001. This date, after 2 weeks was quickly scratched and no reason was given for that. This year, publishers notified stores saying that it would be sometime in the 3rd or 4th quarter of the year. I have heard people say that she has every book written and locked ina vault somewhere, just waiting to be released, I have read that she has outlines for every book, parts of book 7 written and all of book 5 written. There are many other reasons for delays. For all we know, she may be waiting for the hype with the next movie to accompany book 5 and for that reason as delayed publication. Unfortunately, as difficult as this is, we just have to all have a bit of patience. Hopefully she won't be another Robert Jordan or Jean Auel... (Jordan takes 3 years between books. JEan Auel's newest one has been awaited for years) Until then, we just have to look to rereadin gover and over the other books, look to the release of the movie on home video/dvd and rely on our imaginations to carry us. ----- Original Message ----- From: dicentra63 To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Sent: May 10, 2002 6:14 PM Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: new book Me, I have another theory: Book 5's taking so long because she's working on more than Book 5. It wouldn't surprise me if she were also writing Important Scenes from Books 6 and 7 to make sure they're all Flint-free. Which could mean that we'll get Books 5, 6, and 7 in fairly quick succession. --Dicentra, hoping against hope From catlady at wicca.net Sat May 11 01:35:19 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 01:35:19 -0000 Subject: Train Disaster / Waiting for Ootp Message-ID: Kathryn wrote: > The train didn't explode - the explosion-like noise people heard > was the fourth carriage jumping in the air turning through 90 > degrees, sliding along the platform and demolishing the waiting > room. It is currently sat off the ground with one end on each > platform. It's in Potter's Bar, btw. It also partially demolished > a bridge over the High Street so I guess it's a miracle only 6 > people died. Oh, my gods, how horrible a crash. We (Greater Los Angeles) recently had a freight train run through a red-light to head-on hit a commuter train, 2 deaths. Before that, I had thought that all rail switches were made so that the track was automatically switched to a siding when the light was set to red, to prevent these bad results of human error about the light. Is it the 'interlocking' that is the only switch with that safety feature? Btw, this name Potter's Bar means nothing to me except wondering if it's connected to *our* Potter. > Frankly I'm sitting here being incredibly grateful that I'm a lazy > sod since I was supposed to be going home today and that might well > have been my train. As it was I hadn't even managed to leave > Windsor when the news broke. You can use that as an excuse for lateness in the future. > Most of my thoughts are with the families etc etc, but there is > one, relatively small, and incredibly selfish part of my brain, > which is bemoaning the fact that it's my birthday this weekend and > I want to go home damn it. Instead I'm stuck here till someone can > come and get me. However, things could be much worse so I'll just > have to stop being such a brat and get over it. I admire your courage in saying something so honest. Bernadette wrote: > I don't recall the railways being anywhere near that bad > when I lived in London back from '85 through '88... Yes, there has been a lot on the news for like a year about the UK rail system having bunches of accidents as result of the tracks, cars, and so on have deteriorated to the point of being unsafe as a result of years and years of 'deferred maintenance'. I remember the same thing with the NYC subways when I lived here in early 1980s. Melissa Critelli wrote: > I found out why HP #5 will NOT be out until next year. Apparantly > JKR hasnt even finished half of the book yet!WHAT IS SHE DOING WITH > HER TIME, I ask you? She said that this book is proving much harder > to composed then the other four, could this be writers block? Probably not BLOCK exactly... probably writing gruesome scenes of death and horror, and then tearing them up because they don't hurt enough, and writing the scene again, and tearing it up because it will traumatise too many readers, adult readers.... Btw, like David I would like a link or something to the source of your information, so I could read all the tragic details for myself. Bernadette wrote: > I've waited over 15 years for a book to come out from one of my > favorite authors and over a decade for another... and they were > both worth the wait! I remember having a very bad experience when an author suddenly, after like 15 years, wrote the no-longer-expected last novel in a series I had liked (but I don't remember which author, which series: memory is the first to go) and the new volume was totally different than what I had like, the characters' personalities had changed to be more cruel and violent and the authorial voice had changed to be bitter and cynical... So I'm scared of books that come out after a LONG wait (three or four years is not long!), in case the author has changed so much that it's like the series being continued by a new author. --Dicentra, hoping against hope, wrote: > Which could mean that we'll get Books 5, 6, and 7 in fairly quick > succession. Melissa Critelli wrote: > Hello! Sorry I said anything about the book being late! I will > NEVER mention anything like that on here again. No! I'm glad to have heard your information, and the resulting thread was interesting. From john at walton.vu Sat May 11 02:19:04 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 03:19:04 +0100 Subject: Other Books & Fanfiction (was Re: new book) In-Reply-To: <000b01c1f884$8a33b2e0$ac7afea9@oemcomputer> Message-ID: Renee Gunn wrote: > Until then, we just have to look to rereading over and over the other books, > look to the release of the movie on home video/dvd and rely on our > imaginations to carry us. Alternatively, we can turn to other authors! There's a Recommended Reading database over at the main group -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database?method=reportRows&tbl=2 -- if there's a book there which is your favorite, tell us about it! If one of your faves isn't there, add it in and still tell us about it :D If you need a HP fix and you haven't discovered the wonders of Harry Potter fanfiction (stories based in the Harry Potter universe, written by Fans Like You...er...Me), check out www.fictionalley.org -- FictionAlley, the HP fandom's largest fanfiction archive. FictionAlley was recently featured in the New York Times article on the wait for Book 5, and stories by many HPFGU listmembers are archived there. --John ____________________________________________ "What is straight?? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains." -- Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, 1947 John Walton || john at walton.vu || johnwalton.livejournal.com ____________________________________________ From golden_faile at yahoo.com Sat May 11 05:47:39 2002 From: golden_faile at yahoo.com (golden faile) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 22:47:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020511054739.45022.qmail@web14602.mail.yahoo.com> naamagatus wrote: Hi, I have a question to the Americans amongst you. I couldn't help noticing that on practically all the American TV shows (sitcoms, dramas, soaps) there are no mixed - black and white - couples. I know it's not an expression of racism - these shows are all mainstream and seem to bend over backwards to be PC. I also remember a few years ago, that Eric la Salle (Benton in E.R.) was uncomfortable with his character having an affair with a white woman (Elisabeth), and because of that the romance between them was ended. Since when - and WHY - has it become the bon-ton in the US for "racially pure" couples? (I have to say, that I personally find this racial exclusiveness disturbing, but maybe I'm not getting something?) There is alot that I would say about this as a black woman, but I will refrain from any comments that might be offensive. Let's just say that some folks are still narrow minded, so that producers have to watch their step about what may be offensive to some people. If you'd like to discuss this further I'd be glad to, off-list. Laila Yahoo! Groups SponsorADVERTISEMENT ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From selah_1977 at yahoo.com Sat May 11 15:45:21 2002 From: selah_1977 at yahoo.com (selah_1977) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 15:45:21 -0000 Subject: Harry's Got His Own Jack Chick Comic! Message-ID: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/5012/5012_01.asp? And the scary thing is that six years ago *I* used to leave Chick comics everywhere. Oh, "how hath the mighty fallen!" *laughs to herself* Have missed you guys terribly. Look forward to summer, and having more time to participate in the HP4GU community again. --Eb (Ebony AKA AngieJ, for you newbies) From vheggie at yahoo.com Sat May 11 15:58:43 2002 From: vheggie at yahoo.com (vheggie) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 15:58:43 -0000 Subject: Please help me with the DVD and my IT illiteracy! Message-ID: I got the DVD (region 2) delivered this morning (Yay for Amazon), and I've spent about 4 hours trying to make it work *sob*. I can install and play the video (disk one) OK, but I just *cannot* work out how to run Disk two. All I get is the InterActive skin witht eh little blue logo in it, I press 'play' the disk spins and....nothing happens; blank screen, no menus or anything. I've tried all sorts of settings, installing and uninstalling time and time again, and I just *can't* figure it out. Has anyone successfully installed it? I'm running a PC with Windows 2000 (professional), have *minimal* IT abilities, and no one to ask for help - Amazon don't usually take back opened DVDs, so I want to be 100% sure it's actually the disks which are broken and not me who is stupid before I try to return it... Please excuse me for cross posting but I'm getting desperate! Any helpful hints off list will be HUGELY appreciated. Vanessa From selah_1977 at yahoo.com Sat May 11 16:17:16 2002 From: selah_1977 at yahoo.com (selah_1977) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 16:17:16 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: OK, had to respond to this. ****WARNING--if you're thin-skinned on racial issues, this is not the post to read. Naama wrote: > >I also remember a few years > > ago, that Eric la Salle (Benton in E.R.) was uncomfortable with > >his > > character having an affair with a white woman (Elisabeth), and > > because of that the romance between them was ended. Actually, Eriq La Salle was quoted in several national black magazines (Ebony, Essence, Savoy, Jet, etc.) as saying that *he* was the one who didn't like the plotline, and felt as if the writers/producers were forcing it on him. So unless he was lying to the black community, he's the one who requested the change. Cindy: > Based on what I've seen, relationships between African American men > and white women are the least accepted in the U.S., and African > American men who date outside their race can take quite a bit of > heat for it in the community. It might seem that way because black men date outside of their race *much* more often... the ratio of black male/non-black female couples to black female/non-black male relationships is something like 8 to 1. Black American females have been traditionally reluctant to date outside of the race for sad historical reasons. My father was very much against any of his daughters dating white boys/men (he thought other men of color were fine, no matter the race) because of the horrible things that happened to many black women during slavery and the Jim Crow period... the variety of skin tones amongst American blacks today tells the tale. Dad used to always say, "Baby, a white boy might want to have his fun with you, but he sure as hell ain't gonna marry you." Racist comment? Hell yeah. Generalized truth, as evidenced throughout our history? Well... my dad was born in 1940s Mississippi. Of course he'd feel that way. Also, there is the sad fact that skin color and socioeconomic status is interconnected in the American mind. So for a black man, to marry a white woman, no matter what her class or educational background, in out community has been subconsciously seen as a "step up". On the other hand, in my experience the black women who are married to middle-to-upper class white men tend to be of a certain class and educational background. (There are several liberal pockets of the country that prove the exception to this rule, like New York City, Minneapolis, and southern California... and there are openminded people everywhere, but as a rule, I stand by this.) That statement might seem racist, but really, I can cite example after example amongst the people I know and even celebs. For instance, the black talk show host Montel Williams married a white stripper. I don't know of any black strippers, waitresses, or the equivalent who are actually *married* to white professionals or millionaires. Mistress, yes. Wife, no. Again, that's historical fact. The few black women who *do* date outside of their race tend to get flack from male *and* female, whereas black men tend to only get heat from one side of the fence--from black women. The same black men who will encourage their "brothers" to go after a woman of another race often are highly offended by a black woman who does the same. At the present time, I'm dating a wonderful guy who happens to be white. You wouldn't believe the things I've heard, the looks I've gotten. My mom thinks it's a bit odd that I'm attracted to this guy and has told me so, teasing me, but you can catch the underlying hint. It's *extremely* hard... I've dated interracially twice before this, and in both cases I was the one who ended it. I'm having fun and we do really enjoy each other's company, but it's too bad our society can't get over its own history. Naama: > > Since when - and WHY - has it become the bon-ton in the US for > > "racially pure" couples? (I have to say, that I personally find > this > > racial exclusiveness disturbing, but maybe I'm not getting > > something?) Racial purity is a myth. At least 80% of American blacks are racially mixed, and I'd say a lot of whites are as well. You have people who check the "black/African-American" box on the census who are phenotypically white. As for genotype, there is no white blood or black blood--all the oxygenated blood I've ever seen is red. I tell my students all the time that there is no gene for race. It's a cultural construct. I'm currently taking a grad BritLit seminar, "Race and the Victorian Novel". It's interesting, studying the Empire and learning where all these racial tropes and constructs originated. Again, sorry if I've offended any of my friends here. It's just that this is really a very sore point with me. --Ebony AKA AngieJ From moongirlk at yahoo.com Sat May 11 16:33:29 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 16:33:29 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: <20020511054739.45022.qmail@web14602.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., golden faile wrote: > There is alot that I would say about this as a black woman, but I will refrain from any comments that might be offensive. Let's just say that some folks are still narrow minded, so that producers have to watch their step about what may be offensive to some people. If you'd like to discuss this further I'd be glad to, off-list. > Laila > > Laila, I don't think your comments would be offensive. I agree with you, the powers that be in TVland are both running scared from the narrow minded of the world and, aside from being scared, they're also suffering from the narrow-mindedness themselves that stunts their creativity as far as relationships go. It just doesn't come naturally for them to view the whole mix of a show's cast and say - hmmm - there could be some chemistry here - without regard to people looking different. I was a little disappointed with Eriq LaSalle myself, because ER is one of the few shows that has had an inter- racial romance in the recent past, and I though he had far more chemistry with Alex Kingston than Anthony Edwards. Then again, I think she's got more chemistry with Paul McCrane (rotten little Dr. Romano) than anyone, but that's neither here nor there. I think there are all sorts of limitations that people put on themselves that are so unnecessary. It's not even just in regards to race, either. Just as an example, very few relationships that involve any sort of socioeconomic mixing are shown either, except as being somehow comic or doomed to fail. But there's a long history of race issues in this country, so I guess for that particular issue it's going to take a long time for TV to catch up, since it seems to cater to tle lowest common denominator. kimberly who thinks Amy and the handsome, brooding clerk guy she works with should get together on Judging Amy, and who would also love to see Tyne Daly's character hook up with her cute boss despite the wild age difference. And this after having seen the show two and a half times. From lupinesque at yahoo.com Sat May 11 17:03:12 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 17:03:12 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Naama wrote: > I have a question to the Americans amongst you. I couldn't help > noticing that on practically all the American TV shows (sitcoms, > dramas, soaps) there are no mixed - black and white - couples. I know > it's not an expression of racism I would say it is. What else should we call a discomfort with interracial relationships if not racist? Amy From Aegeus86 at aol.com Sat May 11 17:09:31 2002 From: Aegeus86 at aol.com (Aegeus86 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 13:09:31 EDT Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] re: Train Disaster / Waiting for Ootp Message-ID: <169.d7ab4d5.2a0eaa4b@aol.com> In a message dated 5/10/2002 9:37:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time, catlady at wicca.net writes: > Btw, this name Potter's Bar means nothing to me except wondering if > it's connected to *our* Potter. Potter's Bar, IIRC, is the name of the station the train derailed into. ~Aegeus [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From golden_faile at yahoo.com Sat May 11 18:13:28 2002 From: golden_faile at yahoo.com (golden faile) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 11:13:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020511181328.67758.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com>

moongirlk wrote:

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., golden faile wrote:

> There is alot that I would say about this as a black woman, but I
will refrain from any comments that might be offensive. Let's just
say that some folks are still narrow minded, so that producers have
to watch their step about what may be offensive to some people. If
you'd like to discuss this further I'd be glad to, off-list.
> Laila
>
>
Laila, I don't think your comments would be offensive. I agree with
you, the powers that be in TVland are both running scared from the
narrow minded of the world and, aside from being scared, they're also
suffering from the narrow-mindedness themselves that stunts their
creativity as far as relationships go. It just doesn't come
naturally for them to view the whole mix of a show's cast and say -
hmmm - there could be some chemistry here - without regard to people
looking different.

It always happens this way in TVLand. There will be a couple with chemistry and because of their racial make-up they will be taken off (something happens and they don't stick it out and end up breaking up, or she/he moves etc.), and replaced with a more acceptable love interest, It's crap!!!It's because either the actors/producers are uncomfortable due to hatemail and viewer backlash or other reasons(personal). I've been watching this happen for years and it bothers me because there are many other aspects of relationships out in the world.I was fortunate enough to be raised in a very diverse area, made all types of friends and have been blessed to have been around many different types of families and have come to realize that yes there are a few differences, but for the most part it's all the same. However, most places in America are still very segregated and closed minded. Anything that makes people uncomfortable must be swept under the rug. We can't grow as a society, or as people if we don't force ourselves to challenge the things that make us uncomfortable.

Laila

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__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From jkusalavagemd at yahoo.com Sat May 11 18:42:16 2002 From: jkusalavagemd at yahoo.com (jkusalavagemd) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 18:42:16 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "lupinesque" wrote: > Naama wrote: > > it's not an expression of racism > > I would say it is. What else should we call a discomfort with > interracial relationships if not racist? > > Amy I think you are overly quick to label an economic decision as racist. If a show doesn't get ratings, then it cannot command the best price-- or any price-- for its commercials, and the producers of the show, the broadcasters of same, and the millions of stockholders will see the value of their own investments fall in value. The prospective popularity of a show is tested with focus groups ad nauseam. In the words of Michael Corleone, "It isn't personal, it's just business." The supposed homophobia of society has not prevented "Queer As Folk" from being aired on cable? Showtime is no altruist. They didn't buy that program in order to preach. They felt that there would be enough demand out there for the program. If they felt that a show about an interracial couple would be a hit, the airwaves would be saturated with program having these themes. You wouldn't want these businesses to throw away their capital just so that you can feel oh- so-pc viewing your little "morality play"-- or perhaps you would? I would suggest then that you raise the capital, produce the programs and see your own money go bye-bye, rather than throw inflammatory epithets around so casually. Haggridd p.s. Well Amy, I guess I've stopped lurking. I wonder how long it will be before the thought police take an interst? From golden_faile at yahoo.com Sat May 11 18:52:46 2002 From: golden_faile at yahoo.com (golden faile) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 11:52:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: <20020511181328.67758.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020511185246.66519.qmail@web14606.mail.yahoo.com>

golden faile wrote:

It always happens this way in TV Land.There will be a couple with chemistry and because of
their racial make-up they will be taken off (somethinghappens and they don't stick it out and end up breaking up, or she/he moves etc.), and replaced with a more acceptable love interest, It's.crap!!!It's because either the actors/producers are uncomfortable due to hatemail and viewer backlash or other reasons(personal). I've been watching this happen for years and it bothers me because there are many other aspects of relationships out in the world.I
was fortunate enough to be raised in a very diverse area, made all types of friends and have been blessed to have been around many different types of families and have come to realize that yes there are a few differences, but for the most part it's all the same. However, most places in America are still very segregated and closed minded. Anything that makes people uncomfortable must be swept under the rug. We can't grow as a society, or as people if we don't force ourselves to challenge the things that make us uncomfortable.

Laila

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From nightfall at prodigy.net Sat May 11 19:54:03 2002 From: nightfall at prodigy.net (Dee R) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 15:54:03 -0400 Subject: Amazon and returns References: <1021144386.481.54150.m12@yahoogroups.com> Message-ID: <005a01c1f925$9ac51d00$1e13fea9@deescomputer> Has anyone successfully installed it? I'm running a PC with Windows 2000 (professional), have *minimal* IT abilities, and no one to ask for help - Amazon don't usually take back opened DVDs, so I want to be 100% sure it's actually the disks which are broken and not me who is stupid before I try to return it... Please excuse me for cross posting but I'm getting desperate! Any helpful hints off list will be HUGELY appreciated. Vanessa Vanessa, I've returned things to Amazon--they're wonderful with returns. I had a broken VHS tape, and they took it back without any argument. I called their customer support number, explained what happened, then the man told me he'd get the label out in the next mail to re-attach to the package, and just take it to the post office. No additional charges, and he'd get a replacement out asap (it came three days after my phone call--which meant I had two in my hands, not one; they trusted me!). Great folks. I hope, though, that it's simply a setting/software problem though. Dee Who's waiting to get her loan check, and then do a Borders' preorder! :D Btw, has anyone heard of Neil or Simon? Been watching the posts via digest, and I've been worried about ALL the English folks, but especially my chat buddies! From golden_faile at yahoo.com Sat May 11 20:51:53 2002 From: golden_faile at yahoo.com (golden faile) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 13:51:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: <20020511185246.66519.qmail@web14606.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020511205153.22343.qmail@web14603.mail.yahoo.com>

I have no Idea why My messages have been occuring with all of this strange script, but I apologize for the damage to everyone's eyes. Hopefully it does not occur again.

Laila

__________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From cindysphynx at comcast.net Sat May 11 20:52:56 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 20:52:56 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Haggridd wrote: > I think you are overly quick to label an economic decision as >racist. AND >In the words of Michael Corleone, "It isn't personal, it's just >business." AND >You wouldn't want these > businesses to throw away their capital just so that you can feel >oh- > so-pc viewing your little "morality play"-- or perhaps you would? > I would suggest then that you raise the capital, produce the programs > and see your own money go bye-bye, rather than throw inflammatory > epithets around so casually. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a great deal of racism in the U.S. has been justified based on economics. Not so long ago, many businesses claimed they needed to hire only those of certain races because their customers would balk. Or rent to those of a certain race. Or serve only certain races in restaurants or hotels. As a matter of social policy, we don't put up with that, and we deem it illegal race-based discrimination. If producers of TV shows are using the same old argument that they are unwilling to cast shows with interracial couples because some customers (viewers) will balk, well . . . I think they're making arguments that were rejected in the 1960's. Cindy (who is not a member of the thought police, but who tries to call 'em as she sees 'em) From catlady at wicca.net Sat May 11 21:26:56 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 21:26:56 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "jkusalavagemd" wrote: > I think you are overly quick to label an economic decision as > racist. If a show doesn't get ratings, then it cannot command the > best price-- or any price-- for its commercials,(snip) The > prospective popularity of a show is tested with focus groups ad > nauseam. In the words of Michael Corleone, "It isn't personal, >it's just business." All you are saying is that if making a decision about casting and/or plot lines is racist, then it is the focus groups (and presumably the viewing public that they represent) which is racist, not the producers and studios. (Actually, living here in Los Angeles, I have heard a fair number of anecdotes about various specific, named, TV producers and studio executives saying or doing racist things, but that's not what Naama asked about.) I don't think you should accuse Amy of being a thought police who wants TV investors to lose their money just because she commented on an apparent characteristic of the TV viewing audience. You might discuss whether that alleged characteristic of the viewing audience is in fact 1) racist and 2) bad. Or the larger question of whether allowing race to affect casting decisions and plot lines is automatically racist. There was the fuss about the Broadway production of Miss Saigon, in which the actor who had created the role was picketted by American actors for being a Caucasian playing a Eurasian. There is also a Real Life white-husband black-wife couple here in Southern California who were active in Renaissance Faire and had the role of two real people from Elizabeth I's court. They acted 16th century English aristocrats so well that no one in the audience noticed that Lady so-and-so in her black velvet and white lace gown had dark skin. (Of course, just about EVERYONE in So Cal has darker skin than 16th century English aristocrats in their foggy climate.) > If they felt that a show about an interracial couple would be a > hit, the airwaves would be saturated with program having these > themes. I vaguely remember a sitcom about an interracial couple back in the 1970s -- it was said to be a modernization of "Abie's Irish Rose". But what people were commenting on the lack of is NOT shows ABOUT an interracial couple, but shows which a situtation like the above in which a couple of supporting characters (not the stars) is interracial but no one cares, or shows which SHIP two existing characters ignoring their race... say, Strek Classic, the beautiful Lt. Uhuru and any male cast member I can recall: Spock, Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, Chekhov, Scotty... From bray.262 at osu.edu Sat May 11 21:40:32 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (duranduran88) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 21:40:32 -0000 Subject: Happy Mother's Day Message-ID: Just wanted to drop in and say Happy Mother's Day to all the awesome moms we have on the list!!! Hope you get a nice gift or two from your kids. Or, at least, a day with no bickering, pouting, yelling or sniffling. :-) Rachel Bray *who is at her parents' house right now and is listening to her mother say to her father "Don't be such a baby" as she pours iodine all over his finger he just cut open on the lawnmower.....I love coming home. :-) * From catlady at wicca.net Sat May 11 21:43:46 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 21:43:46 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples in real life (was: on American TV In-Reply-To: <20020511181328.67758.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., golden faile wrote: > I was fortunate enough to be raised in a very diverse > area, made all types of friends and have been blessed > to have been around many different types of families > and have come to realize that yes there are a few > differences, but for the most part it's all the same. But it's NOT *all* the same. For example, when I lived in New York City, one hell of a lot of couples I knew consisted of a woman of Jewish ethnicity and a man of white Protestant ethnicity. Every one of these couples (including mine) had problems with conflict, because the woman would speak of her annoyance, the man would pointedly ignore her, the woman would shout, the man would go into another room and slam the door behind him, and if the woman followed the man into the other room, this could lead to him hitting her. These was because of cultural differences in how to deal with conflict: in my culture, I was raised to discuss conflict (sometimes loudly) until resolution was achieved, and Toad was raised in his culture to clam up about conflicts and go down to the pub until it blew over. The differences between the cultures was exacerbated by the larger USAmerican culture's having taught us women to talk about feelings, and them men not to talk about feelings (for which reason, the one Irish-American woman, Jewish-American man couple I knew dealt with conflict more compatibly: both yelled and no one got physical). From meboriqua at aol.com Sun May 12 00:02:07 2002 From: meboriqua at aol.com (jenny_ravenclaw) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 00:02:07 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Wow! This is a loaded topic (and one I'm now looking forward to discussing with my students). Ebony said much of what I wanted to, about history and all, and others said what I also agree with, which is that the media perpetuates racism at almost every opportunity possible. I think there is even more to it than that. We all know that segregation here in the US is not legal and hasn't been for a while. However, segregation is very much a part of life here; so much, IMO, that most people don't even notice it. On the east side of Manhattan, when one goes above 96th street, suddenly all the doorman buildings turn into projects - I kid you not. Black and Hispanic men (like my boyfriend) are constantly hassled by the police when they dare to venture into white neighborhoods, especially during the evenings. Most of the public schools here are mostly attended by - you guessed it - Black and Hispanic students. What is the point of this? Well, most tv show writers are white and really don't know much about minorities because our country *is* segregated still. You may disagree with me or tell me I am being racist, but this is what I believe. If an interracial couple was to be seriously written into a plot for a show ("Friends" or another popular show), the characters would *have* to deal with the real life things interracial couples deal with, like what it's like to be a black man whose family hates his white girlfriend, or how hard it is for a Jewish girl to have a Puerto Rican boyfriend who comes home after being followed by the police - again (that would be my experience!). I think most tv shows don't really want to deal with racism at all because they don't know how to. It's not funny the way sitcoms are supposed to be, and it's not simple the way most tv shows in general are. In reality, interracial couples still get stared at and questioned regularly, like Raul and I do - and we live in Harlem! In some ways it is like dealing with rape on a television show - there's the aftermath, the fear, guilt, depression, distrust... what sitcom watcher wants to see that? In general, I think most tv shows avoid certain topics like the plague, and I think race is one of them, unless it's touched upon lightly and briefly. It's a shame, but until there are more minorities writing for tv shows, they will remain mostly white, both in character and topic. I could start blathering on about my feelings about "Boston Public", but I'll save that for another time. --jenny from ravenclaw, who could write a *great* interracial couple for a show **************************** From lupinesque at yahoo.com Sun May 12 02:22:52 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 02:22:52 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > Naama wrote: > > > > it's not an expression of racism I wrote: > > I would say it is. What else should we call a discomfort with > > interracial relationships if not racist? Haggridd wrote: > I think you are overly quick to label an economic decision as racist. Maybe so. Let me clarify: the writers/producers/etc. who decide to portray only single-race couples may themselves be uncomfortable with interracial relationships (which I would say is racist--inflammatory term it may be, but it is not a slur; it is a word defined in the dictionary and that definition certainly encompasses this attitude), OR, it's true, they may just be bowing to economics. In that case they aren't exactly being admirably courageous, but they might well not harbor any racist ideas themselves. By "discomfort with interracial relationships," however, I didn't mean the writers'/producers'/etc's discomfort only, but also the viewers' discomfort (which creates the economic issue, since viewers who don't like watching interracial couples won't give economic rewards to shows that portray them). Naama was asking why there are so few interracial couples and I was saying "because people are racist." Are we on the same page as far as that goes? Amy From tabouli at unite.com.au Sun May 12 03:36:11 2002 From: tabouli at unite.com.au (Tabouli) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 13:36:11 +1000 Subject: Interracial marriages Message-ID: <003d01c1f966$40c4bc20$f71cddcb@price> Naama: > I have a question to the Americans amongst you. I couldn't help noticing that on practically all the American TV shows (sitcoms, dramas, soaps) there are no mixed - black and white - couples. I know it's not an expression of racism - these shows are all mainstream and seem to bend over backwards to be PC.< OK, OK, a topic which could hardly fail to flush me out of hiding! (glances uneasily at the monstrous "Things to Do before the 11th of June" list). As the product of a mixed race marriage myself (Chinese/Anglo-Australian) I too have noticed this. Ebony: > Also, there is the sad fact that skin color and socioeconomic status is interconnected in the American mind. So for a black man, to marry a white woman, no matter what her class or educational background, in out community has been subconsciously seen as a "step up". On the other hand, in my experience the black women who are married to middle-to-upper class white men tend to be of a certain class and educational background< (...) > At the present time, I'm dating a wonderful guy who happens to be white. You wouldn't believe the things I've heard, the looks I've gotten.< In terms of mixed couples, one other thing I notice is *which races* comprise the couple. From what I've seen, it's white/African-American couples that seem taboo in the American media. Note that white/Asian couples seem to be more acceptable. I assume this is because of what Ebony mentioned: black people are perceived as of "lower status", the "model minority" Asians less so. I too have noticed that American TV and movies, with few exceptions, always *scrupulously* pair blacks with blacks and white with whites. Also, a few years ago I was researching biculturalism for my postgrad degree, and found a few sites devoted to people of mixed race, which had links to articles which really alarmed me. There were one written by an African American, apparently as a call to their people to stick to their own, with comments like "If you are dating someone who is not of your own race, ask yourself why this is. Why don't you find people of your own race attractive? Why are you buying the white people's message that whites are more attractive and worthwhile?" There were other links to KKK type organisations, who were arguing that for a white to betray his or her race by marrying outside it should be condemned (or worse) for promoting the genocide of the Caucasian race! After four or five of these articles, I started feeling quite scared. In Australia, there are very few people of African origin, so the white/black issue doesn't come up much. However, in middle class people born since about the seventies, white/Asian couples are becoming common. In fact, of the eight or so weddings I've attended since 1990, all except one have been Eurasian marriages (one Indian/white, the others Chinese/white). Even in 1970, when the White Australia policy was still mostly in force and my father brought my mother to Melbourne from Malaysia, they didn't get spat on, or refused service or anything (though my father's parents made it clear they didn't approve). It's the Aboriginal people and the Muslims who receive the worst prejudice here. Aboriginal people are regularly refused service, and many a middle class white Australian parent who wouldn't mind if their child brought home an Asian or African American would go into seizures if they brought home someone Aboriginal. Ebony: > The few black women who *do* date outside of their race tend to get flack from male *and* female, whereas black men tend to only get heat from one side of the fence--from black women.< I noticed this when I watched a few African-American films recently (Spike Lee, and whoever did "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" (which had a very dishy black guy), and "Waiting to Exhale"). With Asian/white couples in Australia, it's very much the other way around. Things are changing with the second generation Asians, but it's still usually white man/Asian woman, which makes some people uncomfortable, as it's seen to have the ring of "exotic trophy wife" about it. And it's the Asian men who get angry about it. Rumour has it that Asian women are rather taken by white men, leading to a backlash against "white trash stealing our women" and so on in Singapore, Japan, etc. (I have a number of theories about this, but they're definitely off-list material). Australia has a bad reputation in the racism department, but from my observation, (outside the inevitable nasty rednecks who hate Brits, Americans and Anglo-Australians from the wrong *suburbs*, let along people of different race from themselves) what we have here is more ethnocentrism than "biological racism" (prejudice based on skin colour alone). Among the educated middle class, what seems to be most important is being culturally Westernised. You can be African, or Vietnamese, or Indian or whatever, but if you speak good English, have an Australian accent and exhibit Australian behaviour and interests, that's quite all right, and you might even score an exotic bonus card. OTOH, woe betide you if you have a foreign accent or bad English and no "Australia-friendly" interests. Some cases in point: I met a rather beautiful Swiss Kenyan woman in Geneva, who said she'd like to go to Australia, but had heard such horrible rumours about the racism there that she wouldn't dare. Everyone present who'd lived in Australia (3 of us) emphatically disagreed. She was a Westernised, English-speaking, physically attractive black woman with a French accent... she would be not only acceptable (outside Redneckville, where even I am not acceptable, despite being born and bred in Australia), but sought-after, fawned on. By contrast, the story would be very different for the recent wave of Muslim immigrants from the Horn of Africa, who speak poor English, dress in traditional clothes, have very different values from the Australian norm, etc. In 1995, I worked in a student dormitory where 50% of students were from overseas. The Australian country kids (most of whom had had little if any contact with people from overseas) steered totally clear of the mostly Chinese international students from Malaysia and Singapore with strong accents who didn't like to get drunk and weren't interested in football, etc. However, there were a couple of Chinese sisters who'd been born and raised in Australia, and they were fine with them, asked them all about what it was like to be Asian (!) where they'd never feel comfortable approaching "the real thing". Also, on the subject of how people identify *you* by skin colour, regardless of how you identify yourself: At the same dormitory, I met my Swiss Chinese friend (soon engaging in her own interracial marriage, to a Frenchman!), who is, looks notwithstanding, culturally very Swiss. The minute she arrived, all the other Overseas Chinese international students embraced her as their own. However, within weeks she made them extremely uncomfortable. They found her opaque, strange, they felt uncomfortable with her, couldn't communicate with her at all, and within a couple of months, abandoned her altogether. Racially she looked like one of them, but she wasn't at all. Interesting reflection on the relationship between race and culture. Any American thoughts? How much of a factor is skin colour alone in the States? Tabouli. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From golden_faile at yahoo.com Sun May 12 07:13:10 2002 From: golden_faile at yahoo.com (golden faile) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 00:13:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Mixed Couples in real life (was: on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020512071310.51824.qmail@web14609.mail.yahoo.com>

catlady_de_los_angeles wrote:

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., golden faile wrote:

> I was fortunate enough to be raised in a very diverse
> area, made all types of friends and have been blessed
> to have been around many different types of families
> and have come to realize that yes there are a few
> differences, but for the most part it's all the same.

But it's NOT *all* the same.

Okay, I get your point here, but let me clarify myself. I understand that there are going to be some differences. What I meant by this was that family activities, were pretty much the same as in my own household. Yes, I realize that different people handle different situations in their own ways. I guess that most of the families that I was around were very Americanized, and this may account for my take on the issue. I did learn a few things when I was working ata women's shelter about how women of different races deal w/abuse etc. so I realize that there are some major issues that as Americans we don't quite understand, being raised to speak freely etc(American women are by far one of the most outspoken groups!). What I was getting at was family is family, whether you have a mixed family or not, what I got from these experiences was that they all loved their families and their parents were not so different from mine, even though we were different on the outside.

Laila


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__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From catlady at wicca.net Sun May 12 07:28:50 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 07:28:50 -0000 Subject: HTML (was: Mixed Couples in real life (was: on American TV In-Reply-To: <20020512071310.51824.qmail@web14609.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., golden faile wrote: >

marks the beginning of a paragraph >

catlady_de_los_angeles marks Begin Boldface marks Begin Italic. marks some character that some computer along the way doesn't recognize, probably not backslash because backslash is pretty necessary. > catlady at w... wrote: end of italics. end of boldface. Incidentally, I agree with you that people and families have a lot of similarities regardless of skin color and cuisine choice. From golden_faile at yahoo.com Sun May 12 07:42:01 2002 From: golden_faile at yahoo.com (golden faile) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 00:42:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: HTML (was: Mixed Couples in real life (was: on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020512074201.87593.qmail@web14604.mail.yahoo.com> catlady_de_los_angeles wrote: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., golden faile wrote:> Incidentally, I agree with you that people and families have a lot of similarities regardless of skin color and cuisine choice. Good, that's really the point that I was trying to convey. Heck, we don't always resolve issues effectively in my own family and we were raised by the same people! I think it has to do alot also with personality types and compatiblity. There are people who I have been raised around, who have pretty much the same background as I do, who see things a whole lot differently than I do! But forgive me, I'm rambling now. Laila Yahoo! Groups SponsorADVERTISEMENT________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files!http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying!Is your message...An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements.Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie.Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups.None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter.Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.comUnsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From macloudt at hotmail.com Sun May 12 08:20:35 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 08:20:35 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Mixed Couples on American TV Message-ID: What an interesting thread! I'd like to throw my 2 knuts in: Jenny from Ravenclaw wrote: >We all know that segregation here in the US is not legal and hasn't >been for a while. However, segregation is very much a part of life >here; so much, IMO, that most people don't even notice it. On the >east side of Manhattan, when one goes above 96th street, suddenly all >the doorman buildings turn into projects - I kid you not. In 1987, while in high school in Toronto, I went on a school trip behind the Iron Curtain. This involved flying from Toronto to La Guardia (sp?) airport in NYC, and taking the bus from LG to JFK airport. Bearing in mind that Toronto is as ethnically diverse as NYC, we were *shocked* at the segregation between neighbourhoods. Sure, Toronto has Chinatown, Little Portugal, Little Italy, etc., but still you find people from all ethnic backgrounds in every neighbourhood (the posh white neighbourhoods have growing Asian populations, for example). But these neighbourhoods in NYC were either white, or they weren't. Period. Even though Canada is bombarded with American TV channels, never mind shows, and we "knew" about the American racial divisions, it was still a *major* reality check for us. This, however, does not mean that non-whites are less hassled by Toronto police than whites. Not at all. And don't get me started about the treatment of First Nations people. Grrr... I now live in a seaside resort town in southwest England, where *I* (Canadian with Dutch background) am considered delightfully foreign. I can count the number of non-white kids in my daughter's school on two hands. But interestingly, most of the black kids have one white parent. The school is fantastically open-minded (not too surprising; the headmaster is gay) and doesn't tolerate bullying or prejudice of any kind, but there have been some nasty racist incidents in the town over the years. A few years ago one harassed family was featured in the local paper. They were ex-Iron Curtain immigrants (can't remember which country) and the harassment was so bad that the 10-year-old son wanted to commit suicide. Racism is based on fear and ignorance. There is no excuse for it in *any* situation. *At all*. Mary Ann (who will probably throw up the next time she's told she has a "darling accent") _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From Joanne0012 at aol.com Sun May 12 15:45:06 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 15:45:06 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples in real life (was: on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "catlady_de_los_angeles" wrote: > when I lived in New York > City, one hell of a lot of couples I knew consisted of a woman of > Jewish ethnicity and a man of white Protestant ethnicity. Every one > of these couples (including mine) had problems with conflict, because > the woman would speak of her annoyance, the man would pointedly > ignore her, the woman would shout, the man would go into another room > and slam the door behind him, and if the woman followed the man into > the other room, this could lead to him hitting her. These was because > of cultural differences in how to deal with conflict: in my culture, > I was raised to discuss conflict (sometimes loudly) until resolution > was achieved, and Toad was raised in his culture to clam up about > conflicts and go down to the pub until it blew over. The differences > between the cultures was exacerbated by the larger USAmerican > culture's having taught us women to talk about feelings, and them men > not to talk about feelings (for which reason, the one Irish-American > woman, Jewish-American man couple I knew dealt with conflict more > compatibly: both yelled and no one got physical). This Jewish/Protestant distinction also happens along Italian/Irish lines -- having been brought up with an Italian let-it-all-hang-out style for family commmunications, I was baffled by my Irish-American husband's sulking. Whereas he had to warn me to tone it down when we visited his family, lest they think I was constantly rude and hysterical. Furthermore, most of the dinner-table topics that we enjoyed at the Italian family get-togethers were absolutely forbidden at his family's events. Booorrrrring! From neilward at dircon.co.uk Sun May 12 21:24:37 2002 From: neilward at dircon.co.uk (Neil Ward) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 22:24:37 +0100 Subject: ADMIN: Hoax virus warning Message-ID: <001b01c1f9fb$6c0bba60$673670c2@c5s910j> Hi everyone, If you receive a message about a virus called jdbgmgr.exe, instructing you to delete it, please note that this is a hoax warning. You do not need to delete the file. Details here: http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176442.html Although it's as well to play it safe with suspected viruses and keep your virus-checking software up to date, there are hoaxes, such as this one, that instruct you to delete standard Windows files. Neil ...for the Moderators From simon.hp at virgin.net Sun May 12 22:30:06 2002 From: simon.hp at virgin.net (sjbranford) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 22:30:06 -0000 Subject: Amazon and returns In-Reply-To: <005a01c1f925$9ac51d00$1e13fea9@deescomputer> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Dee R" wrote: >Btw, has anyone heard of Neil or Simon? Been watching the posts via >digest, and I've been worried about ALL the English folks, but >especially my chat buddies! Neil posted an admin message a few minutes ago and I just have been rather quiet for a while. Simon From editor at texas.net Mon May 13 02:31:39 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 21:31:39 -0500 Subject: Fw: Texas Facts Message-ID: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> These were fun. I have inserted commentary. --Amanda ----- Original Message ----- Subject: Fwd: Fw: Texas Facts > Facts you know in Texas: > > Armadillos sleep in the middle of the road with their feet in the air. This is actually untrue. The reproductive cycle of the armadillo requires that it mate with a tire. If the mating is successful, soon afterwards tire will blow and the baby armadillos will skitter off into the grass. This explains all the large pieces of tire you see along Texas highways. All the squooshed armadillos are unsuccessful lovers. > Roadrunners don't say "Beep Beep" > There are 5,000 types of snakes and 4,998 live in Texas. True. And they live under your house, unless you have a concrete foundation (we don't "do" cellars in Texas, I'd never seen a basement until I was 28, when Jan and I went to visit his Ohio relatives). And they come into your garage on hot days. > There are 10,000 types of spiders. All 10,000 live in Texas, plus a couple no one's seen before. True. Most of the 10,000 also live in my house, except the black widows, which to be honest have never come inside. They're on the outside and in the mailbox, but not in the house. > Possums will eat anything. Even in suburbia. And they have a nasty bite. And they are luckily totally incapable of carrying rabies. > Armadillos love to dig holes under tomato plants. Hell, armadillos love to dig holes everywhere. They dig as fast as cartoon dogs. > Raccoons will test your crop of melons and let you know when they are ripe. During the summer, they will also uproot all your outdoor potted plants because the soil smells wet. If you have any outdoor plants left after the stupid deer eat them because your plants are green and everything else is brown. > If it grows, it sticks you. If it crawls, it bites you. Yes. There are 5,637 species of stinging insects, and most of them nest on or around my house, in amongst the stickers. We wage a constant war against the stickers and the bull nettles. > Nothing will kill a mesquite tree. ("tree" is a courtesy term, here). True. Not cutting it down, not burning it out, not plant killer, nothing. They're permanent. > There are valid reasons some people put concertina wire around their house. Can't help you with this one, I've never heard of concertina wire. > You cannot find a country road without a curve from corner to corner. I can't work this one out. If anyone figures out what the hell this is saying, do enlighten us. > A tractor is NOT an all-terrain vehicle. They do get stuck. And royally. I have hiked miles to knock on total strangers' doors to request that my husband and I be pulled from the mud. > The wind blows at 90 MPH from Oct 2 until June 25, then it stops totally until Oct 2. This person is obviously from west Texas, a huge place we non-affectionately refer to as "God's ping-pong table." > Onced and Twiced are words. Yup. > All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, insect or animal. Let's see. Poteet Strawberry Festival. Noonday Sweet Onion Festival. Floresville Peanut Festival. Hah! Wait! The Czilispiel is none of the above! Hah! But mostly, this is true. > Coldbeer is one word. Where is it not? > People actually grow and eat okra. Not me. Ugh. Okra is a creation of Satan. > When the world ends, only cockroaches and mesquite trees will survive. I think the fire ants will be there, too. > There IS a polite way to spit. > Green grass DOES burn. Yes. But it's only green for a week or two in the pre-summer, anyway. > When you live in the country, you don't have to buy a dog. City people drop them off at your gate in the middle of the night. Yes. And cats. > The sound of coyotes howling at night only sounds good for the first couple of weeks. Only city people think it sounds good at all. > When a buzzard sits on the fence and stares at you, it's time to go to the doctor. For those of you of the European persuasion, a bit of clarification: in Texas (and probably the whole southwest), a buzzard is not a species of hawk but is a term for vulture. Usually the turkey vulture, although we have black vultures too. I did not learn that buzzards in Europe were hawks (or are they falcons? the mind is going) until my early twenties. > A tank is a dirt hole in the ground that holds water for irrigation...and seconds as a swimming pool > Tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when you're 2. > Backards and forards means I know everything about a subject. As in, I know Snape backards and forards. > 'Jeet? is actually a phrase meaning "Did you eat?" > You know you're from Texas if: > 1. You measure distance in minutes. This is true. It's an hour and a half from here to Austin, 30 minutes to downtown, four hours to Houston, etc. I can call up the actual mileage if I think about it, but we think of it in terms of time. > 2. You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day. There are whole months we have to do this, on both ends of summer. > 3. You don't have to wear a watch because it doesn't matter what time it is; you work until til you're done or it's too dark to see. > 4. You see a car running in the parking lot at the store with no one in it. Or with loads of kids in it. > 5. You use 'fixinto' as one word. Fixinto *is* one word. > 6. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked. > 7. You carry jumper cables in your car ... for your OWN car. Um, who else's car would you carry them for? > 8. You know what "cow tipping" and "snipe hunting" is. *are* > 9. You only own four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and chili. > 10. You know everyone on TV has an accent. Actually, San Antonians don't have much of an accent. Only north and west Texans have much of what the world thinks of as a Texas accent (thank you, "Dallas"). > 11. You think sexy lingerie is a tee shirt and boxer shorts. On either gender. > 12. The local papers covers national and international news on one page but requires 6 pages for local gossip and sports. High school sports alone gets two pages. > 13. You think that the first day of deer season is a national holiday. It's not? > 14. You find 100 degrees F "a little warm." I personally find it too f***ing hot, myself, but then, I don't care for jalapenos or chicken fried steak, either. I think I'm a changeling. > 15. You know all four seasons: Almost summer, Summer, Still summer, and Christmas. Sadly, this is too true to be funny. All you people jumping up and down because something bloomed in your yard, when our first batch of wildflowers has gone to seed and been mowed down and things are starting to get brown and crispy..... > 16. You know whether another Texan is from east, west, north or south Texas as soon as they open their mouth. Especially if they open it to spit. > 17. You know there is a Dairy Queen in every town with a population of 1000 or more and you use them as milemarkers for trips. Yes. I know the distance (in hours/minutes) between DQs on the way to Houston and Austin and College Station. Sigh. > 18. Going to Wal-Mart is a favorite past-time known as " goin wal-martin" or off to "Wally World." This is not as time-honored as the rest, Wal-Marts are not that old. > 19. You describe the first cool snap (below 70 degrees) as good chili weather. I don't like chili. But anything under 82 is cool weather. > 20. You think eating chili helps to cool you off in hot weather by making you sweat. It does. But I don't like chili. > 21. You know frito pie isn't a pie, and isn't a dessert, but should be a food group. It isn't? > 22. You find the word dinner confusing - there's only lunch and then there's supper. Yes. Breakfast --> Lunch --> Supper. A dinner is a formal thing where you have to dress nicely, or have reservations for, or where there is an honoree. > 23. You understand these jokes and forward them to your friends from Texas. Or to your friends all over everywhere. If you read this far, you are friends indeed, or you have Texan relatives and understand. --Amanda From boggles at earthlink.net Mon May 13 04:51:58 2002 From: boggles at earthlink.net (Jennifer Boggess Ramon) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 23:51:58 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Fw: Texas Facts In-Reply-To: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> References: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> Message-ID: At 9:31 PM -0500 5/12/02, Amanda wrote: >These were fun. I have inserted commentary. Oh, dear. And the Houstonian has to comment, too . . . > > Possums will eat anything. > >Even in suburbia. And they have a nasty bite. And they are luckily totally >incapable of carrying rabies. Possums are also incredibly stupid - just barely bright enough to figure out how to use a cat door to get into the house, and too dumb to remember where it is to get back out again. > > Raccoons will test your crop of melons and let you know when they are >ripe. And the tomatoes, and the corn, and pretty much anything in the garden. They have eaten my spearmint this year, and most of the peppermint. They also enjoy terrorizing the possums. > > Nothing will kill a mesquite tree. > >("tree" is a courtesy term, here). True. Not cutting it down, not burning it >out, not plant killer, nothing. They're permanent. They will also try to fake you out by _looking_ dead for a year after you try and kill them - and then send up little spiky runners again . . . > > There are valid reasons some people put concertina wire around their >house. > >Can't help you with this one, I've never heard of concertina wire. It's the stuff that looks like someone took barbed wire a couple steps too far. > > All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, >grain, insect or animal. > >Let's see. Poteet Strawberry Festival. Noonday Sweet Onion Festival. >Floresville Peanut Festival. Hah! Wait! The Czilispiel is none of the above! >Hah! But mostly, this is true. Doesn't work for the Westheimer Street Festival, either, or any given music festival in central Texas, which is more than likely named in German. > > People actually grow and eat okra. > >Not me. Ugh. Okra is a creation of Satan. It's great if you cook it right, and it's fun to watch it grow whether you eat it or not. > > Tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when you're 2. This is true throughout the Southern US, not just in Texas. > > 5. You use 'fixinto' as one word. > >Fixinto *is* one word. And usually pronounced "fixinna". > > 16. You know whether another Texan is from east, west, north or south >Texas as soon as they open their mouth. > >Especially if they open it to spit. Texas is the only state in which the Southern, Western, and Midwestern accents are all native, in addition to the state's own accent. > > 17. You know there is a Dairy Queen in every town with a population of >1000 or more and you use them as milemarkers for trips. > >Yes. I know the distance (in hours/minutes) between DQs on the way to >Houston and Austin and College Station. Sigh. There is a joke in one of my local subcultures that you must pass a Dairy Queen to get to a gathering of ours. > > 18. Going to Wal-Mart is a favorite past-time known as " goin wal-martin" >or off to "Wally World." > >This is not as time-honored as the rest, Wal-Marts are not that old. I associate this with Oklahoma rather than Texas. > > 20. You think eating chili helps to cool you off in hot weather by making >you sweat. > >It does. But I don't like chili. > >> 21. You know frito pie isn't a pie, and isn't a dessert, but should be a >food group. > >It isn't? What are you doing eating Frito pie if you don't like chili? You know you're at an "alternative" event in Texas if you are offered Frito pie made with vegetarian black bean chili and organic blue corn chips. -- - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at earthlink.net === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From catlady at wicca.net Mon May 13 06:42:56 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 06:42:56 -0000 Subject: Fw: Texas Facts In-Reply-To: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amanda" wrote: > These were fun. I have inserted commentary. > Subject: Fwd: Fw: Texas Facts Mandy, some of them are not ONLY Texas. Armadillos I suppose are only Texas, and your explanation of armadillo reproduction made me ROTFL, but possums are ubiquitous. Well, I suppose there are parts of Canada and Alaska too far North for possums.... It is here in Los Angeles that distance is measured in minutes. Raccoons used to eat the goldfish out of my late godmother's garden pond and deer ate the plants -- I should specify that she was in a suburb over 50 years old, not in the country. Grass is green for three days after each serious rain storm. Rain storms only occur during the rainy season, late September through March. If they don't occur at all, that is called drought and happens altogether too often. > > 2. You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day. > There are whole months we have to do this, on both ends of summer. Only the HOTTEST nights of summer don't have those wimps turning on the heat, or at least the electric blanket! Only the COLDEST days of winter don't require air conditioning around noon! > > 7. You carry jumper cables in your car ... for your OWN car. > Um, who else's car would you carry them for? Is there a place where people don't? > > 13. You think that the first day of deer season is a national > > holiday. > It's not? No, only a state holiday... in MANY states. When I went away to university, I was amazed that all the midwestern (not Texan) girls told me that it was taken for granted that the schools would close on the first day of deer season because the male teachers and older boy students would take the day off to go hunting anyway. > > 14. You find 100 degrees F "a little warm." That's someone who lives in the San Fernando Valley, where 105 F is a normal summer temperature and there is always a hot spell that goes higher. I would NEVER live in the Valley. > > 22. You find the word dinner confusing - there's only lunch and > > then there's supper. > Yes. Breakfast --> Lunch --> Supper. A dinner is a formal thing > where you have to dress nicely, or have reservations for, or where > there is an honoree. Tim, a native-born Angeleno, believed that even when he first moved in with me. He acquired this delusion from his mother who was from Nebraska. AARRGGHH!! Your lines are so funny and mine are so not funny! From s_ings at yahoo.com Mon May 13 11:03:33 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 07:03:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Happy Birthday times two! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020513110333.31678.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> *dances into the room carrying cake, candles and multi-coloured balloons* Everyone ready for a party? Of course you are. We have two birthdays today, so settle in and have twice the fun. There's enough cake and goodies to go around. Today's birthday honourees are Neil and Parker. Birthday owls can be sent to this list or directly to Neil at neilward at dircon.co.uk and to Parker at pbnesbit at msncom You've both helped make our lists terrific places to be and I hope your birthdays are magical and as wonderful are you both are. Happy Birthday, Neil! Happy Birthday, Parker! Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Games, Movies, Music & Sports! http://entertainment.yahoo.ca From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Mon May 13 11:30:33 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 11:30:33 -0000 Subject: Texan tea In-Reply-To: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amanda" wrote: > > > > Facts you know in Texas: > > > Tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when you're 2. That seems wrong. Do you dress up as cowboys and throw bales of coffee into the harbor, too? David, off to get his fourth mug for the day From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Mon May 13 12:25:17 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 05:25:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday times two! In-Reply-To: <20020513110333.31678.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020513122517.59045.qmail@web13709.mail.yahoo.com> Sheryll Townsend wrote: *dances into the room carrying cake, candles and multi-coloured balloons* Today's birthday honourees are Neil and Parker. Birthday owls can be sent to this list or directly to Neil at neilward at dircon.co.uk and to Parker at pbnesbit at msncom All of us Malletts join in with Sheryll and party along with you two! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! May you get your Birthday Wishes and eat tons of goodies! Party Harty! Big Toast to the two of you! Schnoogles, Wanda The Witch of Revere, Massachusetts and Her Very Merry Band of Muggles 100% "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From Joanne0012 at aol.com Mon May 13 12:31:21 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 12:31:21 -0000 Subject: Fw: Texas Facts In-Reply-To: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amanda" wrote: > You know you're from Texas if: > > 1. You measure distance in minutes. > > This is true. It's an hour and a half from here to Austin, 30 minutes to > downtown, four hours to Houston, etc. I can call up the actual mileage if I > think about it, but we think of it in terms of time. > > > 2. You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day. > > There are whole months we have to do this, on both ends of summer. Amanda, thanks SO much for the laughs. But I must inform you that numbers 1 and 2, above, are also true in Massachusetts. I never realized that we Yankees had so much in common with folks from Texas! I suspect that our reason for giving distances in time is different from yours -- I assume that in Texas, you're talking mostly about highway miles. Here in the Boston area, we give distances in time because mileage would be misleading in the areas where traffic is so congested that it's often faster to walk or to take a roundabout route that's much longer in miles but shorter in time. As in, "It's two hours from Milton to Somerville if you go straight up Route 93, through the Big Dig, but 45 minutes if you go around the city on Route 128." Regarding No. 2, just in the past month we've had 43 degrees and 93 degrees in one day. From macloudt at hotmail.com Mon May 13 12:46:18 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 12:46:18 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday times two! Message-ID: Our Birthday Elf: >*dances into the room carrying cake, candles and >multi-coloured balloons* :::::Dizzy Elf dances in behind, throwing confetti and sampling the butterbeer::::: >Today's birthday honourees are Neil and Parker. Happy Birthday to you both! Gads, *two* birthdays to drink a toast to...good thing I'm staying home tonight to watch my just-arrived video ;) >You've both helped make our lists terrific places to >be and I hope your birthdays are magical and as >wonderful are you both are. Hear, hear! Hope you both get spoiled rotten. Have a fantastic day! Schnoogles from Dizzy Elf (aka Mary Ann) _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com From editor at texas.net Mon May 13 14:50:07 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 09:50:07 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Texan tea References: Message-ID: <002701c1fa8d$7ac5ca40$257c63d1@texas.net> Dave said: > > > Facts you know in Texas: > > > > > Tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when > you're 2. > > That seems wrong. Do you dress up as cowboys and throw bales of > coffee into the harbor, too? The list was obviously written by someone with a bit of cultural blindness, and my own kicked in, so I was not specific enough. *Iced* tea, you Philistine. Hot tea is consumed by New Agers, little old Southern ladies, and people in Chinese restaurants who are trying to impress the waitstaff. Iced tea is not served or consumed from mugs, it belongs in tall glasses beaded with condensation, visions of which shimmer in front of the eyes like a mirage after working in the yard for a couple hours in the 95+ weather. [Condensation does not happen in west Texas, by the way, which is why they can run those cheap evaporative coolers. In east Texas, condensation happens so much you can't put anything even slightly cool down onto a wooden surface for more than a few seconds. Where I live, it varies.] In any case, hot tea drunk from mugs is not something that would occur to most Texans of the ilk who made this list. --Amanda From editor at texas.net Mon May 13 14:58:45 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 09:58:45 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Fw: Texas Facts References: Message-ID: <004f01c1fa8e$aeb545a0$257c63d1@texas.net> Joanne commented I never realized that we Yankees had so much in common with folks from Texas! Well, *our* name doesn't start with "damn-"..... : ) [Southern ancestry] > I suspect that our reason for giving distances in time is different from yours -- I assume that in Texas, you're talking mostly about highway miles. Here in the Boston area, we give distances in time because mileage would be misleading in the areas where traffic is so congested that it's often faster to walk or to take a roundabout route that's much longer in miles but shorter in time. As in, "It's two hours from Milton to Somerville if you go straight up Route 93, through the Big Dig, but 45 minutes if you go around the city on Route 128." To reply--Texans speak both. When you are talking distance between places, it's understood that you're talking the equivalent of mileage. When you're talking travel inside a city, it's understood that you're talking transit time. By the way, was iced coffee a generational thing or a Texan/southern thing? --Amanda From editor at texas.net Mon May 13 15:10:10 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 10:10:10 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Fw: Texas Facts References: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> Message-ID: <005601c1fa90$4781ad40$257c63d1@texas.net> Jennifer said > Doesn't work for the Westheimer Street Festival, either, or any given > music festival in central Texas, which is more than likely named in > German. My grandmother spent her teen years in a graceful house on a tree-lined residential boulevard on the outskirts of Houston, called Westheimer. I have a tape of a radio interview, when that house was made into a restaurant in the 1970s. Her parents were active in the campaign to keep the city from cutting down the trees to widen the street. She also tells that she was having a slumber party for her 17th birthday, when the race riots were going on, and how her parents could not keep the girls from, well, being girls at a slumber party, and were terrified of attracting attention. > And usually pronounced "fixinna". Not where I live, easterner. Are you one of those "You-ston" people, who leave the "H" off of Houston, too? > > > 16. You know whether another Texan is from east, west, north or south > >Texas as soon as they open their mouth. > > > >Especially if they open it to spit. > > Texas is the only state in which the Southern, Western, and > Midwestern accents are all native, in addition to the state's own > accent. Actually, my honors paper in college was on the Southern dialect in east Texas, and we failed to find it. One of the leading lights of Texan linguistics, Guy Bailey, was kind enough to talk to me and give me several copies of his papers yet unpublished to use in my project. He says that the Southern dialect is native only to people born around the turn of the century (that's 1900, guys); soon after that it began to decline. The dialect maps you see in linguistics books are based on data gathered in the 1940s and 1950s, when the middle-aged and older informants *had* all been born prior to or around the turn of the century. We found no native Southern dialect speakers at all, in our toodle across east Texas through several small towns. This explains why my grandmother, native of east Texas, *did* have a graceful Southern accent (we would beg her to say sugar and pepper and such, to hear /shu-gah/ and /pep-pah/), using wonderful words like "gallery" /gal-ree/ for porch and such, and my mother and uncle did not. Which little oddness is what sent me off on this honors project in the first place. So I don't think I'd consider the Southern dialect to be particularly native to Texas anymore, but I don't know if any Authorities have weighed in on it or if the standard linguistics maps have ever been updated. Wake up! Hit "delete"! --Amanda Binns rides again, sorry From mike at aberforthsgoat.net Mon May 13 18:01:10 2002 From: mike at aberforthsgoat.net (Aberforth's Goat) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 20:01:10 +0200 Subject: USA, here I come! References: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> <005601c1fa90$4781ad40$257c63d1@texas.net> Message-ID: <002601c1faa8$2af5dc10$0200a8c0@shasta> The last phone call, hooked. The last sermon, waffled. The last bag, packed. The office, cleaned out. (Sort of.) The accounts, "no email." The bike, parked in the cellar. The bass, packed and propped next to the door. In a nutshell, it's vacation time. We'll be in New Orleans and some misbegotten town called Philadelphia, Mississippi, so if you have any hot tips, shoot away! I've set this list to Digest mode and I may be able to get online now and again to stave off delirium tremens ... If I had known of any fellow fans in the vicinity I'd have announced my travel plans earlier; as it stands I'll make a point of waving out of the plane window. Otherwise, see y'all again in three weeks! BBFN! Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray) _______________________ "Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery...." From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Mon May 13 23:03:21 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 23:03:21 -0000 Subject: Texan tea In-Reply-To: <002701c1fa8d$7ac5ca40$257c63d1@texas.net> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amanda" wrote: >*Iced* tea, you Philistine. But whatever temperature it is, it's tea, right? The symbol of oppressive colonialism? I mean, there is iced coffee too, and a very nice drink it is. David, happy to be associated with the people of Palestine From selah_1977 at yahoo.com Tue May 14 00:43:42 2002 From: selah_1977 at yahoo.com (selah_1977) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 00:43:42 -0000 Subject: HP4GU-GreatLakes Chicago Meet, June 28-30 Message-ID: Anyone interested in joining us? The URL is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP4GU-GreatLakes Check the message archives for all the details. :-D --Ebony AKA AngieJ From boggles at earthlink.net Tue May 14 01:20:03 2002 From: boggles at earthlink.net (Jennifer Boggess Ramon) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 20:20:03 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Texan tea In-Reply-To: <002701c1fa8d$7ac5ca40$257c63d1@texas.net> References: <002701c1fa8d$7ac5ca40$257c63d1@texas.net> Message-ID: At 9:50 AM -0500 5/13/02, Amanda wrote: > >Hot tea is consumed by New Agers, little old Southern ladies, and people in >Chinese restaurants who are trying to impress the waitstaff. And proper Southern Belles, thank you very much! How else are you going to show off that you have proper tea china and silver, including those darling little sugar tongs with that spike on the end to clean the loose leaves out of the end of the spout? Besides, an afternoon tea is a perfect excuse to haul out the devilled egg plate and make watercress and cucumber sandwiches sans crust. >Iced tea is not >served or consumed from mugs, it belongs in tall glasses beaded with >condensation, visions of which shimmer in front of the eyes like a mirage >after working in the yard for a couple hours in the 95+ weather. Also good for showing off specialized silver, plus the good crystal pitcher . . . You can tell where in the South someone was raised by whether they sweeten the iced tea before they chill it, or when it's poured in the glass. The presence or absence of mint can also signify. >[Condensation does not happen in west Texas, by the way, which is why they >can run those cheap evaporative coolers. In east Texas, condensation happens >so much you can't put anything even slightly cool down onto a wooden surface >for more than a few seconds. Where I live, it varies.] I remember one particularly dry day during the last drought when I happened to be in Austin. I picked my glass up, and it wasn't wet. This had never, to my recollection, ever happened to me before. >In any case, hot tea drunk from mugs is not something that would occur to >most Texans of the ilk who made this list. Certainly not! We have proper bone china cups and saucers for that! ;) -- - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at earthlink.net === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From boggles at earthlink.net Tue May 14 01:30:53 2002 From: boggles at earthlink.net (Jennifer Boggess Ramon) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 20:30:53 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Fw: Texas Facts In-Reply-To: <005601c1fa90$4781ad40$257c63d1@texas.net> References: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> <005601c1fa90$4781ad40$257c63d1@texas.net> Message-ID: At 10:10 AM -0500 5/13/02, Amanda wrote: > >My grandmother spent her teen years in a graceful house on a tree-lined >residential boulevard on the outskirts of Houston, called Westheimer. The Spouse and I once drove All The Way Down Westheimer just to see where it ended . . . it still looks like that if you drive far enough. You just have to drive a _lot_ farther. > > And usually pronounced "fixinna". > >Not where I live, easterner. Are you one of those "You-ston" people, who >leave the "H" off of Houston, too? No, that would be the Mother-In-Law - who is hardly an Easterner, unless Deer Park counts. ;) >Actually, my honors paper in college was on the Southern dialect in east >Texas, and we failed to find it. Really? As a native speaker of it (born in unpleasant exile in the North to two native Mississippians, moved back there before learning to talk), I'm sure I've heard it around Port Arthur. Perhaps those are displaced northern Louisianians, but they seemed native enough. >This explains why my grandmother, native of east Texas, *did* have a >graceful Southern accent (we would beg her to say sugar and pepper and such, >to hear /shu-gah/ and /pep-pah/), using wonderful words like "gallery" >/gal-ree/ for porch and such, and my mother and uncle did not. Which little >oddness is what sent me off on this honors project in the first place. Hmm. _I_ don't think I've ever heard "gal'ry" used for a porch - back home, it's a walkway on the roof of a house, like a widow's walk. >So I don't think I'd consider the Southern dialect to be particularly native >to Texas anymore, but I don't know if any Authorities have weighed in on it >or if the standard linguistics maps have ever been updated. They hadn't when I was taking linguistics courses in college here. Perhaps there are enough of us transplants around to keep the image alive . . . -- - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at earthlink.net === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From pennylin at swbell.net Tue May 14 03:45:01 2002 From: pennylin at swbell.net (plinsenmayer) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 03:45:01 -0000 Subject: Fw: Texas Facts In-Reply-To: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> Message-ID: Hi -- --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amanda" wrote: > These were fun. I have inserted commentary. And, I, a native Texan, have inserted additonal commentary: > > There are 10,000 types of spiders. All 10,000 live in Texas, plus a couple no one's seen before. > > True. Can't believe there seems to be no commentary about the insects I think of most readily in Texas: those damn large flying cockroaches (palmetto bugs I"m told) that I'm terrified of. They're as large as small mammals ... and have a wing span... you'd think they'd rate a mention in this list of Texas facts. > > > The wind blows at 90 MPH from Oct 2 until June 25, then it stops totally until Oct 2. > > This person is obviously from west Texas, a huge place we non- affectionately refer to as "God's ping-pong table." Agreed! Am a native West Texan ... > > All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, insect or animal. > > Let's see. Poteet Strawberry Festival. Noonday Sweet Onion Festival. Floresville Peanut Festival. Hah! Wait! The Czilispiel is none of the above! Hah! But mostly, this is true. I agree with fellow Houstonian Jennifer that this is not true of most Central Texas German festivals, most especially WurstFest, our favorite. Obviously ... Festival of the Sausage. :::waves at Jennifer::: We must have a Houston get-together with Katze... > > When the world ends, only cockroaches and mesquite trees will survive. Ah, there's the cockroach mention. Agreed. > > You know you're from Texas if: > > 1. You measure distance in minutes. > > This is true. It's an hour and a half from here to Austin, 30 minutes to downtown, four hours to Houston, etc. I can call up the actual mileage if I think about it, but we think of it in terms of time. Agreed! And, yes, when you're talking about distances within a city, you're counting in the time you'll spend in stop-and-go traffic (the West Loop Jennifer?). I measure all distance in terms of time. > > > 2. You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day. > > There are whole months we have to do this, on both ends of summer. The most severe example of this I've ever experienced occurred in Lubbock while I was in college there. The temperature dropped about 60 degrees in 2 hours. I was in shorts when I went into a class & it was decidedly *not* shorts weather when I walked out. Gusting freezing winds in fact. :::shudders::: > > 10. You know everyone on TV has an accent. > > Actually, San Antonians don't have much of an accent. Only north and west Texans have much of what the world thinks of as a Texas accent (thank you, "Dallas"). No -- must disagree. East Texans have a decidedly distinct accent IMO. > > > 11. You think sexy lingerie is a tee shirt and boxer shorts. > > On either gender. :::looks down at sleeping attire::: Eep ... > > 12. The local papers covers national and international news on one page but requires 6 pages for local gossip and sports. > > High school sports alone gets two pages. 2 pages? You're clearly not from *West* Texas, Amanda. There's a separate section within Sports during football season -- it's more than 2 pages for sure. 2 pages gets devoted just to the less than 5A programs. 5A programs get about 6 pages of coverage on average. > > 15. You know all four seasons: Almost summer, Summer, Still summer, and > Christmas. > > Sadly, this is too true to be funny. Yes, I agree. Christmas can also fall under "still summer" sadly. You know it's bad when you're excited that it's cold enough to wear your Christmas sweater ... if you turn on the AC and sit under the ceiling fan. > > 19. You describe the first cool snap (below 70 degrees) as good chili weather. > > I don't like chili. But anything under 82 is cool weather. I love chili ... but agree that anything that starts with a "7" is "cool." If it's below 55 and you're a River Oaks matron, you can also feel free to drag out the fur coat. Penny From catlady at wicca.net Tue May 14 04:25:36 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 04:25:36 -0000 Subject: Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday! Message-ID: Happy Birthday to Neil the Mechanimagus Moderator! *honk* *beep* Happy Birthday to Parker the weaver, historical explainer, and fanfic author! From ganvira1 at hotmail.com Tue May 14 05:12:10 2002 From: ganvira1 at hotmail.com (Terry van Ettinger) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 22:12:10 -0700 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Fw: Texas Facts References: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> Message-ID: Hello, all, I'm back after a hiatus of trying to straighten out e-mail as well as my life (which is rather pathetic anyway and still isn't straightened out), but I have to comment on measuring distance by time vs. miles. Let me tell you, it's just as common gere in CA as it is in Texas. At least most of the time, when I hear distance measured, it's in time. Terry [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From bludger_witch at yahoo.com Tue May 14 08:49:00 2002 From: bludger_witch at yahoo.com (Dinah ***) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 01:49:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Fw: Texas Facts In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020514084900.66499.qmail@web12004.mail.yahoo.com> > > > All the festivals across the state are named > after a fruit, > vegetable, grain, insect or animal. > > > > Let's see. Poteet Strawberry Festival. Noonday > Sweet Onion > Festival. Floresville Peanut Festival. Hah! Wait! > The Czilispiel is > none of the above! Hah! But mostly, this is true. > > I agree with fellow Houstonian Jennifer that this is > not true of > most Central Texas German festivals, most especially > WurstFest, our > favorite. Obviously ... Festival of the Sausage. *groans* Just what is it with Americans and pseudo-german culture? I mean, embracing foreign culture and experiencing new ethnic traits is alright, but this completely baffles me. What you are celebrating over there is here only interesting to the generation of over 55 and up to 100. Dirndls are not sexy, they throw all kinds of really disgusting things into the Weiwurst (I swear it's probably mainly made up of eyes and nostrils) and beer... well, there's a salvaging point. But you do have beer overthere, too, don't you? And the Polka is evil and Dirndl do nothing for you - especially when you have hips like a horse because it'll magnify that effect. I'd rather do the cha-cha or a waltz. But then, I'm currently rather sensitive about the subject. My little brother is learning drumming and has recently entered a youth-"kapelle" - meaning, they only play marches and other delightfully terrifying music. I can't wait til he's older and can enter a Band, preferably rock or jazz... Dinah ===== "Bludger - nasty little buggers" - Oliver Wood, PS the movie __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From pennylin at swbell.net Tue May 14 11:10:51 2002 From: pennylin at swbell.net (plinsenmayer) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 11:10:51 -0000 Subject: Central Texas & German Festivals In-Reply-To: <20020514084900.66499.qmail@web12004.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi -- I had mentioned the many Central Texas German festivals, including WurstFest in New Braunfels. --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Dinah *** wrote: > > *groans* Just what is it with Americans and > pseudo-german culture? I mean, embracing foreign > culture and experiencing new ethnic traits is alright, > but this completely baffles me. What you are > celebrating over there is here only interesting to the > generation of over 55 and up to 100. > Dirndls are not sexy, they throw all kinds of really > disgusting things into the Wei?wurst (I swear it's > probably mainly made up of eyes and nostrils) and > beer... well, there's a salvaging point. But you do > have beer overthere, too, don't you? And the Polka is > evil and Dirndl do nothing for you - especially when > you have hips like a horse because it'll magnify that > effect. I'd rather do the cha-cha or a waltz. Central Texas was heavily settled by German (and Czech and Polish) immigrants in the mid to late 1800s. Many of these communities are *still* highly German in culture. In fact, in many of the homes, German is still spoken as the primary language, several generations later. My sister's roommate is from New Braunfels and is bi-lingual. It's not so much celebration of a "foreign" culture in those communities; it's a celebration of their ongoing heritage. They've retained a strong connection with Germany all these years. It's also not something that is limited to the older generation. When you attend the German festivals in Central Texas (mainly in the fall), it's quite obvious that a huge number of the residents, even the younger ones, speak German and continue to identify strongly with German culture. Amanda may be able to comment further. Penny From editor at texas.net Tue May 14 15:02:30 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 10:02:30 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Central Texas & German Festivals References: Message-ID: <003801c1fb58$7340b980$e57763d1@texas.net> Dinah had groaned > > *groans* Just what is it with Americans and > pseudo-german culture? I mean, embracing foreign > culture and experiencing new ethnic traits is alright, > but this completely baffles me. What you are > celebrating over there is here only interesting to the > generation of over 55 and up to 100. Penny defended the German residents of Texas and their festivals thusly: Central Texas was heavily settled by German (and Czech and Polish) immigrants in the mid to late 1800s. Many of these communities are *still* highly German in culture. In fact, in many of the homes, German is still spoken as the primary language, several generations later. My sister's roommate is from New Braunfels and is bi-lingual. It's not so much celebration of a "foreign" culture in those communities; it's a celebration of their ongoing heritage. They've retained a strong connection with Germany all these years. It's also not something that is limited to the older generation. When you attend the German festivals in Central Texas (mainly in the fall), it's quite obvious that a huge number of the residents, even the younger ones, speak German and continue to identify strongly with German culture. Amanda may be able to comment further. (Amanda blushes, digs toe in dirt) Aww. How can I refuse such an invitation to hold forth? But really, Penny summarized it beautifully. It isn't something the residents of Texas saw, wanted, and tried to appropriate; it's something that they *are.* It *is* a source of lingering disgust to me, here on the Polish side of the equation, that the cultural stereotype happens to be true and the Germans just *are* better organized, which is why most of the little festivals are German (not Czech or Polish) and why the local theme park Fiesta Texas has a German area and not a Polish. Fully as many Poles settled this area as Germans, and there is still much speaking of Polish (witness the many, many conversations I overhear and cannot understand after mass, which we attend in the little town of St. Hedwig). There are plenty of household traditions that carry on their European precedents; the festivals are just community extensions of this. Why do people always seem to think that any sort of festival harking to European, Asian, etc., traditions, *must* be "pseudo" of some kind? You want pseudo, go to some of those American Indian extravaganzas, supposedly native. Americans are not born "tabula rasa"s, to then go out and seek the culture they'd like to emulate; we are born to them as much as anyone else. Most of us have the option of several. And why should anyone give a damn if they have horse hips, if they have a blast dancing the polka? [It would probably be ethical to warn people to get out of the way; I generally do]. --Amanda, fifth-generation Texan on her father's side (eligible for Daughters of the Republic of Texas, if she'd only get her butt in gear and do the documentation) and Southerner on her mother's (eligible for Daughters of the Confederacy, I believe, with similar caveat), and married to a man of entirely Polish extraction (all grandparents were immigrants from Poland), who loves to refuse to check "Caucasian" on forms on the reasonable grounds that there is not a drop of Caucasian blood in him, only Slavic. On the recent census, I wrote in a category for my kids, "Polish American," just to give the government a little heartburn. From bludger_witch at yahoo.com Tue May 14 17:54:25 2002 From: bludger_witch at yahoo.com (Dinah ***) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 10:54:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Fw: Texas Facts In-Reply-To: <20020514084900.66499.qmail@web12004.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020514175425.18635.qmail@web12004.mail.yahoo.com> Weiwrste have nothing to do with German culture. At least not in my book. Goethe, Schiller, Thomas Mann is German culture. Bach is German culture. Polka and Wurst are sad mirrors of how other nations perceive us - even if their ancestors did come from here. Besides, those things are only customary in the very southern part of Germany. the river Main (on which our village lies) is called the "Weiwurst Aequator" - go farther North and you won't find those things. Even here they aren't that usual. It's nice that people enjoy that part of German heritage - it's just that it's not that much of a heritage and more of a blown-up cliche of how we live. D** ===== "Bludger - nasty little buggers" - Oliver Wood, PS the movie __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From john at walton.vu Tue May 14 17:58:16 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 18:58:16 +0100 Subject: The Best Wuerste (was: Texas Facts) In-Reply-To: <20020514175425.18635.qmail@web12004.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Dinah *** wrote: > Wei?w?rste have nothing to do with German culture. I always thought that weisswuerste were an Austrian (Viennese, specifically) thing. They're exceeding yummy, though, wherever they come from. Mmm, sausages/wuerste. *wanders off to kitchen* > It's nice that people enjoy that part of German heritage - it's just that it's > not that much of a heritage and more of a blown-up clich?e of how we live. You mean there's more to German culture than Oktoberfest? *shock* --naughty!John ____________________________________________ Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?? ~Ernest Gaines John Walton || john at walton.vu || johnwalton.livejournal.com ____________________________________________ From lupinesque at yahoo.com Tue May 14 20:59:11 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 20:59:11 -0000 Subject: Texan tea In-Reply-To: Message-ID: David asked: > But whatever temperature it is, it's tea, right? The symbol of > oppressive colonialism? No, not the way Lipton's makes it. The favored iced teas in the USA are (1) Powdered with Fake Lemon and Teeth-Clenchingly Sweet and (2) Bottled with Real Lemon and Teeth-Clenchingly Sweet. Both are calculated to deliver the maximum insult to an honest, tea-loving nation such as yours. Viva la revolution! Amy who suspects that if you threw something into Boston Harbor nowadays, it would bounce back on board From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Tue May 14 21:38:23 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 21:38:23 -0000 Subject: Texan tea In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter, Amy wrote: [snip] > Amy > who suspects that if you threw something into Boston Harbor > nowadays, it would bounce back on board Bit like the Mississippi River then? Best regards Christian Stub? who should probably catch up on Mark Twain one of these days From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Tue May 14 22:12:09 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 22:12:09 -0000 Subject: Texan tea In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "pengolodh_sc" wrote: > --- In HPFGU-OTChatter, Amy wrote: > [snip] > > Amy > > who suspects that if you threw something into Boston Harbor > > nowadays, it would bounce back on board > > Bit like the Mississippi River then? > or possibly the river Ankh - an invention of a British author D From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Tue May 14 22:20:05 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 22:20:05 -0000 Subject: Level Quidditch fields Message-ID: Amanda wrote on the main list, about inequitable Quidditch: > The difference in brooms follows the style of school administration. It tends to be rather "hands off," allowing students to learn not only their lessons, but some life lessons as well--like life isn't always fair. Other students may have better brooms. People in authority may not be open-minded or even-handed. You won't always get heard. Etc. [I personally feel that this is a better approach than one finds in many American schools, where we lead students to believe that the world is fair and you are owed a level playing field; it ain't the case, and it's unfair to expect kids to learn it when they hit college, after having been kid-gloved for twelve years.] OTOH, we spend quite a bit of effort (on both sides of the Atlantic) trying to legislate a level playing field for *adults*, presumably on the ground that it is owed to them. We may fail to provide it fully in adult life - but if schools are not seen to be trying to provide it, that would seem to be a contradiction. Is fairness owed to others? David From pennylin at swbell.net Wed May 15 03:09:32 2002 From: pennylin at swbell.net (plinsenmayer) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 03:09:32 -0000 Subject: Central Texas Germans In-Reply-To: <20020514175425.18635.qmail@web12004.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Dinah *** wrote: > Wei?w?rste have nothing to do with German culture. At > least not in my book. Goethe, Schiller, Thomas Mann is > German culture. Bach is German culture. > > Polka and Wurst are sad mirrors of how other nations > perceive us - even if their ancestors did come from > here. I'm not *exactly* sure what you mean by "Wei?w?rste." Maybe if you elaborate? Yes, the Central Texas German & Polish & Czech festivals no doubt reflect a certain amount of "Texas" culture, including notably the Tejano influence. The "Oktoberfest" celebrations that you see all over the US are "similar" to what you see in Central Texas ... but there is a unique twist to what you'll see in Central Texas. And, I think this is largely because these communities have retained very strong ties to German influences. As I mentioned, many of the younger kids and most especially the older generations speak German as their *first* language. Whatever you may believe, they certainly identify themselves still as German-Americans, and they've retained that strong sense of identity over many generations. I guess they probably think of themselves more as German-Texans more specifically. I don't mean to be snippy, but isn't it possible that you have an image in your mind of what you think these festivals are like that may or may not match with reality? Have you attended a Central Texas "Oktoberfest"? I'm just curious what your specific objections are ... since those might or might not be present in what we see here. Yes, people dance polkas at these events. They also dance the Texas line dances, they two-step, they waltz and there's the obligatory "Chicken Dance" umpteen times, which I'm quite certain is *Texas* and not German. But, if you go in the Little Tent, you see a packed crowd singing German songs in German that are not "beer hall songs." I think you might find it's not so terribly removed from German culture as you might be imagining... not all of it anyway. Penny (who, despite her German surname, is not of German-Texas extraction, having married into the German-ness ... and is all Anglo and a first-generation Texan) From john at walton.vu Wed May 15 03:44:48 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 04:44:48 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Central Texas Germans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: plinsenmayer wrote: > I'm not *exactly* sure what you mean by "Wei?w?rste." Maybe if you > elaborate? Ach, nein! You don't know what Weisswuerste are? (See "The Best Wuerste" post earlier today.) They're yummy sausages made IIRC of veal (Dinah? is that right?). I first encountered them at the age of 10 in Vienna, and was ecstatic to see that the chain German sausage stall in Grand Central actually has them. Last summer, one of those in a bun would be my Friday Treat. Hmm. I don't think I can compare them to anything else. Now, all we need to do to get the vegetarians really retching is talk about black pudding -- yum! --John ____________________________________________ Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby. Somewhere over that rainbow, skies are blue And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. John Walton || john at walton.vu ____________________________________________ From tabouli at unite.com.au Wed May 15 04:11:32 2002 From: tabouli at unite.com.au (Tabouli) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 14:11:32 +1000 Subject: Watercress Message-ID: <003101c1fbc6$9b2b7f20$a522ddcb@price> Jennifer Boggess Ramon: > Besides, an afternoon tea is a perfect excuse to haul out the devilled egg plate and make watercress and cucumber sandwiches sans crust.< Poking my head out of a pile of paper to ask... what on *earth* is watercress like? English children always seem to be munching on egg and cress sandwiches in books, and I was always curious about it. Is it widely eaten? What does it look and taste like? (some cookbook told me it tastes "peppery" (?)) Can you actually scoop it out of a pond and wash it off to eat? Maybe I have an emerging thing for eating aquatic plants or something, as I love the taste of seaweed as well... Tabouli. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From ch001d4564 at blueyonder.co.uk Wed May 15 09:22:18 2002 From: ch001d4564 at blueyonder.co.uk (Martin Hooper) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 10:22:18 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Texan tea In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20020515102202.009f67a0@pop3.blueyonder.co.uk> At 23:12 14/05/02, you wrote: >or possibly the river Ankh - an invention of a British author Dave you a Discworld fan then???? ;) Martin J Hooper http://www.martinjh.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk AIM: Martinjh99 ICQ: 43933602 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From bludger_witch at yahoo.com Wed May 15 10:30:31 2002 From: bludger_witch at yahoo.com (Dinah ***) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 03:30:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] The Best Wuerste (was: Texas Facts) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020515103031.33109.qmail@web12007.mail.yahoo.com> > You mean there's more to German culture than > Oktoberfest? *shock* Oooh, you mean that big party down in Munich where they have special police-forces who are only there to control that people don't pee against the tents? And beat them up for doing it? (that really happened, I'm not kidding) Well, Weiwrste might be yummy, but only if you don't think about what's in them. And I'm still cringing from the thought of going to have a Weiwurst-breakfast at 5 in the morning after dancing the night through in Carnival... my parents did that once. What a terrible thought. Though, speaking of German food, why not ask Sabine, our local Northerner, about Labskaus? It beats Haggis in the icky factor, believe me. Very mythical food. Dinah ===== "Bludger - nasty little buggers" - Oliver Wood, PS the movie __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From bludger_witch at yahoo.com Wed May 15 10:41:38 2002 From: bludger_witch at yahoo.com (Dinah ***) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 03:41:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Central Texas Germans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020515104138.13983.qmail@web12006.mail.yahoo.com> Well, I'm pretty sure they look a bit like what they look like here. Actually I've seen some on TV and heard enough detailed desciption to have a rather good impression of what they look like. I'm just really touchy about the subject because my parent's are from Czech heritage (my Dad was one of those that had to leave their home after WWII was over) and while a certain amount of cliches surely apply I don't like the fact that it seems to be reduced to that. And "beer hall" songs, if you don't necessarily take the Oktoberfest but more rural festivals of a similar kind, are not strictly speaking cheesy. Some have a long standing tradition. It's just that 1. the halls are filled with people who are mostly 65 and up 2. it degenerates more and more to "how much beer can you drink in one evening and still remember the lyrics" (that's if there are younger ones) It's a bit like all those "Western Clubs" that exists here. Germans dressing up in Cowboy boots and complete regalia including chaps and hats and mixing it in weid combination with Native American jewelery and being sure they are doing something typically American. Or saying "Go to McDonald's, experience American culture". Okay, that last example was a stretch, but that's how many people think. I'm not comfortable with the thought of being reduced to that. I didn't mean to bash your festivals, it's just that many people get a pictures stuck in their heads that is completely untrue. I really don't like that. Dinah ===== "Bludger - nasty little buggers" - Oliver Wood, PS the movie __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From bludger_witch at yahoo.com Wed May 15 10:47:01 2002 From: bludger_witch at yahoo.com (Dinah ***) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 03:47:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Central Texas Germans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020515104701.69669.qmail@web12001.mail.yahoo.com> Re: Weiwuerste: >They're yummy sausages made IIRC of veal (Dinah? is > that right?). Uhuu. Just think about last year's BSE problems... if you were clever you didn't touch them. I still look at them with deep suspicion. > Now, all we need to do to get the vegetarians really > retching is talk about black pudding -- yum! It's made with blood, right? *shudders* I do like meat very much, but that's ick. My Dad likes to tell story's from way back when when they used to butcher themselves (I mean, they butchered animals. They just did it themselves) and some weird soup or sauce or whatever they used to make with blood. Believe me, that doesn't only make the veggies retch. Dinah ===== "Bludger - nasty little buggers" - Oliver Wood, PS the movie __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Wed May 15 14:02:02 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 14:02:02 -0000 Subject: Lapskaus (or Labskaus, depending on nationality) In-Reply-To: <20020515103031.33109.qmail@web12007.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter, Dinah wrote: [snip] > Though, speaking of German food, why not ask Sabine, > our local Northerner, about Labskaus? It beats Haggis > in the icky factor, believe me. Very mythical food. > > Dinah Hmm.. In Norway we have a dish called lapskaus, which is basically a stew made with chunks of potatoes, turnips, carrots, meat (normally of ox, and yes - it is real meat; I have watched my mother make it), and often sausage (Norwegian sausages are subject to legislation about what may and may not be used in making it). I don't see how that can rate very high on the icky-factor, unless you think all stews are icky? There is something called brown lapskaus, but it is brown only because it is made with gravy. Best regards Christian Stub? From mdemeran at hotmail.com Wed May 15 14:25:00 2002 From: mdemeran at hotmail.com (demeranville) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 14:25:00 -0000 Subject: Fw: Texas Facts In-Reply-To: <014301c1fa26$50e0de20$b17663d1@texas.net> Message-ID: Most of these will fit for Alabama as well. Oh well, I guess the southern states have to stick together. --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amanda" wrote: > > Facts you know in Texas: >Armadillos sleep in the middle of the road with their feet in the air. > This is actually untrue. The reproductive cycle of the armadillo requires that it mate with a tire. If the mating is successful, soon afterwards tire will blow and the baby armadillos will skitter off into the grass. This explains all the large pieces of tire you see along Texas highways. All the squooshed armadillos are unsuccessful lovers. Me: And armadillos stink something foul if you run one over. I think they are where stink bombs come from. > There are 10,000 types of spiders. All 10,000 live in Texas, plus a couple no one's seen before. > True. Most of the 10,000 also live in my house, except the black widows, which to be honest have never come inside. They're on the outside and in the mailbox, but not in the house. Me: We have spiders too. And roaches and all other kinds of horrible insects. We seem to have a problem with Black Widows and Brown Recluses here, but maybe I just seem to go looking in places I shouldn't. > Possums will eat anything. > Even in suburbia. And they have a nasty bite. And they are luckily totally incapable of carrying rabies. Me: I don't care, they attack my cats. I don't like them. > If it grows, it sticks you. If it crawls, it bites you. > Yes. There are 5,637 species of stinging insects, and most of them nest on or around my house, in amongst the stickers. We wage a constant war against the stickers and the bull nettles. Me: We have all kinds of fun insects that I am blessed to be allergic to, yellow flies, mosquitos (these can take off with a small child) and did I mention our roaches? We have managed to create sticker grass as well. It looks just like normal grass, until you step on it, then it sends sharp spikes into your feet. > Nothing will kill a mesquite tree. ("tree" is a courtesy term, here). True. Not cutting it down, not burning it out, not plant killer, nothing. They're permanent. Me: Nothing kills Magnolias, Kudzu or Pine trees either. Except maybe hurricanes, which leave the kudzu alone. I think even hurricanes are afraid of it. > There are valid reasons some people put concertina wire around their house. >Can't help you with this one, I've never heard of concertina wire. Me: There are people that use this stuff. But where I live high walls and broken glass seem to be the norm (concertina is barbed wire). But these are also the people who refer to "The War of Northern Agression" > You cannot find a country road without a curve from corner to corner. >I can't work this one out. If anyone figures out what the hell this is saying, do enlighten us. Me: This is true in Alabama as well. I think the person who laid out the county roads used a map and spagetti. That's all I can figure for all the curves on all of the roads. > The wind blows at 90 MPH from Oct 2 until June 25, then it stops totally until Oct 2. > This person is obviously from west Texas, a huge place we non- affectionately refer to as "God's ping-pong table." Me: The wind blows here constantly, and the weather is never the same. This weekend it was in the 90+F range. Today it's in the 50s. Go figure. > Onced and Twiced are words. > Yup. Me: You mean people think they aren't? > All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, insect or animal. > Let's see. Poteet Strawberry Festival. Noonday Sweet Onion Festival. Floresville Peanut Festival. Hah! Wait! The Czilispiel is none of the above! Hah! But mostly, this is true. Me: Except for the Shakespeare festival, all of ours are. > Coldbeer is one word. > Where is it not? Me: Who has coldbeer and isn't sharing? > People actually grow and eat okra. > Not me. Ugh. Okra is a creation of Satan. Me: Me neither, Okra is disgusting. Although put it in gumbo and we can talk. > When the world ends, only cockroaches and mesquite trees will survive. >I think the fire ants will be there, too. Me: The cockroaches, fire ants, and the pigeons (they aren't afraid of anything here) and Mobile's resident squirrel population (I have never seen so many cars swerve for the squirrels, they aren't moving out of your way) > There IS a polite way to spit. Me: And that would be into your spit cup. > When you live in the country, you don't have to buy a dog. City people drop them off at your gate in the middle of the night. > Yes. And cats. Me: The resident stray dog population exists around my summer house. My grandfather has all of the stray cats. > Tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when you're 2. Me: You are only offered sweet tea, don't ask for it unsweet or you get dirty looks from the waitstaff. > 'Jeet? is actually a phrase meaning "Did you eat?" Me: And the appropriate response is "Nah, diju?" (No, did you?) > You know you're from Texas if: > 1. You measure distance in minutes. Me: We do this here too. I have no concept of distance. Just how far things are in minutes. And I know how long things take given the time of day as well (rush hour and such) > 2. You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day. Me: We did this all weekend. And all winter (I use that term loosely) > 3. You don't have to wear a watch because it doesn't matter what time it is; you work until til you're done or it's too dark to see. > 4. You see a car running in the parking lot at the store with no one in it. > Or with loads of kids in it. Me: Wait, you mean you are suppose to turn the car off? And take kids out of it? Why? > 5. You use 'fixinto' as one word. > Fixinto *is* one word. Me: Who said it wasn't. Ya'll is a word too. It is singular. All ya'll is plural. All ya'lls is plural possessive. > 6. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked. Me: All the time. > 7. You carry jumper cables in your car ... for your OWN car. > Um, who else's car would you carry them for? Me: My father gave me road flares and jumper cables when I turned 16. I can't tell you how many times I have had to use the jumper cables. (One of these days I am going to remember to turn off my lights) > 8. You know what "cow tipping" and "snipe hunting" is. > *are* Me: The simple games are the most fun aren't they? > 9. You only own four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and chili. Me: We use garlic instead of chili here, but we are an odd family. > 10. You know everyone on TV has an accent. > Actually, San Antonians don't have much of an accent. Only north and west Texans have much of what the world thinks of as a Texas accent (thank you, "Dallas"). Me: We can tell where you are from in the state by your accent. And everyone on TV gets the southern accent wrong. We are not all that illiterate. Just the ones who get interviewed after hurricanes. > 11. You think sexy lingerie is a tee shirt and boxer shorts. > On either gender. Me: What else would you wear? > 12. The local papers covers national and international news on one page but requires 6 pages for local gossip and sports. > High school sports alone gets two pages. Me: Our local section runs at 12 pages. Our sports section is huge. Especially during football season. 6A football gets 6 pages by itself. More if there was a rivalry game over the weekend (high school or college) > 13. You think that the first day of deer season is a national holiday. > It's not? Me: We are the only family in the state that doesn't hunt. I know, we are an embarrassment. > 14. You find 100 degrees F "a little warm." > I personally find it too f***ing hot, myself, but then, I don't care for jalapenos or chicken fried steak, either. I think I'm a changeling. Me: That's only a little warm. But it's not the heat, it's the humidity. That will kill you. Especially when it is so steamy you can cut it with a knife. Even the bay is uncomfortable at that point. > 15. You know all four seasons: Almost summer, Summer, Still summer, and Christmas. > Sadly, this is too true to be funny. All you people jumping up and down because something bloomed in your yard, when our first batch of wildflowers has gone to seed and been mowed down and things are starting to get brown and crispy..... Me: Our seasons are the same way, but we have Spring training, Summer, Football, and Christmas as well. > 16. You know whether another Texan is from east, west, north or south Texas as soon as they open their mouth. > Especially if they open it to spit. Me: Ditto for Alabama. > 17. You know there is a Dairy Queen in every town with a population of 1000 or more and you use them as milemarkers for trips. > Yes. I know the distance (in hours/minutes) between DQs on the way to Houston and Austin and College Station. Sigh. Me: DQ is the way to count towns. Although I am finding fewer of them. > 18. Going to Wal-Mart is a favorite past-time known as " goin wal- martin" or off to "Wally World." > This is not as time-honored as the rest, Wal-Marts are not that old. Me: Going 'Martin is only fun late at night if you dress for the part. Small children and sponge curlers are crucial. > 19. You describe the first cool snap (below 70 degrees) as good chili weather. > I don't like chili. But anything under 82 is cool weather. Me: I dont do chili. But it's good gumbo weather. (I am from the coast, we do seafood) > 20. You think eating chili helps to cool you off in hot weather by making you sweat. > It does. But I don't like chili. Me: Eating gumbo for the same reason works too. > 21. You know frito pie isn't a pie, and isn't a dessert, but should be a food group. > It isn't? Me: So should shrimp dip. > 22. You find the word dinner confusing - there's only lunch and then there's supper. > Yes. Breakfast --> Lunch --> Supper. A dinner is a formal thing where you have to dress nicely, or have reservations for, or where there is an honoree. Me: Agreed. Dinners are formal occasions. And we do enough of those with Mardi Gras every year. > 23. You understand these jokes and forward them to your friends from Texas. > Or to your friends all over everywhere. If you read this far, you are friends indeed, or you have Texan relatives and understand. Me: Or you are from Alabama, or the rest of the deep South. > --Amanda Glad to know Alabama isn't the only state this applies to. Meg From bray.262 at osu.edu Wed May 15 11:07:24 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 11:07:24 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: Lapskaus and 24 Message-ID: <794BF2161B@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> >In Norway we have a dish called lapskaus, which is >basically a stew made with chunks of potatoes, turnips, >carrots, meat Isn't this also called goulash? On the 24 website they have this place where you can "log" into Kimberly's computer and see what's on her desktop. Under Books she has listed under "Books to read when not so serious" she has Goblet of Fire. I thought that was cute. Anyone watch 24? I love it. And I just KNEW that the other mole in the agency was who it turned out to be! I was so excited about that because I so rarely guess those things correctly. This is the slowest day....erg. We're seeing Star Wars tonight at midnight and I swear the clock is running backwards. (EwanEwanEwanEwan) Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements LORD OF THE SNITCH Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly One is the dork Ref all on his own On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it One game may take three months, or may take but a minute On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Wed May 15 15:45:37 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 15:45:37 -0000 Subject: Lapskaus In-Reply-To: <794BF2161B@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Rachel Bray wrote: > >In Norway we have a dish called lapskaus, which is > >basically a stew made with chunks of potatoes, turnips, > >carrots, meat > > Isn't this also called goulash? [snip] Gulash is Hungarian, and I think they use different seasoning. In Norway it is only seasoned with pepper and salt. I believe the sauce of gulash is much thinner than that of lapskaus too - properly cooked lapskaus is relatively thick. If forced to translate the term lapskaus into English, I normally just say it is a variation of Irish stew. Best regards Christian Stub? From moongirlk at yahoo.com Wed May 15 16:02:06 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 16:02:06 -0000 Subject: Central Texas Germans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., John Walton wrote: > Now, all we need to do to get the vegetarians really retching is talk about > black pudding -- yum! > > --John John, sweetie, it's not just the vegetarians who'll be retching! While I'm posting, the thread about central TX German festivals prompts me to compare them a little to central Missouri German festivals. Quite a few German immigrants settled the banks of the Missouri river, supposedly because it reminded them of the Rhine valley. They, however, mostly came from an immigrant group that initially settled in Pennsylvania, and are probably further removed from Germany by now than their Texan counterparts. Still, there are towns with German names (including Rhineland, which was all but wiped out in the flood of '93) that retain a degree of German culture (not to mention some nice little wineries) all along that area. I was reminded of them when I visited New Braunfels back in my college days in TX. There are "German" festivals in this area as well, and I have to say that in part I agree with Dinah that they are a bit clich?, but some of that is an economic issue (which I'll get into in a minute), and despite the look of it, the people running them do still feel the tie to Germany, even if Germany wouldn't claim them. I did a research project in grad school about language and culture retention in immigrant enclaves in Missouri, and while the Italian- inhabited Hill area of St. Louis has many more people who still speak Italian (and has an Italian-language newspaper, *many* Italian restaurants and bakeries, import shops, etc.) than the more rural German enclaves like Hermann, the adult generations in the Hermann area do still see themselves as being German in heritage/culture, and many do still speak the language. The problem with the festivals is that they are meant to generate money, and therefore are geared to appeal to outsiders. Hermann's not exactly in the middle of a bustling thoroughfare, people have to decide to go there, so their festivals are all about the wineries, beer and brats and the most obvious bits of what is considered German culture by meltingpot midwestern USAmericans. It may seem crass to a true German, but it's what brings in a good chunk of their livelihood each year. I'm not sure what that adds to the discussion, but I thought I'd toss out that the festivals don't necessarily (at least in this case) reflect the true level of German culture that is present in the community. kimberly trying hard to distract herself from the thought of black pudding From editor at texas.net Wed May 15 16:30:07 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 11:30:07 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Central Texas Germans References: <20020515104138.13983.qmail@web12006.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00ba01c1fc2d$c752ba20$8b7663d1@texas.net> Dinah said: Weiwrste have nothing to do with German culture. At least not in my book. Goethe, Schiller, Thomas Mann is German culture. Bach is German culture. Amanda responds: Semantic difficulties. "Culture" as Penny and I are using the term (I think; Penny, correct me if I'm wrong) is the totality of a people--up to and including their ethnic foods, dress, dances, and the jokes they tell on themselves. It is not just literature or music. It's what makes an ethnic identity, and I really believe most Germans (most anybody) would identify themselves by things like food or dress more than by Great Works. Dinah: Polka and Wurst are sad mirrors of how other nations perceive us - even if their ancestors did come from here. Besides, those things are only customary in the very southern part of Germany. the river Main (on which our village lies) is called the "Weiwurst Aequator" - go farther North and you won't find those things. Even here they aren't that usual. Amanda: Probably because Germany itself has only been an entity for a relatively short time; previously it was various different states, who presumably all had slightly different cultures. You see different variants in different regions of most countries, even one like Poland which has been dealing with the world as a country for hundreds of years. Dinah, about Texas German festivals: Well, I'm pretty sure they look a bit like what they look like here. Actually I've seen some on TV and heard enough detailed desciption to have a rather good impression of what they look like. Amanda: I beg to differ. I *live* here and had an impression based on TV and detailed descriptions, which, after actually attending a few, turned out to not be a good impression of them. Dinah: I'm just really touchy about the subject because my parent's are from Czech heritage (my Dad was one of those that had to leave their home after WWII was over) and while a certain amount of cliches surely apply I don't like the fact that it seems to be reduced to that. Amanda: Well, I'm sorry it is over there. But we aren't talking about anything having been reduced over here. There is a certain amount of looking back at the source, surely, but every bit as much celebration of a very active and existing culture. With cliches thrown in, yes, but that is not the sum total. Dinah: And "beer hall" songs, if you don't necessarily take the Oktoberfest but more rural festivals of a similar kind, are not strictly speaking cheesy. Some have a long standing tradition. It's just that > 1. the halls are filled with people who are mostly 65 and up Amanda: Not over here. > 2. it degenerates more and more to "how much beer can > you drink in one evening and still remember the > lyrics" (that's if there are younger ones) Amanda: Well, yeah, so? That's fun, and getting drunk is an integral part of just about any culture.....Germanic cultures of all stripes had a strong river of ale and mead flowing through them. Here is a point where Germanic, Texan, and Mexican cultures have all neatly converged; hell, at some point it doesn't even matter if you *can* remember the words..... Dinah: It's a bit like all those "Western Clubs" that exists here. Germans dressing up in Cowboy boots and complete regalia including chaps and hats and mixing it in weid combination with Native American jewelery and being sure they are doing something typically American. Or saying "Go to McDonald's, experience American culture". Okay, that last example was a stretch, but that's how many people think. Amanda: It's nothing like that. Apples to oranges. Germans dressing up as cowboys is just that, dress-up, for no better reason than they want to. Unless there is a displaced population of cowboys in Germany, this is not a relevant comparison. While I admit that nobody wears lederhosen on an everyday basis in small town Texas, and you do see some German folk costumes during the festivals, still--they're wearing them because they are a root of the Texas/German cultural heritage. These people haven't simply dressed up in a way that they think is cool, that has nothing to do with them, they've dressed to reflect their heritage. And to sell beer, to be sure, but the point is, there is a relevant association there. Dinah: I'm not comfortable with the thought of being reduced to that. I didn't mean to bash your festivals, it's just that many people get a pictures stuck in their heads that is completely untrue. Amanda: Like you have. Dinah: I really don't like that. Amanda: Me either. From dicentra at xmission.com Wed May 15 19:17:05 2002 From: dicentra at xmission.com (dicentra63) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 19:17:05 -0000 Subject: Watercress In-Reply-To: <003101c1fbc6$9b2b7f20$a522ddcb@price> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Tabouli" wrote: > Jennifer Boggess Ramon: > > Besides, an afternoon tea is a perfect excuse to haul out the devilled egg plate and make watercress and cucumber sandwiches sans crust.< > > Poking my head out of a pile of paper to ask... what on *earth* is watercress like? English children always seem to be munching on egg and cress sandwiches in books, and I was always curious about it. Is it widely eaten? What does it look and taste like? (some cookbook told me it tastes "peppery" (?)) Can you actually scoop it out of a pond and wash it off to eat? > I don't know if the Brits eat the same version, but something we call watercress grows in cold, swift creeks in the Rocky Mountains. Yeah, you can pretty much just grab a handful and eat it, though it's always prudent to wash it in potable water first. (I guess you don't need to be told about the dangers of Giardia.) And it's kind of "peppery." If you've ever eaten Nasturtium leaves (Tropaeolum), they're like that, only not so strong. --Dicey, who can't stand it but whose father was crazy about it and made her eat it when they were camping From aprilgc at ivillage.com Wed May 15 22:24:31 2002 From: aprilgc at ivillage.com (ladylprekaun) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 22:24:31 -0000 Subject: Willow (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Episode II note Message-ID: She TOOK his skin! I couldn't believe it. Sorry, I don't remember who the watchers on the list are. I just had a "Whoa!" moment and felt the need to share. On another plot-line, my brother was questioning - if that demon makes Spike "what he used to be", will he be raging Spike again, or will he be William (also "what he used to be)? Going to see Star Wars Episode II at midnight! The excitement is building. Magically yours, Lady Leprechaun From bray.262 at osu.edu Wed May 15 18:36:38 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 18:36:38 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: Willow (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Episode II note Message-ID: <80C8F9432A@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> She TOOK his skin! I couldn't believe it. Sorry, I don't remember  who the watchers on the list are. I just had a "Whoa!" moment and  felt the need to share. I KNOW! I actually jumped and gasped when that happened! My friend looked at me in horror and said "DID SHE JUST SKIN HIM?!" Wow has Willow gone over the deep end. 6.5 hours until Star Wars! I'm getting so giddy! Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements LORD OF THE SNITCH Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly One is the dork Ref all on his own On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it One game may take three months, or may take but a minute On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm From aprilgc at ivillage.com Wed May 15 22:51:23 2002 From: aprilgc at ivillage.com (ladylprekaun) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 22:51:23 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples in real life (was: on American TV In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm going to weigh in (late as usual) on the interracial thread once I've had a chance to catch up on my email (and read what everyone else is saying). I was once involved in a mixed-marriage, and have a lot to say on the subject. In the meantime, I wrote a little story on interracial dating. It hasn't been primed for the web or anything yet, and may not ever be, but if you're interested you can check it out at: http://www.geocities.com/aprilgc/The_Job.htm If you do read it, please let me know what you think (aprilgc at yahoo.com). Magically yours, Lady Leprechaun From coriolan at worldnet.att.net Thu May 16 01:11:33 2002 From: coriolan at worldnet.att.net (coriolan_cmc2001) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 01:11:33 -0000 Subject: Interesting headline Message-ID: On the Dutch election: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020515/ap_wo_en_po/netherlands_balkenende_profile_1 - CMC From boggles at earthlink.net Thu May 16 02:13:39 2002 From: boggles at earthlink.net (Jennifer Boggess Ramon) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 21:13:39 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Central Texas & German Festivals In-Reply-To: <003801c1fb58$7340b980$e57763d1@texas.net> References: <003801c1fb58$7340b980$e57763d1@texas.net> Message-ID: At 10:02 AM -0500 5/14/02, Amanda wrote: > >-- and Southerner on her mother's (eligible for Daughters >of the Confederacy, I believe, with similar caveat), OMG, I can't believe you admitted that in public. (I am too, no caveat - the great-grandmother was a daughter of a Confederate cavalryman and documented. My grandmother made me go to one of their meetings once. I fled, horrified. My mother was sort of relieved, I think.) >On the >recent census, I wrote in a category for my kids, "Polish American," just to >give the government a little heartburn. I wrote in "Celt" for myself and "Ashkenazic-Hungarian" for the Spouse. :) Some friends of ours called themselves Samoan just because they could . . . -- - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at earthlink.net === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From boggles at earthlink.net Thu May 16 02:27:00 2002 From: boggles at earthlink.net (Jennifer Boggess Ramon) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 21:27:00 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Watercress In-Reply-To: <003101c1fbc6$9b2b7f20$a522ddcb@price> References: <003101c1fbc6$9b2b7f20$a522ddcb@price> Message-ID: At 2:11 PM +1000 5/15/02, Tabouli wrote: > >Poking my head out of a pile of paper to ask... what on *earth* is >watercress like? English children always seem to be munching on egg >and cress sandwiches in books, and I was always curious about it. >Is it widely eaten? Depends on where you are. It's not too uncommon as a salad green around here. >What does it look and taste like? (some cookbook told me it tastes >"peppery" (?)) It does have a bit of a "hot" edge to it. Otherwise it's basically yet another bitter green. >Can you actually scoop it out of a pond and wash it off to eat? It needs running water, so not a pond, but perhaps a brook or a creek. It's too hot to grow it around here; it's more common in places that have hills or mountains and somewhat cooler weather. >Maybe I have an emerging thing for eating aquatic plants or >something, as I love the taste of seaweed as well... It's nothing like that. It's more like mint than kelp, although that's not a very good comparison. -- - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at earthlink.net === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From meckelburg at foni.net Thu May 16 06:56:30 2002 From: meckelburg at foni.net (mecki987) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 06:56:30 -0000 Subject: Lapskaus- the icky one In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "pengolodh_sc" wrote: > --- In HPFGU-OTChatter, Dinah wrote: > [snip] > > Though, speaking of German food, why not ask Sabine, > > our local Northerner, about Labskaus? It beats Haggis > > in the icky factor, believe me. Very mythical food. > > > > Dinah > Okay, Dinah- you asked for it! and you're absolutely right, Labskaus is the most icky food I know of. you take: -beetroot -rollmops or salted herring, sometimes the young herring -potatos -onions -a can of corned beef -some pickles and a fried egg. You mash the potato with the cooking-water(!),fry the corned-beef together with the onions and mash that too.mash the beetroot and put it to the meat. add the potato and stir. Some people mash the herring into it all, some place it on top. add the pickles and the fried egg- et voil?! Here it is- it looks like it has been eaten before- a dirty, pink coloured mass, smelling of something between fish and meat! Okay, folks from all over the world- try to beat the icky factor! mecki From siskiou at earthlink.net Thu May 16 07:17:22 2002 From: siskiou at earthlink.net (Susanne) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 00:17:22 -0700 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Lapskaus- the icky one In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <129112194413.20020516001722@earthlink.net> Hi, Wednesday, May 15, 2002, 11:56:30 PM, meckelburg at foni.net wrote: > Okay, folks from all over the world- try to beat the icky factor! I've had Labskaus and it tastes better than it looks . I'm from Germany, now living in the US, and my least favorite meal (my dad's favorite) is something called "Gelinge". It's sweet and sour heart and lungs. The heart isn't all that bad, but the texture and taste of lung is something I'll never want to experience again. Blutwurst was also one of my least favorites. On the other hand, our special Christmas sauce looks yucky and the ingredients sound as if somebody threw everything they had left over into a pot, but it tastes great and my American husband and his family love it, too. It's all sorts of roots cooked with Kassler (smoked meat) and then ground up. Add gingerbread (a really simple kind) and Malzbier (a sweet, non alcoholic beer), lemon juice and a little sugar. It's a silesian recipe and the sausages you eat with it are only made for Christmas and New Year. -- Best regards, Susanne mailto:siskiou at earthlink.net From tabouli at unite.com.au Thu May 16 10:33:47 2002 From: tabouli at unite.com.au (Tabouli) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 20:33:47 +1000 Subject: Cultural chip in Message-ID: <004501c1fcc5$2b5da9c0$f420ddcb@price> >Dinah: I'm just really touchy about the subject because my parent's are from >Czech heritage (my Dad was one of those that had to leave their home after >WWII was over) and while a certain amount of clich?es surely apply I don't >like the fact that it seems to be reduced to that.< Australia's image overseas is an interesting case in point. I mean, the fact of the matter is that over 80% of Australians are suburbanites. They live in three bedroom houses or flats and drive cars to the supermarket and watch TV. Their diet and clothing and lifestyle isn't really very different from people in the US and UK. But hey, who's interested in that? How boring! Far more interesting to concoct this romantic image of sheep farms and crocodile hunters and surfers in this semi-rural desert wasteland teeming with kangaroos and snakes and spiders. Truly, though, we're much more "Neighbours" than "Crocodile Dundee". Sad, but true. Amanda: > "Culture" as Penny and I are using the term (I think; Penny, correct me if I'm wrong) is the totality of a people--up to and including their ethnic foods, dress, dances, and the jokes they tell on themselves. It is not just literature or music.< In the cross-cultural area, literature, art, music etc. are often referred to as big C culture or "high" culture. In terms of the more general definition, I spent a whole chapter of my thesis defining "culture". I like Trompenaars' diagram, where he draws three concentric circles, with things like foods, dress, music, etc. in the outer circle (concrete, observable manifestations of culture), values, beliefs, morals etc. in the second circle, and core assumptions in the inner circle. When running cross-cultural programs I often use this sort of diagram to illustrate that the most obvious aspects of "culture" (different food, language, etc.) are not, in the end, the most important. People adapt readily enough to a change in physical environment, unless really extreme. It's the inner circle stuff that ends up stressing people most, the way people just "don't know how to behave!", unlike people back home. Some nice simple quotable definitions (mostly from anthropology, IIRC): - Culture is that which is learned. - Culture is the man-made part of the environment (original version, presumably "man-made" would now be replaced with "artificial" or "created by people" or some such) I rather like the first one of these, and apply it implicitly in my training sessions. Very handy when people declare of something someone from another culture has done "But people should just *know* that..." or "But that's just common sense/courtesy/knowledge!" and so on. If you really think about it, there are very very few things people "just know"... all but the most basic behaviour has to be learned from somewhere, and people from different parts of the world learn different behaviours. Tabouli. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From s_ings at yahoo.com Thu May 16 12:23:56 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 08:23:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Two more birthdays! Message-ID: <20020516122356.29434.qmail@web14601.mail.yahoo.com> *races into the room, dragging a huge cake behind her* Two more birthdays, how can I ever keep up with the cake-baking around here?! Todays birthday wishes go out to Scott and Minzzer. Birthday owls can be sent directly to Minzzer at minzzer at hotmail.com or to both honourees care of this list. I hope both of you have days filled with fun, magic and many chocolate frogs. Happy Birthday, Scott! Happy Birthday, Minzzer! Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Find, Connect, Date! http://personals.yahoo.ca From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Thu May 16 12:28:39 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 12:28:39 -0000 Subject: Icky food In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "mecki987" wrote: > Okay, folks from all over the world- try to beat the icky factor! Tripe, Sybill? David From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Thu May 16 15:09:46 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 15:09:46 -0000 Subject: Icky food In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter, "davewitley" wrote: > --- In HPFGU-OTChatter, "mecki987" wrote: > > > Okay, folks from all over the world- try to beat the icky factor! > > Tripe, Sybill? > > David You WANT icky food? I'll be all too happy to oblige! I'll start with fried tongue of codfish - my main complaint against this dish (yes, I have eaten it, on more than one occasion) is that the surface where the tongue was cut off, is slick and slippery even after it has been fried, and gives a certain slimy feel when you swallow it. Then we can talk Smalehove: The name smalehove stems from the elderly Norwegian noun "smal" (or "smale"), which means sheep, and the noun "hove", which is a local variation of the noun "hode", which means head. The principal ingredient of the dish should thus be apparent to all and sundry. The dish is prepared as follows: Pick a healthy-looking, Scrapie-free sheep. Cut off all the wool (carefully; professional help can be hired in most circumstances) - save for later, and learn how to knit. Cut the head off said sheep. Scorch the remaining wool off the head, while at the same time grilling the skin to a nice, golden crisp. Take care not to scorch the skin, however. Automated machines are available that perform this task. Wash the head in a washing-machine. Chop the head (longitudinally) in two pieces. Remove brain and brain-stem, and clean the nose. Wash the half heads in a washing-machine. Boil the half heads for six hours. Serve with 'taters, mashed Swedes (Danes if Swedes are out of season) and Akevitt. Lots of Akevitt. Connoisseurs know not to eat the cartilage of the ear and the black part of the eye. --- Here's an alternate instruction-manual for smalehove: * Take a sheep and cut off its head. * Divide the head in two halves * Clean the head, i.e., remove the brain and other rubbish lying around inside the head. NB!!!! DO NOT REMOVE THE TONGUE OR THE EYES!!!!!! * Find a gas burner with a good flame, and scorch the head. Thus you remove the wool, and the head gets its nice brown colour, all in one go. * Let the head soak in soda-water for 24 hours. * Wash and scrub the head with a steel brush * Then put the head in a salt-brine for three days * Smoke the head Thus you cook Smalehove: * Find a big pan and put the head(s) in it. * Fill the pan with water so that the head(s) is (are) completely covered * Boil *slowly* for ca. 3 hours * For the last half hour add Swedes * Smalahove is served with boiled potatoes and turnips * Liquid accompaniment should be either Akevitt or potatoes refined at home by methods not entirely legal Thus you eat Smalehove: * Almost everything on the head is edible. The only inedible stuff is the skull and the teeth. * Before eating the tongue, remember to remove the skin. It is not good to eat. * When you slurp the eyes, you're allowed to leave the little black thing * The best part is the meat on the chin and below the ears. * You can get an extra oomph out of the eyes if you allow them to soak for a few seconds in your glas of Akevitt, before you take it all down the hatch. * Enjoy the food, and not the least the liquids! (The term Swedes refers to Swedish turnips, or rutabagers, (we call it k?lrabi in Norway) if anyone was in doubt) --- In coastal regions in Northern Norway, they do a similar thing to codfish-heads. In the regions where people traditionally eat smalehove, they also eat something called v?rraball ("Ramball" when translated into English). I have not indulged. Culinary regards Christian Stub? Wondering if there are any Swedes present willing to share their view on surstr?mming From lupinesque at yahoo.com Thu May 16 19:27:53 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 19:27:53 -0000 Subject: Two more birthdays! In-Reply-To: <20020516122356.29434.qmail@web14601.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Sheryll fretted: > Two more birthdays, how can I ever keep up with the > cake-baking around here?! You mean Andy doesn't bake all our HPfGU cakes? Happy birthday, Scott! and Happy Birthday, Minzzer! Amy Z From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Thu May 16 23:39:11 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 16:39:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Two more birthdays! In-Reply-To: <20020516122356.29434.qmail@web14601.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020516233911.44062.qmail@web13704.mail.yahoo.com> Happy Birthday, Scott! Happy Birthday, Minzzer! May you both get plenty of Birthday goodies! Make a wish and may it come true! Big toast to you both! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere, Massachusetts and Her Very Merry Band of Muggles 100% "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From usergoogol at yahoo.com Thu May 16 22:51:37 2002 From: usergoogol at yahoo.com (usergoogol) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 22:51:37 -0000 Subject: The Daily Prophet's latest news story Message-ID: (Or maybe its something I'm making up on the spot. Who cares.) Headline: J.K. Rowling isn't even trying. Dateline: May 16th 2002 Placeline: Scotland Nameline: Greg Tresso Randomline: I like tacoes JK ROWLING ISN'T EVEN TRYING! New sources say J. K. Rowling enjoys torturing her muggle fans. (Come to think of it, so do I.) (Muggles are fun.) ----Joanne "JK" Rowling, the creator of the popular books about the Wizard World, "Harry Potter and the Whatever of Blank, which have had a surprisingly large market in the Muggle community, says that she's intentionally delaying the fifth book because it makes her feel big. "Yeah, I'm not exactly rushing with the book," she said. "Ideally, I should take as much time as I can trying to make it the best book I can." Obviously, this means that she's delaying it for her own sadistic pleasure. We here at the Daily Prophet have suspected for long that Rowling was pure evil ever since she needlessly attacked veteran reporter Rita Skeeter in her latest book, "...and the Goblet of Fire." Frankly, we have long suspected that Rowling is a dark beast of some horrific breed. Perhaps she was bred by a mad wizard in order to wreak havok upon the good people at our fine newspaper. Perhaps she was raised by godless communistic nazis. Who can say? But we here at the Daily Prophet just have to teach people a lesson. When you mess with the Prophet, you mess with... well, I don't need to finish. Watch out Rowling. Of course, we try to maintain an unbiased opininon, so here is a counterarguement from a man who has been rumored to have improper relations with wild animals, David Hopoffguns. "You're clearly crazy. Before book four, you loved her. But now that she has been a little against your stupid newspaper, you treat her like a Dementor!" Of course, thats rediculous. Dementors have helped maintain order in the prisons of England. Rowling has never done anything for England. From editor at texas.net Fri May 17 01:38:57 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 20:38:57 -0500 Subject: How to Make a Hedgehog (was a very long string of Res from the main list) References: <30.26e0946f.2a14f88e@aol.com> Message-ID: <001c01c1fd43$9dbb0480$a97763d1@texas.net> Eloise pleaded, over on the main list > PS, if anyone can work out how to make little hedgehog icons, please will > they let me know? Every time I try, they come out like fish! Possible hedgehogs? ||||||| ~__'> '' '' \\\\\\ |__]"> '' '' Do hedgehogs have tails? ~~[__]'> '' '' No, wait, that one's a rat. ~~[__]'> '' ' And that one's Scabbers. Alas, even with Scabbers in there, I was afraid to put this on the main list. How ungeistly of me. Any other type-artists out there? Let's make a hedgehog! --Amanda From editor at texas.net Fri May 17 01:40:41 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 20:40:41 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] How to Make a Hedgehog (was a very long string of Res from the main list) References: <30.26e0946f.2a14f88e@aol.com> <001c01c1fd43$9dbb0480$a97763d1@texas.net> Message-ID: <002301c1fd43$db707120$a97763d1@texas.net> Well, they looked good in the original type. As it was translated, it didn't work. Problem is you have to use more than one line. Rrrr. --Amanda, whose hedgehogs now look like they went through the digitizer in GalaxyQuest ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amanda" To: Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 8:38 PM Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] How to Make a Hedgehog (was a very long string of Res from the main list) > Eloise pleaded, over on the main list > > > PS, if anyone can work out how to make little hedgehog icons, please will > > they let me know? Every time I try, they come out like fish! > > Possible hedgehogs? > > ||||||| > ~__'> > '' '' > > \\\\\\ > |__]"> > '' '' > Do hedgehogs have tails? > > ~~[__]'> > '' '' > No, wait, that one's a rat. > > ~~[__]'> > '' ' > And that one's Scabbers. > > Alas, even with Scabbers in there, I was afraid to put this on the main > list. How ungeistly of me. > > Any other type-artists out there? Let's make a hedgehog! > > --Amanda > > > Yahoo! Groups Sponsor > ADVERTISEMENT > > > > > ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ > > Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ > > Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! > > Is your message... > An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. > Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. > Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. > None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. > Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com > > Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com > ____________________________________________________________ > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. > > From s_ings at yahoo.com Fri May 17 11:25:02 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 07:25:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Happy Birthday, Megan! In-Reply-To: <002301c1fd43$db707120$a97763d1@texas.net> Message-ID: <20020517112502.33616.qmail@web14606.mail.yahoo.com> *Trudges exhaustedly into the room slowly throwing confetti about and dragging yet another huge cake with multiple candles. Looks up, notices many watching listees. Puts on a bright smile and bursts into a warbly rendition of Happy Birthday* Happy Birthday to you.... What? You don't like my singing? Okay, I'll leave that to the more talented list members. I know I'm not the best singer, but sheesh, I thought you'd all cut me some slack so early in the morning. It's Megan's birthday today. I was just trying to make it a little special for her. :-D Megan's birthday wishes can be sent care of this list, or directly to the birthday girl herself at rhiannon333 at hotmail.com Megan, I hope you birthday brings everything you hoped for and I apologise for the off-key singing. :) Happy Birthday, Megan! Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Find, Connect, Date! http://personals.yahoo.ca From s_ings at yahoo.com Fri May 17 11:31:40 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 07:31:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Good thoughts to Wanda Message-ID: <20020517113140.99584.qmail@web14601.mail.yahoo.com> *steps into the room, removes Birthday Elf hat and dons hat of Good Thoughts Elf* Wanda, our very own purveyor of good thoughts and birthday wishes is in need of our help this weekend. Her son William is undergoing surgery tomorrow. I'd like to ask everyone who can to send many good vibes in William's and Wanda's direction, either through this list or directly at witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Wanda, our thoughts are with you and we hope William comes through his surgery tomorrow with flying colours. With love and prayers, Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Find, Connect, Date! http://personals.yahoo.ca From tabouli at unite.com.au Fri May 17 12:18:08 2002 From: tabouli at unite.com.au (Tabouli) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 22:18:08 +1000 Subject: Pullman movies? and whimsical weddings Message-ID: <002701c1fd9c$ea0e0f40$f226ddcb@price> Ahaaa, just got the following Ananova announcement: http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_589978.html ...announcing the upcoming conversion of the Pullman books (which I still haven't read) into films... by Tom Stoppard! Well, well. In other news, collected my probable wedding witness outfit today (what exactly does a witness *do* at a wedding besides watch them sign the papers?), and was amused when it turned out to be very Potterpropriate... a deep blue cheongsam emblazoned with gold phoenixes! I'm deciding to read it as an impending Book 5 omen. (I also plan to employ its impeccable Chineseness during future attacks of Oriental mystique, though my hair always lets the side down by being *impossible* to put up using chopsticks). To muse briefly once more on interracial marriages, one thing I've noticed is that in all the Eurasian weddings I've been to (and I've been to lots) the Asian representative has gone completely gung-ho on the ol' traditional wedding front. Yes, marry 'em to a white Westerner, and they're falling over themselves to wear saris and cheongsams, incorporate traditional ceremonies and customs, etc.etc.etc. My Swiss-Chinese friend is marrying a Frenchman and going the whole Chinese hog: wearing a red cheongsam and dressing me in one as well, tea ceremony, red packet, the tests of fidelity and fertility, the Chinese drinking chants, Chinese food at the reception, double happiness symbols, the lot. OTOH, the Asian-Asian weddings I've attended or heard about seem to shy away from such stuff. White wedding dress, Western food, Western vows: the only concession seems to be simultaneously translating the service into the appropriate language for non-English speaking relatives. Most interesting. Myself, I'm all for a bit of spicing up the wedding ceremony. The last one I went to was more like a concert, with singing performances and all manner of things. How about the rest of you merry OT types? Any weird and wonderful weddings you've been to, either your own or other people's? Surely you SCA types must have a few interesting medieval wedding tales to tell, for example, and we must have some people here from places with wedding customs little known to most of us. A nice bridal thread, that's what we need... Tabouli. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From lupinesque at yahoo.com Fri May 17 12:15:36 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 12:15:36 -0000 Subject: How to Make a Hedgehog (was a very long string of Res from the main list) In-Reply-To: <001c01c1fd43$9dbb0480$a97763d1@texas.net> Message-ID: How about this (spliced from two of Amanda's): \\\\\ ~__'> '' '' Now, how about a Flying Hedgehog? /| \\\\\/ ~ '> / /" |/ I knew that that $70,000 spent majoring in art would pay off eventually. Amy, hoping the formatting comes out right From lupinesque at yahoo.com Fri May 17 12:21:57 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 12:21:57 -0000 Subject: How to Make a Hedgehog (was a very long string of Res from the main list) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Amy, hoping the formatting comes out right Drat, no, it didn't. One more try. /| \\\\\/ ~ '> / /" |/ Amy From lupinesque at yahoo.com Fri May 17 12:42:40 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 12:42:40 -0000 Subject: Pullman movies? and whimsical weddings In-Reply-To: <002701c1fd9c$ea0e0f40$f226ddcb@price> Message-ID: Tabouli reported: > the upcoming conversion of the Pullman books (which I >still haven't read) into films... by Tom Stoppard! Well, well. Wow. I can't think of too many writers I'd entrust with books I love this much, but-- Tom Stoppard! So far, so good. > How about the rest of you merry OT types? Any weird and wonderful >weddings you've been to, either your own or other people's? Surely >you SCA types must have a few interesting medieval wedding tales to >tell, for example I am not an SCA type, but one of the first weddings I solemnized (now *that's* a verb you don't get to pull out of mothballs too often) was for a couple who were, and they informed me that they and many of the guests would be in period regalia and asked me whether I'd like to do the same. I said yes on the condition that I got to wear one of those tall pointy hats with the trailing veil. (I asked what a clergyperson of the period would have worn, but they said a wedding wouldn't even have been performed by a clergyperson, so I could wear what I liked.) It was a blast. I wish I had good pictures from it. Other than that, the most unusual wedding I've been involved in will be one next February, when the ceremony will take place on top of a mountain and the bride and groom will then snowboard down. I will be taking the gondola, thank you very much. Amy From rhiannon333 at hotmail.com Fri May 17 13:08:38 2002 From: rhiannon333 at hotmail.com (rhiannon333au) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 13:08:38 -0000 Subject: Happy Birthday, Megan! In-Reply-To: <20020517112502.33616.qmail@web14606.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Sheryll Townsend wrote: > *Trudges exhaustedly into the room slowly throwing > confetti about and dragging yet another huge cake with > multiple candles. Looks up, notices many watching > listees. Puts on a bright smile and bursts into a > warbly rendition of Happy Birthday* > > Happy Birthday to you.... What? You don't like my > singing? Okay, I'll leave that to the more talented > list members. I know I'm not the best singer, but > sheesh, I thought you'd all cut me some slack so early > in the morning. Awww, Sheryll, the s_inging was superb, thank you. It arrived right on time (given our time zones, that is some achievement!) I must say the poor Birthday Elf has had to do a lot of cooking and singing lately - is much appreciated. Thank you, Megan (Whose huge number of candles would require a pretty big cake - enough to feed the watching listees!) From bray.262 at osu.edu Fri May 17 09:56:42 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 09:56:42 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: Weird (well....DIFFERENT) weddings Message-ID: I've been to a wedding once where the couple had a Cherokee Indian holy man in full ceremonial garb chant down the aisle of the church and bless not only the couple but also the guests. It was very different but looking back, it was actually very beautiful. I've been to a wedding in Vegas where they got married on the pirate ship in full pirate costumes (and MAN was her husband drop-dead gorgeous!!) and the food was a seafood buffet. That was fun. Guest souvenirs were eye patches with their names on them and plastic daggers with the date on the blade. Then there was my friend who had a wedding where she and her bridesmaids wore flapper dresses and her husband and his groomsmen wore appropriate suits to match. The music at the reception was an orchestra playing big band. That was BIG TIME fun. Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements LORD OF THE SNITCH Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly One is the dork Ref all on his own On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it One game may take three months, or may take but a minute On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm From macloudt at hotmail.com Fri May 17 15:58:21 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 15:58:21 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] whimsical weddings Message-ID: Tabouli wrote: >In other news, collected my probable wedding witness outfit today (what >exactly does a witness *do* at a wedding besides watch them sign the >papers?), and was amused when it turned out to be very Potterpropriate... a >deep blue cheongsam emblazoned with gold phoenixes! > >I'm deciding to read it as an impending Book 5 omen. (I also plan to >employ its impeccable Chineseness during future attacks of Oriental >mystique, though my hair always lets the side down by being *impossible* to >put up using chopsticks). Wow, your outfit sounds fab. On the cultural clothing thread, has any bridesmaid ever worn a bridesmaid dress (a western-style one) that *didn't* make you gag? Thank heavens I've only been a bridesmaid 3 times, so I only harboured 3 disasters in my wardrobe (hint: moving to another continent is a great excuse to get rid of the blasted things). The first one had yards of material and made me look like a curtain. The second was shiny light blue and clung in all the wrong places. The third was a nice purple shade but the style of the dress made me look like a mutant grape. When I got married I just had my maid of honour, and I told her to buy whatever dress she wanted. She's always been grateful for that. One friend of mine had been a bridesmaid *11* times, so she had spent at least one thousand dollars on the hideous disasters. The worst one was yellow and black. The poor girl looked like a bumblebee. >A nice bridal thread, that's what we need... Agreed! And the guys on the list are more than welcome to relate their wedding stories as well :) Mary Ann (who has vowed to never, ever wear satin again!) _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com From Zorb17 at aol.com Fri May 17 16:28:31 2002 From: Zorb17 at aol.com (Zorb17 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 12:28:31 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] whimsical weddings Message-ID: <5CBDF52F.4DBB7C24.00059C09@aol.com> In a message dated Fri, 17 May 2002 12:00:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Mary Jennings" writes: >Wow, your outfit sounds fab. On the cultural clothing thread, has any >bridesmaid ever worn a bridesmaid dress (a western-style one) that *didn't* >make you gag? I saw a wedding once with a great theme - and the bridesmaids looked great, too! It was on a cliff overlooking the ocean in late afternoon, right next to my grandfather's condo, which is how I got the nice view. They had a tropical/Hawaiian theme. All the men had Hawaiian shirts and light slacks, and all the women had tropical-looking dresses. The guests were dressed along the same lines. The only one who looked out of place was actually the bride, who came in a more traditional white dress. A friend of mine is getting married next year, and I'm going to be a bridesmaid. She promised the dresses wouldn't be all poofy or hideous - I hope she keeps to that! Zorb From kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk Fri May 17 16:14:58 2002 From: kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk (Kathryn) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 17:14:58 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] whimsical weddings References: Message-ID: <3CE52C82.000001.70355@monica> *raises hand tentattively* At the risk of pissing of everyone who has ever had to wear a dress that made them look like the creation of some mad confectioner. I was a bridesmaid for my cousin and the dress was quite nice. A beautiful shade of green and reasonably attractive - I mean it wasn't perfect but of the 2 adult bridesmaids I'm very short, fairly round and have pale skin and the other was tall, skinny and dark finding a dress that suited us both was difficult! The other bridesmaid was trying to talk the bride into a dark shade of green that made me look like a walking corpse but my wonderrful cousin refuesd. And we only hired the dresses so I wasn't stuck with it anyway. The only actual problem was she picked the hottest day of the year and wanted us to wear it for the evening reception as well as the afternoon. She tried insisting we wear them for the family gathering that was happening in between but her mother stepped in and pointed out that if we were both suffering from heat stroke we wouldn't make the evening reception at all. So I spent all afternoon wanderin agound the barbecue in a kimono dressing gown with my hair still up in flowers (couldn't get any regular clothing on without destroying the hair)I kept being told I looked like a geisha! They actually had fans on the tables at the reception because they thought between the girls in the dresses (with masses of underskirts) and the guys in mrning suits we might not make i theough the speeches. K -------Original Message------- From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Date: 17 May 2002 17:00:47 To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [HPFGU-OTChatter] whimsical weddings Wow, your outfit sounds fab. On the cultural clothing thread, has any bridesmaid ever worn a bridesmaid dress (a western-style one) that *didn't* make you gag? Thank heavens I've only been a bridesmaid 3 times, so I only harboured 3 disasters in my wardrobe (hint: moving to another continent is a great excuse to get rid of the blasted things). The first one had yards of material and made me look like a curtain. The second was shiny light blue and clung in all the wrong places. The third was a nice purple shade but the style of the dress made me look like a mutant grape. When I got married I just had my maid of honour, and I told her to buy whatever dress she wanted. She's always been grateful for that. Mary Ann (who has vowed to never, ever wear satin again!) _________________________________________________________________ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Fri May 17 17:00:42 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 17:00:42 -0000 Subject: whimsical weddings In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Mary Jennings" wrote: > One friend of mine had been a bridesmaid *11* times, so she had spent at > least one thousand dollars on the hideous disasters. The worst one was > yellow and black. The poor girl looked like a bumblebee. > I don't get this. It's a bit of a blur after 15 years but IIRC, Ruth got to choose her bridesmaids' dresses on the grounds that her dad was paying. A bit tough on her dad perhaps, but not too bad for them. Even then, she tried to ensure they were dresses that they could wear on other occasions. David, wondering if he'll have any say if his daughter ever gets married From jenP_97 at yahoo.com Fri May 17 18:04:48 2002 From: jenP_97 at yahoo.com (jenP_97) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 18:04:48 -0000 Subject: whimsical weddings In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Well, let's see. My wedding was pretty different, as my husband and I had to pay for it ourselves (my dad bought my dress, my sister's dress, and the main course, but everything else was either donated by relatives or paid for by us). My husband's graduate advisor (counsellor) was our minister (she was a member of the Universal Life Church - you know, the "get your certificate through the mail for $5" type of thing - got it so she could officiate at her brother's wedding), and she did it for free (and it was wonderful, as she cried through half the ceremony). We had the ceremony and the reception at an old barn that was renovated for social occasions, and as it's owned by the cousins of my cousins, we got it for free. My aunt and cousins made hors d'ouvres, salads, and the "men" barbecued the meat. The minister and her husband actually bought a pinata and stuffed it full of REALLY COOL stuff and had the kids at our wedding (lots, as my cousins are all Catholic and there are 7 of them with children) pound the stuffing out of it (literally). Then! My husband's sister's birthday was 2 days later, so we bought a cheesecake for her and put candles on it and sang happy birthday during the reception. And my husband made a huge batch of homebrew. People were very drunk (and very happy) when they left. My relatives still tell me that they had the best time at our wedding... and all for under $1000. We went honeymooning at Lake Sonoma (and tasted a lot of wine), and got into a car accident the Saturday after we came home. Totalled the car. I'm still nervous when I drive because of that. Oh, and my sister was my only bridesmaid, and I let her pick out anything she wanted, as long as it wasn't ugly. :) And my husband's best man fell in love with one of my best friends at the wedding, and they're married now and are waiting for their new house to be finished. Isn't that cute? Jen (who made one match, but wasn't able to make the other one she attempted stick) ps. anyone have any links to their wedding pictures online? I think I did at one point, but my old "will always be available to you" alumni account doesn't seem to work anymore... From macloudt at hotmail.com Fri May 17 21:29:18 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 21:29:18 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: whimsical weddings Message-ID: David said: >I don't get this. It's a bit of a blur after 15 years but IIRC, Ruth >got to choose her bridesmaids' dresses on the grounds that her dad >was paying. A bit tough on her dad perhaps, but not too bad for them. I wouldn't have minded so much if I hadn't had to fork out for the dresses! OK, my mom paid for the first one because it was my brother's wedding, but as to the style of dresses outvoted by the other bridesmaids, who were much taller than me. I paid for my other 2 disasters, which is why I'm still so bitter after all these years ;) It may be a cultural thing as to who pays for the bridesmaid dresses. The general rule of thumb I encountered (from my friends with English/Scottish ancestry in Canada) is that if the bridesmaids have to pay, they get to choose the actual dress (unless the bride totally hates them--the dresses, that is!--, but the taste of lots of brides seems to deteriorate rapidly when it comes to such things). In my case I was a completely different shape, size, and colouring as the rest of the bridal party, so I simply lost out. >Even then, she tried to ensure they were dresses that they could wear >on other occasions. Yes, that's what I was promised on all occasions. Halloween, perhaps... >David, wondering if he'll have any say if his daughter ever gets >married Nah, you'll just pay for it. VoiceOfDoom!Mary Ann ;) _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From pbnesbit at msn.com Fri May 17 22:02:55 2002 From: pbnesbit at msn.com (harpdreamer) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 22:02:55 -0000 Subject: Whimsical weddings, bridesmaid dresses (Was: Pullman) In-Reply-To: <002701c1fd9c$ea0e0f40$f226ddcb@price> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Tabouli" wrote: (Snip) > How about the rest of you merry OT types? Any weird and wonderful weddings you've been to, either your own or other people's? Surely you SCA types must have a few interesting medieval wedding tales to tell, for example, and we must have some people here from places with wedding customs little known to most of us. > > A nice bridal thread, that's what we need... > > Tabouli. > > > Doug & I were heavily into Civil War reenacting when we married in 1990, so we had a Civil War-era wedding. My mum made my dress, one of the bridesmaid's dresses, Doug's Sack coat, vest, and shirt. She also made a dress for one of the singers. Our entire wedding (aside from the catering, which Mum & Da paid for) cost all of $50.00. My dress was $10, Doug's clothing was $15, the dress material cost $10. Mum made her dress, and for flowers, I had very simple blue and white baby's breath nosegays. We had friends do all of the videotaping and picture-taking (we only have about 5 posed pictures...all the rest are candids). Doug's father, cousin, and a friend of their performed the music, and we also had a friend of ours from the Music Department at Murray State (where Doug worked then) playing fiddle. Our wedding was held at my Grandmum's farm (with the barn cleaned out in case of rain) outdoors. We borrowed chairs from a local funeral home, so those were free. I've never been to a wedding where the guests *didn't* want to go home! After the wedding, our best man and his fiancee (who was one of my bridesmaids) took us out for pizza. We're going to renew our vows in 3 years (15th anniversary), and this time it'll be a Scottish wedding, held in the Stableyards at Middleton Place, where we both work. I'll be weaving Doug's greatkilt, and probably the material for my dress as well. I've only had one disasterous bridesmaid dress (3 times as a bridesmaid). The other two were quite lovely, even though I don't wear them any more. Peace & Plenty, Parker From SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com Fri May 17 22:09:51 2002 From: SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com (kelleyelf) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 22:09:51 -0000 Subject: Icky food In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Christian, PLEASE tell me there are some authentic Norwegian dishes that are delicious and appealing, not only in the taste, but in the description as well... I am not an overly weak-stomached person (though I can't at all watch those scenes in 'reality' shows in which people have to eat various living, wriggly things), but this Smalehove story did give me quite a few squicks. I think it was the eyeball thing; too many flashbacks to high school Anatomy/Physiology. I was never squicked in that class, not really, but I was very happy when my darling lab partner Elsa took so readily to the dissection of the sheep's eye. Now trying to summon visions of *good* food, so I can start dinner. Hm... "Accio thoughts of pizza with the works, pasta alfredo with lobster, walnut chicken, enchiladas verdes..." :-D --Kelley From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Sat May 18 00:01:07 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 00:01:07 -0000 Subject: Not so icky Norwegian food In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter, "kelleyelf" wrote: > > > Christian, PLEASE tell me there are some authentic Norwegian > dishes that are delicious and appealing, not only in the > taste, but in the description as well... Lightly boiled (poached), lightly salted cod, with boiled potates, boiled carrots, and a small amount of melted butter as sauce. Smoked or cured salmon, with scrambled eggs flavoured only with salt and chives, on a slice of fresh, warm, buttered bread. Halibut Ball - take filet of haddock and raw (peeled, for goodness' sake!) potatoes, onion, salt, pepper and "enough" flour for a firm dough, through a meat-grinder. Form into large palm-size balls, and boil for 1-2 hours. When eating ball, you take three or four on a plate, squash them with a fork, sprinkle dollops of butter all round, and tuck in. Start eating when they're so hot you're almost burn your tongue - the butter will acts as a coolant. Strictly speaking this is mixed ball, as opposed to potato-ball, sometimes called Komle - I haven't tried that. Moose - in caseroles, as roast, etc. Caserole with reindeer-meat, such as Finnbiff - a rich, creamy caserole-dish using dried scrapings of reindeer-meat. Whale-beef, prepared as sirloin, with scalloped potatoes and pepper- sauce (preferably homemade, by frying out that pan with cream and adding pepper, paprika-slices, etc., after you've fried the meat). Meat-rissoles (somewhat overgrown meatballs (see http://www.coop.no/butikkoversikt/coop_mega/menykort/16466.htm for picture), rather more irregular in shape), with potatoes, carrots or creamed peas, and a thin dark gravy. Strawberries with cream and sugar. Not strictly a Norwegian invention, I guess, but with berries from Northern Norway, where the berries take a long time to ripen, and just about explode with taste once they are ripe.... Divine! "Veiled farmgirls" - a dessert. It is made by crushing sweet rusk, frying it wtih sugar and butter until it all is golden. This mix, applesauce, and whipped cream (sometimes slightly sweetened), are layered in a large serving-bowl of glass (so you can see the layers). "Blushing town-girls". Take strawberries, divide them, sprinkle sugar over, and blend well. Take almond-cake sticks and crush them to fine crumbs in a food-processor. Layer this with whipped cream in single-serving glasses, making the top-layer a strawberry-layer. I think this is a bit like strawberry shortcake in your repertoir. > I am not an overly weak-stomached person (though I can't at > all watch those scenes in 'reality' shows in which people > have to eat various living, wriggly things), but this > Smalehove story did give me quite a few squicks. > > I think it was the eyeball thing; too many flashbacks to high > school Anatomy/Physiology. I was never squicked in that class, > not really, but I was very happy when my darling lab > partner Elsa took so readily to the dissection of the > sheep's eye. I have been spared the evil fate of eating it, but there was this initiation in a student-society at my uni which included the consumption of odd foods - see pictures at http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/hpfgu-otchatter/lst? &.dir=/Christian+(Pengolodh)&.src=gr&.view=t . Best regards Christian Stub? From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Sat May 18 01:45:17 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 18:45:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: William's Surgery- very OT Message-ID: <20020518014517.32588.qmail@web13704.mail.yahoo.com> Well, everybody, and Dr. Andrea Van Deven, we made it! A very long day from 5 am to 8 pm! First of all, William as I am typing this is still in the ICU and sleeping with the help of meds to keep him from moving around. He is coming along fine. Roy took it really hard seeing William helpless like this. All the other surgeries he got to the hospital after many things were removed. I always break down anyway, but to see Roy cry, was a double duty of shed tears! Timing is everything, a lady chaplain was there and she helped us. I never refuse prayers. This surgery was a Pioneer in the Children's Hospital Surgical Procedures by Dr. Richard Jonas. William is the first to undergo using a new material to make a larger pulmonary artery not just his right section but also a section of his left. To put it in simple terms, he had a kink in his artery that had to be removed and a new section put in. Everything is wider for blood flow, a rooftop effect where the valve should be, but he may get 10 years out of this surgery or more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Time will tell as he grows and his echos and other tests to monitor him. I want to THANK EVERYBODY for their prayers not just for us and William but for everyone else too that has had to undergo something or other. My pryaers went out to my son and many others there and else where! Roy will be up to see William in the ICU tomorrow, then we take James Sunday. Less of a tramatic sight for him to see his brother without some added tubing. On a lighter note, they had to put heated blankets and lamps to warm William up slowly, his body temp was lowered for surgery. Dr. Jonas came by again to see William again in the ICU, Roy couldn't stop himself from asking, "Dr. Jonas. when did you change my son into an iguana? He is under heat lamps!" Well, the great Dr. couldn't stop himself from having a really well deserved giggle session with us! Humor follows us everywhere, maybe because we have so much laughter to enjoy with William and James to come! Will let you all know when he comes home. I am off for a hot shower and tons of comfort food! we will be calling the ICU around 10pm for updates and before midnight. Everybody take care and I will be in touch! Love and Hugs, Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and a very relieved James and Roy and a very much better William! "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Sat May 18 01:51:57 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 18:51:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday, Megan! In-Reply-To: <20020517112502.33616.qmail@web14606.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020518015157.13940.qmail@web13702.mail.yahoo.com> Sheryll Townsend wrote: Happy Birthday to you.... It's Megan's birthday today. I was just trying to make it a little special for her. :-D Megan, I hope you birthday brings everything you hoped for and I apologise for the off-key singing. :) Happy Birthday, Megan! Sheryll ===== We all want to join in with the singing, but better thought to send you this greating instead! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! May all your goodies be what you wanted! Enjoy your special day! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and Her Band of Muggles 100%( we will all be very merry when William comes home) "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From starling823 at yahoo.com Sat May 18 04:36:32 2002 From: starling823 at yahoo.com (starling823) Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 04:36:32 -0000 Subject: bridesmaids dresses Message-ID: ooooh....I'm going to be a bridesmaid in a week and a few -- May 26th my good friend is getting married and I am one of her bridesmaids. =) We actually have very nice dresses -- very simple cut, a little bit of a train in back, very simple and elegant and therefore able to be used again. The kicker is the color -- a silvery green. Obsessed with HP as I am, I saw the dresses and my first comment was "That's a rather Slytherin-ey color." My friend has declared me crazy and asked me to promise to not try to talk her family into reading HP until after dinner has been cleared. It will be hard but I will do my best. ::winks:: The nightmare part of this outfit is the shoes -- they're rather high heels and since I wear heels so rarely, I'm afraid of wobbling/tripping/making an idiot out of myself by tripping on my way down the aisle...I'm going to be practicing all next week. It's really spooky...I'm 21, and almost all of my friends are within a year or so of me, we're almost all graduating from college this weekend, and almost all of them are engaged. I'm starting to get really freaked at how many people are pairing up -- I still feel very young for something that huge (this could also be the result of two disasterous relationships...I'm content to be patient at this point), but I'm just amazed at how many people I know that are my age and engaged. Abbie, who, between uni. graduation (wahooo!) and this wedding, is feeling very overwhelmed. PS -- Wanda, my best wishes for your son and family! From boggles at earthlink.net Sat May 18 20:03:11 2002 From: boggles at earthlink.net (Jennifer Boggess Ramon) Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 15:03:11 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] whimsical weddings In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 3:58 PM +0000 5/17/02, Mary Jennings wrote: > >Wow, your outfit sounds fab. On the cultural clothing thread, has any >bridesmaid ever worn a bridesmaid dress (a western-style one) that *didn't* >make you gag? When I got >married I just had my maid of honour, and I told her to buy whatever dress >she wanted. The Spouse and I actually had two ceremonies, one a Christian/Jewish one in my parents' hometown, and one a Wiccan/Discordian one here where we live. For the first one, which was the formal one with bridesmaids, I sent each bridesmaid (they lived in three different cities) a swatch of bright royal blue fabric and told them to get a tea-length dress that matched the swatch, in a cut that they could wear again. -- - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon boggles at earthlink.net === Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 === GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+ c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+ ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U! From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Sun May 19 01:15:40 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 01:15:40 -0000 Subject: Look, it's Harry! Message-ID: OK, maybe not Harry, but it's close. We just celebrated May 17th here in Norway - it is our constitution- day - and the local picture put out some galleries of the celebrations, including this picture: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU- OTChatter/files/17_mai_Harry_Potter.gif Admit it - he would have made quite a passable Harry. Best regards Christian Stub? From catlady at wicca.net Sun May 19 01:21:24 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 01:21:24 -0000 Subject: Look, it's Harry! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "pengolodh_sc" wrote: > OK, maybe not Harry, but it's close. > Admit it - he would have made quite a passable Harry. Yes, but can I have the curly haired boy in the front row on right hand side? Is he a young (and obediently dressed) Sirius? And there's a red head two further rgiht of him... From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Sun May 19 02:02:04 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 19:02:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: William's Room info- very OT Message-ID: <20020519020204.48198.qmail@web13706.mail.yahoo.com> just to let you all know, he has been moved out of the ICU tonight. Dad is with him and they are watching movies! The Mummy and The Mummy Returns and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas! I have printed out all the posts and cards for him! Wonderful suggestion from Sharon! We must have been in the right frame of thought on that one! If anybody wants to write to him here is the address to Children's Hospital: The Children's Hospital William Mallett Room 616 B 300 longwood Avenue Boston, Massachusett 02115 So far, he has light foods, holding down very good! His main concern is urinating! He thinks he is not going enough! Must be a guy thing! just kidding, told that to Roy when he told me! Well, I had to aggravate Dad! He got both Will and myself with his goofy remarks earlier! But I just want you all to know that he is on the mends and most likely will try to stand tomorrow. He was sitting up in a chair for about a half hour today and did very well. He still has the drain tubes in his chest, hopefully by tomorrow they will come out. All in all, good news! Thank you everybody, we never refuse a prayer of help and strength! My prayers also go out to all of you and to anyone who needs that extra bit of love and support! Love and Hugs, Wanda "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From s_ings at yahoo.com Sun May 19 11:26:52 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 07:26:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Happy Birthday, Michelle! Message-ID: <20020519112652.31691.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> *bounces into the room, flinging confetti and trailing balloons* Yes, another birthday today. Today's honouree is our very own List Elf, Michelle. Birthday owls can be sent to this list or directly to Michelle at michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk Michelle, you've helped make this list a wonderful place to be. I hope your day is filled with joy and magic. Happy Birthday, Michelle! Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Find, Connect, Date! http://personals.yahoo.ca From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Sun May 19 12:23:54 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 05:23:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday, Michelle! In-Reply-To: <20020519112652.31691.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020519122354.77477.qmail@web13702.mail.yahoo.com> Sheryll Townsend wrote: *bounces into the room, flinging confetti and trailing balloons* Yes, another birthday today. Today's honouree is our very own List Elf, Michelle. We are going to bounce along with Sheryll for your Birthday today! May you get all that you wish for and maybe more! Have a great special day today and while you bounce along with everybody, maybe those balloons have special surprises too! Happy Birthday! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and Her Band of Muggles 100%(William is getting us all back to a very merry band very fast) "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From saitaina at wizzards.net Sun May 19 13:57:02 2002 From: saitaina at wizzards.net (saitaina) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 13:57:02 -0000 Subject: A small question you might be able to help with- Message-ID: Earlier today I recived a returned mail (which I did not send) that said it might possibly contain a virus. Well the original message most likely did contain a virus except, the return path below my return address was not my server. In fact it wasn't even near my server as it was physically across the ocean. So my question is, could I be infected even though the smtp was not mine (wizzards.net does not use uk servers) or is it another case of address stealing that virus' do and I just happened to be alerted to it due to the returned mail? If any of you have an awnser please get back to me on it because it's annoying me. Saitaina PS: Below is the top part of the returned message so you see what I'm refering to: Return-path: Received: from modem-3490.antelope.dialup.pol.co.uk ([217.134.29.162] helo=Lfzseqhz) by mail18.svr.pol.co.uk with smtp (Exim 3.35 #1) id 179Ph0-00076s-00 for zortified at earthlink.net; Sun, 19 May 2002 13:21:43 +0100 From strijkg at xs4all.nl Sun May 19 14:11:53 2002 From: strijkg at xs4all.nl (rietepiet_nl) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 14:11:53 -0000 Subject: Look, it's Harry! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: We in the Netherlands have our own grown-up Harry ;), and running for prime-minister (maybe...) just follow the link: www.nrc.nl/denhaag/personen/ 987663129198.html Riet --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "catlady_de_los_angeles" wrote: > --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "pengolodh_sc" wrote: > > OK, maybe not Harry, but it's close. > > > Admit it - he would have made quite a passable Harry. > > Yes, but can I have the curly haired boy in the front row on right > hand side? Is he a young (and obediently dressed) Sirius? > > And there's a red head two further rgiht of him... From strijkg at xs4all.nl Sun May 19 14:24:37 2002 From: strijkg at xs4all.nl (Riet Strijker) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 16:24:37 +0200 (West-Europa (zomertijd)) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Look, it's Harry! References: Message-ID: <3CE7B5A5.00000D.40013@xbwesrtn> In reply to my own message: the link doesn't work anymore:-(( A pity. But if you go to google: type in "Balkenende" an click on pictures, you can see what I mean (g) bye for now, crawling back into my comfy lurking corner Riet -------Original Message------- From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Date: zondag 19 mei 2002 16:11:57 To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Look, it's Harry! We in the Netherlands have our own grown-up Harry ;), and running for prime-minister (maybe...) just follow the link: www.nrc.nl/denhaag/personen/ 987663129198.html Riet --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "catlady_de_los_angeles" wrote: > --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "pengolodh_sc" wrote: > > OK, maybe not Harry, but it's close. > > > Admit it - he would have made quite a passable Harry. > > Yes, but can I have the curly haired boy in the front row on right > hand side? Is he a young (and obediently dressed) Sirius? > > And there's a red head two further rgiht of him... Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk Sun May 19 14:41:48 2002 From: michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk (Michelle Apostolides) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 15:41:48 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Look, it's Harry! References: Message-ID: <007f01c1ff43$5037a400$728901d4@john> We in the Netherlands have our own grown-up Harry ;), and running for prime-minister (maybe...) just follow the link: www.nrc.nl/denhaag/personen/ 987663129198.html They said something like that on the BBC online news too Michelle [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com Sun May 19 17:39:41 2002 From: SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com (kelleyelf) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 17:39:41 -0000 Subject: Not so icky Norwegian food In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Christian described some very delicious-sounding dishes... Now that's more like it! I was beginning to wonder how you'd managed to subsist all these years... :-) > K> I think it was the eyeball thing; too many flashbacks to high > K> school Anatomy/Physiology. > Christian: > I have been spared the evil fate of eating it, but there was this > initiation in a student-society at my uni which included the > consumption of odd foods - see pictures at > http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/hpfgu-otchatter/lst? > &.dir=/Christian+(Pengolodh)&.src=gr&.view=t . >>>>>>>>> Haha! Ah, yes, I remember these. Now, which one are you in these pictures?.... ;-D --Kelley From SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com Sun May 19 18:16:52 2002 From: SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com (kelleyelf) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 18:16:52 -0000 Subject: Happy Birthday, Michelle! In-Reply-To: <20020519112652.31691.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Happy birthday, Michelle! Hope you have a terrific day... Btw, how does it feel? :-) Best, Kelley From michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk Sun May 19 18:49:50 2002 From: michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk (Michelle Apostolides) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 19:49:50 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Happy Birthday, Michelle! References: Message-ID: <000901c1ff65$f6083f80$0f9a01d4@john> Happy birthday, Michelle! Hope you have a terrific day... Btw, how does it feel? :-) Well, when I find out what's different, I'll let you know ! Oh, and anyone with a single, male striaght friend or relative non smoker with a sense of humour and fun? I'm interested and available ! Michelle [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From macloudt at hotmail.com Sun May 19 19:11:31 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 19:11:31 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday, Michelle! Message-ID: :::::cracks open a butterbeer::::: Hope you had a brilliant day, Michelle! Were there lots of HP goodies for you? Enjoy! Mary Ann :) _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk Sun May 19 19:09:14 2002 From: michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk (Michelle Apostolides) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 20:09:14 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday, Michelle! References: Message-ID: <001901c1ff68$aba6c6c0$0f9a01d4@john> > :::::cracks open a butterbeer::::: > Hope you had a brilliant day, Michelle! Were there lots of HP goodies for > you? Enjoy! Thanks ! I got the movie on Video, a poster, a mug and a card Michelle From SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com Sun May 19 19:14:31 2002 From: SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com (kelleyelf) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 19:14:31 -0000 Subject: Happy Birthday, Michelle! In-Reply-To: <000901c1ff65$f6083f80$0f9a01d4@john> Message-ID: > I wrote: > Happy birthday, Michelle! Hope you have a terrific day... > > Btw, how does it feel? :-) > > > And Michelle replied: > Well, when I find out what's different, I'll let you know ! >>>>>> Haha! Yes, please! I'm still trying to figure it out myself... > Oh, and anyone with a single, male striaght friend or relative non smoker with a sense of humour and fun? I'm interested and available ! > > Michelle >>>>>>>> Oo, can I sign up after Michelle for this? Michelle, if you're suddenly deluged with men, could you throw one of the extras my way? ;-D Wasn't Joywitch thinking about starting an HPfGUs dating service....? --Very single!Kelley From michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk Sun May 19 19:11:41 2002 From: michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk (Michelle Apostolides) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 20:11:41 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Happy Birthday, Michelle! References: Message-ID: <002001c1ff69$0318f220$0f9a01d4@john> Oo, can I sign up after Michelle for this? Michelle, if you're suddenly deluged with men, could you throw one of the extras my way? ;-D Wasn't Joywitch thinking about starting an HPfGUs dating service....? Hell, why not ? Let's have some fun in our lives ! Michelle [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk Sun May 19 19:19:58 2002 From: michelleapostolides at yahoo.co.uk (Michelle Apostolides) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 20:19:58 +0100 Subject: Chat Message-ID: <002a01c1ff6a$2b3e3d40$0f9a01d4@john> Nobody else coming in today ? Michelle [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From strijkg at xs4all.nl Sun May 19 20:40:24 2002 From: strijkg at xs4all.nl (Riet Strijker) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 22:40:24 +0200 (West-Europa (zomertijd)) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Happy Birthday, Michelle! References: <002001c1ff69$0318f220$0f9a01d4@john> Message-ID: <3CE80DB8.000001.02419@xbwesrtn> Can I sign up after Kelley? Happy birthday Michelle, hope you had a really nice one, with fine weather and good friends to share it with. Here's to you: raises glass (with butterbeer or port, whatever) Riet -------Original Message------- From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Date: zondag 19 mei 2002 21:16:43 To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Happy Birthday, Michelle! Oo, can I sign up after Michelle for this? Michelle, if you're suddenly deluged with men, could you throw one of the extras my way? ;-D Wasn't Joywitch thinking about starting an HPfGUs dating service....? Hell, why not ? Let's have some fun in our lives ! Michelle [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From drumforever at earthlink.net Sun May 19 21:42:22 2002 From: drumforever at earthlink.net (Betty Landers) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 17:42:22 -0400 Subject: Hey, how about a huge party? Message-ID: <3CE81C3E.678F1221@earthlink.net> I just graduated from college (with a B.A. psychology, if anyone wants to know). Any fellow Tar Heel Alums on here? Anyway, I considered it done a week and a half ago, but it's official as of today. We had the ceremony this morning and it was both huge and boring. There were too many speakers and too many people to recognize, so we undergraduates just sat there and stood up when we were told to do so. The masters and doctoral students were recognized personally and received some sort of diploma, but I don't know if it was their real one. Anyway, whatever I thought of the ceremony is kind of irrelevant; I've finished with school and I'm happy! Pardon the ramble... Betty -- Ron reached inside his jacket and pulled out a fat gray rat, which was asleep. "His name's Scabbers and he's useless, he hardly ever wakes up ...." Ron Weasley: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone, Chapter six. From SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com Mon May 20 00:03:19 2002 From: SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com (kelleyelf) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 00:03:19 -0000 Subject: Hey, how about a huge party? In-Reply-To: <3CE81C3E.678F1221@earthlink.net> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Betty Landers wrote: > I just graduated from college (with a B.A. psychology, if anyone wants to know). I've finished with school and I'm happy! > > Pardon the ramble... > Betty >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Betty, congratulations! That's wonderful! It is -so- nice to hear some good news. I'm really happy for you. :-) *Butterbeer for everyone!* --Kelley From dradamsapple at yahoo.com Mon May 20 03:01:47 2002 From: dradamsapple at yahoo.com (dradamsapple) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 03:01:47 -0000 Subject: Hey, how about a huge party? In-Reply-To: <3CE81C3E.678F1221@earthlink.net> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Betty Landers wrote: > I just graduated from college (with a B.A. psychology, if anyone wants > to know). Any fellow Tar Heel Alums on here? > > Anyway, I considered it done a week and a half ago, but it's official as > of today. We had the ceremony this morning and it was both huge and > boring. There were too many speakers and too many people to recognize, > so we undergraduates just sat there and stood up when we were told to do > so. The masters and doctoral students were recognized personally and > received some sort of diploma, but I don't know if it was their real > one. > > Anyway, whatever I thought of the ceremony is kind of irrelevant; I've > finished with school and I'm happy! > > Pardon the ramble... > Betty > -- > Ron reached inside his jacket and pulled out a fat gray rat, which was > asleep. > "His name's Scabbers and he's useless, he hardly ever wakes up ...." > Ron Weasley: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone, Chapter six. Betty, Congratulations on your Graduation! My own college graduation was exactly twenty years ago (May 16, 1982, 1:30pm to be exact; and no, I didn't remember it, I looked it up in my year book!). I have to agree with you, the ceremony itself is rather anti-climatic at times. I remember that one of our speakers was An Wang, the founder and president of Wang laboratories (it's an OLD company that no longer exists here in Massachussetts), and the other speaker was Paul Tsongas the U.S. Senator from Massachussetts. I guess at the time they were pretty prominent people but I could'nt save my life if I had to tell you what they said. The really important part of college is yes, of course, that stupid piece of parchment that will open doors, but it is also the friendships you make and party's that you've gone to, and stupid things you've done in class (on the last day of my organic chemistry class, we started drinking at 9:30am; NOT a good idea!!).Well, you know what I mean; it's the (*breaking out in song*) MEMORIES!! Anyhow, I'm rambling . . . sorry. I guess I'm getting little reminiscent (spelling?)of those good old days! God I feel old!! Happy Graduation Betty! Anna . . . From jenP_97 at yahoo.com Mon May 20 06:34:44 2002 From: jenP_97 at yahoo.com (jenP_97) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 06:34:44 -0000 Subject: Disgusting long rant about neighbors, any advice welcome... Message-ID: Lawyers out there - if you're willing to make suggestions on this situation, I'm willing to hear them. My husband and I live in a small town of about 30,000 people. We bought our house (our first house!) 4 years ago this July, and because we don't make a whole lot of money (especially now that I'm staying at home with Ginger), we tried to buy a house that was less expensive than what we could qualify for, mortgage-wise. This meant an smaller, older home in a neighborhood close to the center of town. The neighborhood isn't the greatest, but not the worst, either. Mostly rentals, now. Well, we've got these neighbors. Our orignial complaint when they moved in (about 3.5 years ago) was that their dogs constantly got out and pooped in our yard. But that's nothing compared to this. About a year ago, Chris heard some weird noise coming out of their house. Went to investigate, and discovered that their sewage line had backed up somehow and their toilet (they only have one bathroom, and the "owner" of the house rents out 2 of her 3 bedrooms, so there are at least 4 adults (and two kids) living in the house at the same time, sharing the one bathroom) is overflowing into the side yard that backs up to our driveway. Raw sewage is all over the ground. After hubby's stomach comes back down from his throat, he goes over and explains situation. Answer? "Yeah, we know about that - we haven't gotten around to fixing that yet." First thought? How can someone KNOW about this and not try to fix it right away? We give it a day, nothing. Go over again. "We're working on it." Give it another day, thinking they've got a busy plumber coming out as soon as he can. Nothing. Finally, we call the health department. Next day? The guys who rent out the rooms are BADLY fixing the plumbing problem (now there's a 4in PVC pipe sticking out of the middle of the side yard), and just covering up the problem with dirt. We call the health department again, but apparently, there's nothing that can be done. Cut to yesterday. We hosted the division social for my hubby's colleagues yesterday afternoon. 10+ people from the division, plus spouses, plus kids... most of the adults with advanced degrees of some kind... eating and making merry in our backyard. Chris is playing basketball in our driveway with his colleagues' kids. Guess what he hears. Yep. He doesn't even have to look - the SMELL tells him what's going on. Can you believe it? He hustles the kids into the backyard (where the smell's not very apparent), and cancels the game. What else can you do? Would YOU want to eat with that stuff going on? Of course, this happens over the weekend, when the health department isn't taking complaints, so we have to wait until tomorrow. Of course, nothing's being done currently. We're not even going to the neighbors this time... we know they're not going to do anything until they're forced to. So... what can we do to make sure this doesn't happen again? Can we INSIST that the health department oversee the cleanup and repair? Can we do anything besides make the phone call? This is NOT something I should have to deal with! And it's really a health risk for me - I mean, I'm pregnant, for crying out loud, and the rate of Hepatitis A (which is passed through fecal matter) around here is SKY HIGH! We've got this long list of things to tell the health department tomorrow onthe phone, but is there any kind of smoking gun that we can use? Any advice (or sympathy, or just "ew gross!" responses) would be very much appreciated. Jen, the disgusted. From kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk Mon May 20 06:42:44 2002 From: kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk (Kathryn) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 07:42:44 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Disgusting long rant about neighbors, any advice welcome... References: Message-ID: <3CE89AE4.000001.92241@monica> Any advice (or sympathy, or just "ew gross!" responses) would be very much appreciated. Jen, the disgusted. *hugs* Can't do much on the advice front being a Brit and therefore having different laws, but sympathy I can do. I hope the Health dept can sort it all out. Could you get any of the tenants next door on your side because they'd probably be able to force the landlord to do something easier than you. I don't know though, that's a guess based on our system here. *more hugs and virtual chocolate* K From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Mon May 20 09:29:31 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 09:29:31 -0000 Subject: Look, it's Harry! In-Reply-To: <3CE7B5A5.00000D.40013@xbwesrtn> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Riet Strijker" wrote: > In reply to my own message: the link doesn't work anymore:-(( > A pity. > But if you go to google: type in "Balkenende" an click on pictures, you can > see what I mean (g) Ah, but he could be a follower of Pim Fortuyn on Polyjuice. CONSTANT VIGILANCE! David From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Mon May 20 09:39:39 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 09:39:39 -0000 Subject: Disgusting long rant about neighbors In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "jenP_97" wrote: > Any advice (or sympathy, or just "ew gross!" responses) would > be very much appreciated. > > Jen, the disgusted. Ew gross! (and sympathy) Do they have neighbours on the other side who might also be affected? It is hard to believe that this situation is not illegal and therefore you have no redress. David From strijkg at xs4all.nl Mon May 20 10:01:09 2002 From: strijkg at xs4all.nl (Riet Strijker) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 12:01:09 +0200 (West-Europa (zomertijd)) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Disgusting long rant about neighbors, any advice welcome... References: Message-ID: <3CE8C965.000006.00373@xbwesrtn> Jen you have my deepest sympathy, (hugsJen). The problems with my neighbours (beneath me, they have also two dogs who love to bark) are nothing compared to this. Riet (from the Netherlands, so I can't help with legal advice, sorry) -------Original Message------- From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Date: maandag 20 mei 2002 08:34:47 To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Disgusting long rant about neighbors, any advice welcome... Lawyers out there - if you're willing to make suggestions on this situation, I'm willing to hear them. My husband and I live in a small town of about 30,000 people. We bought our house (our first house!) 4 years ago this July, and because we don't make a whole lot of money (especially now that I'm staying at home with Ginger), we tried to buy a house that was less expensive than what we could qualify for, mortgage-wise. This meant an smaller, older home in a neighborhood close to the center of town. The neighborhood isn't the greatest, but not the worst, either. Mostly rentals, now. Well, we've got these neighbors. Our orignial complaint when they moved in (about 3.5 years ago) was that their dogs constantly got out and pooped in our yard. But that's nothing compared to this. About a year ago, Chris heard some weird noise coming out of their house. Went to investigate, and discovered that their sewage line had backed up somehow and their toilet (they only have one bathroom, and the "owner" of the house rents out 2 of her 3 bedrooms, so there are at least 4 adults (and two kids) living in the house at the same time, sharing the one bathroom) is overflowing into the side yard that backs up to our driveway. Raw sewage is all over the ground. After hubby's stomach comes back down from his throat, he goes over and explains situation. Answer? "Yeah, we know about that - we haven't gotten around to fixing that yet." First thought? How can someone KNOW about this and not try to fix it right away? We give it a day, nothing. Go over again. "We're working on it." Give it another day, thinking they've got a busy plumber coming out as soon as he can. Nothing. Finally, we call the health department. Next day? The guys who rent out the rooms are BADLY fixing the plumbing problem (now there's a 4in PVC pipe sticking out of the middle of the side yard), and just covering up the problem with dirt. We call the health department again, but apparently, there's nothing that can be done. Cut to yesterday. We hosted the division social for my hubby's colleagues yesterday afternoon. 10+ people from the division, plus spouses, plus kids... most of the adults with advanced degrees of some kind... eating and making merry in our backyard. Chris is playing basketball in our driveway with his colleagues' kids. Guess what he hears. Yep. He doesn't even have to look - the SMELL tells him what's going on. Can you believe it? He hustles the kids into the backyard (where the smell's not very apparent), and cancels the game. What else can you do? Would YOU want to eat with that stuff going on? Of course, this happens over the weekend, when the health department isn't taking complaints, so we have to wait until tomorrow. Of course, nothing's being done currently. We're not even going to the neighbors this time... we know they're not going to do anything until they're forced to. So... what can we do to make sure this doesn't happen again? Can we INSIST that the health department oversee the cleanup and repair? Can we do anything besides make the phone call? This is NOT something I should have to deal with! And it's really a health risk for me - I mean, I'm pregnant, for crying out loud, and the rate of Hepatitis A (which is passed through fecal matter) around here is SKY HIGH! We've got this long list of things to tell the health department tomorrow onthe phone, but is there any kind of smoking gun that we can use? Any advice (or sympathy, or just "ew gross!" responses) would be very much appreciated. Jen, the disgusted. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Mon May 20 10:30:43 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 03:30:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Disgusting long rant about neighbors, any advice welcome... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020520103043.91838.qmail@web13702.mail.yahoo.com> jenP_97 wrote: About a year ago, Chris heard some weird noise coming out of their house. Went to investigate, and discovered that their sewage line had backed up somehow and their toilet (they only have one bathroom, and the "owner" of the house rents out 2 of her 3 bedrooms, so there are at least 4 adults (and two kids) living in the house at the same time, sharing the one bathroom) is overflowing into the side yard that backs up to our driveway. Raw sewage is all over the ground. Hi, Jen, you weren't kinding about a real stinky problem! You should call all your local TV stations and have one of their reports come out and see first hand! Get it onto the news and how for a year the Health Department has done nothing! Let your Mayor know and get him or her involved, politicians love good news coverage, not bad! So you should really make a public outcry and make your town government look really stinky! Your a home owner and even here in Revere, homeowners usually have more co-operation on complaints than us folks who rent! Taxes pay for their salary so let them really work for it! Let everybody know what is not getting done! All the air fresheners in the world couln't cover that smell! The more you cry out and the more who know, something should get done. Make a pest of yourself with the tv and radio stations and even your local papers! Make it really embrassing for your neighbors for not doing something about what they know about is happening with their property! You said their are kids, let the school nurse and principal know what kind of health situation those kids are living in! Let us know what happens, somewhere down the line the health department and mayor have to get involved. We are with you! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere, Massachusetts and Her Band of Muggles 100%(almost back to our very merry selves) "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From unfauxpas at yahoo.com Mon May 20 11:31:50 2002 From: unfauxpas at yahoo.com (faux pas) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 04:31:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Disgusting long rant about neighbors, any advice welcome... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020520113150.12027.qmail@web20402.mail.yahoo.com> --- Jen the disgusted wrote: > Lawyers out there - if you're willing to make > suggestions on > this situation, I'm willing to hear them. > > (they only > have one bathroom, and the "owner" of the house > rents out 2 > of her 3 bedrooms, so there are at least 4 adults > (and two > kids) living in the house at the same time, sharing > the one > bathroom) is overflowing into the side yard that Not a lawyer but a lurker. Have you thought about going to the zoning board? They may have regulations about how many families can live in one house. Maybe with less people in the house, it won't be as much as a problem. faux pas back to lurking __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From Joanne0012 at aol.com Mon May 20 12:43:28 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 12:43:28 -0000 Subject: Disgusting long rant about neighbors, any advice welcome... In-Reply-To: <20020520113150.12027.qmail@web20402.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., faux pas wrote: Eeeuw, poor Jen, how absolutely disgusting and frustrating! I can only add that I agree with the suggestions to go to the press and the zoning board. It's time to get assertive! Put those hormones to work! Call the zoning board, tell them you're planning on renting out a couple of rooms, and find out the legality/requirements of it in your neighborhood. Find out what regulations your town has chosen to have for unrelated individuals, subletting rooms (rooming houses are strictly zoned in most places), etc. The right of towns to limit the number of unrelated individuals living together went all the way to the US Supreme Court in the mid-1970s; they decided in Borass vs Belle Terre, that the towns could do so (IIRC the decision came down in spring of 1974 or maybe 1975). My own personal strategy on this would be to first explain to the owner that I planned on outing her to the zoning board or the press if she doesn't fix the situation adequately. Be prepared to explain your strategy in detail so she knows you're not bluffing -- have the phone numbers of the local down-and-dirty newscast and the town rep for your regional newspaper. In dealing with public agencies like the health department, it's definitely a case of the squeaky wheel getting the attention. Every time it crosses your mind to worry about this situation, call them. Even if this means calling several times a day. You have a legitimate concern. Explain your press strategy to them, too. I personally enjoy dramatic touches and would consider showing up in their offices in town hall bearing a bucketful of stuff scraped up from the yard, but that's just me. The thing that motivates bureaucrats best is fear -- of getting in trouble, or of having more work. So base your strategy on that -- always offer to go over the head of any bureaucrat who displeases you -- that supervisor doesn't want HER supervisor to hear about it! From ameliagoldfeesh at yahoo.com Mon May 20 13:35:50 2002 From: ameliagoldfeesh at yahoo.com (ameliagoldfeesh) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 13:35:50 -0000 Subject: A Pointless Rasputin Question and Scaramouche Message-ID: From ameliagoldfeesh at yahoo.com Mon May 20 14:07:30 2002 From: ameliagoldfeesh at yahoo.com (ameliagoldfeesh) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 14:07:30 -0000 Subject: A Pointless Rasputin Question and Scaramouche Message-ID: I titled this a pointless question since I think I know the answer (No) but... has the 1996 Rasputin movie (with Alan Rickman) ever been available for North American DVDs? I see it is available in England and Germany. I wouldn't bother asking but I find it strange since it was made by HBO. I really liked this movie...you had Rickman, Ian McKellen *and* a mostly accurate historical movie. They did leave out all the influence and chaos Rasputin brought to the the Russian gov't (for instance it got so bad that appointed ministers didn't bother to move into their state apartments.) On the other hand, it could have been much worse- had it been a more Hollywood "historical" movie the plot would have been "the doomed immoral love affair of the mad holy man and the Empress of Russia" I'm sure. Incidently, my friends, before going to see"historical epic" Pearl Harbor, told me to repeat to myself "this is just a Hollywood movie and a romance" so I'd be able to enjoy it more. *L* About Scaramouche, I am so excited. I just happened to look up the book (by Rafael Sabatini) on Amazon and guess who was on the paperback cover- Stewart Granger! He is my favorite of the old time actors and starred in the film version. A Goldfeesh www.geocities.com/hollywood/studio/1026/ (scene: Andre and Philippe de Valmorin, his friend- upon Philippe's losing track of Lenore) A: "Where's the lady? The bride to be, the light of my life? Where is she?... Where's Lenore?!" P: (apprehensively): "I don't know...I mislaid her." A: (increduously): "You mislaid her? You mislaid her?! What is she? A button, a handkerchief that she can be dropped on the carpet or be sent by mistake to the laundry? Come on you dunderhead--where's my woman!" From ameliagoldfeesh at yahoo.com Mon May 20 14:07:59 2002 From: ameliagoldfeesh at yahoo.com (ameliagoldfeesh) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 14:07:59 -0000 Subject: A Pointless Rasputin Question and Scaramouche Message-ID: I titled this a pointless question since I think I know the answer (No) but... has the 1996 Rasputin movie (with Alan Rickman) ever been available for North American DVDs? I see it is available in England and Germany. I wouldn't bother asking but I find it strange since it was made by HBO. I really liked this movie...you had Rickman, Ian McKellen *and* a mostly accurate historical movie. They did leave out all the influence and chaos Rasputin brought to the the Russian gov't (for instance it got so bad that appointed ministers didn't bother to move into their state apartments.) On the other hand, it could have been much worse- had it been a more Hollywood "historical" movie the plot would have been "the doomed immoral love affair of the mad holy man and the Empress of Russia" I'm sure. Incidently, my friends, before going to see"historical epic" Pearl Harbor, told me to repeat to myself "this is just a Hollywood movie and a romance" so I'd be able to enjoy it more. *L* About Scaramouche, I am so excited. I just happened to look up the book (by Rafael Sabatini) on Amazon and guess who was on the paperback cover- Stewart Granger! He is my favorite of the old time actors and starred in the film version. A Goldfeesh www.geocities.com/hollywood/studio/1026/ (scene: Andre and Philippe de Valmorin, his friend- upon Philippe's losing track of Lenore) A: "Where's the lady? The bride to be, the light of my life? Where is she?... Where's Lenore?!" P: (apprehensively): "I don't know...I mislaid her." A: (increduously): "You mislaid her? You mislaid her?! What is she? A button, a handkerchief that she can be dropped on the carpet or be sent by mistake to the laundry? Come on you dunderhead--where's my woman!" From ComtessadeChats at cs.com Mon May 20 14:59:33 2002 From: ComtessadeChats at cs.com (ComtessadeChats at cs.com) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 10:59:33 EDT Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Disgusting long rant about neighbors, any advice welcom... Message-ID: <13c.e9b811a.2a1a6955@cs.com> Try calling the police! See what legal recourse you have. This is ridiculous and I can't believe there isn't something you can do! What if kids were playing around it and didn't know what it was? Yikes! Keep us posted!! ~~Lysa~~ From zulyblue at yahoo.com Mon May 20 20:39:38 2002 From: zulyblue at yahoo.com (zulyblue) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 13:39:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Career Advice? Message-ID: <20020520203938.88542.qmail@web20009.mail.yahoo.com> Hello! I guess I should introduce myself before I start with anything else, eh? I've been a lurker here and on the main list for far too long (since mid-December). I really enjoy reading the posts in the HPFGU groups, but usually feel that I have nothing to add that hasn't been said before. I have, however, been around long enough to realize that HPFGU is composed of many interesting and diverse people so I thought I try might picking your brains a bit. Of course, I'm not sure how many science types there are on the list but its worth a try. Oh yeah....I'm supposed to be introducing myself :) Well, I'm almost 28, from Massachusetts, but have lived in Cleveland, OH for 2.5 years and am more than ready to move back to New England. I have a BA in biology and a MS in entomology and have been working as a research assistant in a lab at a University for 3 years. My job is ok and I love the people I work with, but I have been kind of bored and unhappy for a while. Lately every project I take on just seems to stop working so I spend my time doing experiments over and over changing little things here and there to try to make them work again and not generating any data at all. I do immunohistochemistry, some histology, some morphology, some confocal microscopy, assorted in vitro assays, and general lab stuff like ordering, maintaining equipment (keeping track of birthdays and ordering cakes!) and making sure everyone in the lab is happy and things are running well. I have a few publications and lots of poster abstracts. I make pretty good money for what I do, but I'm just not happy doing it anymore. I also am never going to make it as a research scientist. I don't have the passion for it and I'm not good at interpreting results and asking the right questions. Basically if I stay where I am I will be a tech or RA for every with little or no room for advancement. Even thought I am trying to leave benchwork behind, I was looking into biotech/pharmaceutical/industry jobs because I am (hopefully) looking for a salary increase (not to sound greedy, but I have bills to pay, my car is about to die, and if I end up there Boston is alot more expensive than Cleveland), but I don't really have any molecular biology skills which is what most of the biotech companies are looking for. I like science, but on a far more basic level. When I was growing up I wanted to be a biologist for as long as I can remember and I don't want to leave it behind and I also don't want to feel like I am wasting my science education. Ok...far too much information I know. So after that long winded intro/explanation, what I am really asking is this- Does anybody have an suggestions or ideas about science jobs that don't involve benchwork? Thanks! Zulyblue __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From Joanne0012 at aol.com Mon May 20 23:07:22 2002 From: Joanne0012 at aol.com (joanne0012) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 23:07:22 -0000 Subject: Career Advice? In-Reply-To: <20020520203938.88542.qmail@web20009.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., zulyblue wrote: > > So after that long winded intro/explanation, what I am > really asking is this- Does anybody have an > suggestions or ideas about science jobs that don't > involve benchwork? Have you considered teaching? Many communities in the Boston area are desperate for science teachers in middle and high schools. The pay isn't fabulous, but the benefits, especially vacations, are. Research management, including budgets and contracts, requires knowledge of the underlying work. From cindysphynx at comcast.net Tue May 21 02:30:22 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 02:30:22 -0000 Subject: Disgusting long rant about neighbors, any advice welcome... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Poor, longsuffering Jen wrote: > Lawyers out there - if you're willing to make suggestions on > this situation, I'm willing to hear them. I don't know where you live, but I favor the shotgun approach myself. I'm assuming you wish to play *hardball* and you don't care if these people are ever friendly with you again. OK? As there are children living on the premises, you can call Child Protective Services. That will get your neighbors' attention in a hot hurry. (Oooh, that's just despicable for me even to *suggest* such a thing, huh?) If there is any chance at all that this raw sewage is running into any body of water or is contaminating groundwater, I'll bet you can report them to the Environmental Protection Agency for a Clean Water Act violation. (Why, that might be a federal offense, huh? Oooh, that is *despicable* too!) If you observe them making inadequate repairs, you can try calling the home improvement permitting bureau. Perhaps they'll be told to hire a real contractor and do the job right, and they could be cited for failing to get a permit. I think I'd also call the local water department (where I live, they are responsible for sewage treatment) or whatever department handles water treatment where you live. See what they have to say. If they are renters, you can check the property tax records and get the landlord's name and complain directly. You can investigate filing a small claims court action for monetary damages, or you could even file a court claim seeking abatement of a nuisance. This last course of action would take some time, though. As for the health department, don't take no for an answer. Go down there personally and work your way up the chain of command. Be a total nuisance. Call your local political representatives. They tend to be rather useless, but you never know. Then, go through all of your local government listings and see if you can think up anyone else who might be receptive to a complaint. Of course, keep copies of all letters, and get the names of everyone you speak to. And good luck! Cindy (whose worst offense as a homeowner is leaving her trash cans out long after the trash has been picked up) From dradamsapple at yahoo.com Tue May 21 05:22:24 2002 From: dradamsapple at yahoo.com (dradamsapple) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 05:22:24 -0000 Subject: Career Advice? In-Reply-To: <20020520203938.88542.qmail@web20009.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., zulyblue wrote: > Hello! > > Well, I'm almost 28, from Massachusetts, but have > lived in Cleveland, OH for 2.5 years and am more than > ready to move back to New England. I have a BA in > biology and a MS in entomology Entomology; is that bugs?? :) Er, sorry zulyblue but I've never met an entomologist. Anyhow, this is a small world. I live in medical mecca (aka Boston) and have worked at three of the biggest medical centers of the world in my past twenty two years of working in the medical profession; Mass General, Brigham and Women's and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. And I REFUSE TO BELIEVE that there isn't anything here in the bay state that might suit you to a tee. NOT to mention all the biotech firms here, and there is always medical sales. I'm not sure what you mean by having a molecular biology background. One of my med-tech friends just got a biotech position, and has basiclly the same experience as me, and it doesn't include a lot of molecular biology. (I also have a BA in biology and a Medical Technology degree, with ASCP certification, in which I am trained in the clinical lab setting.) Is going back to school an option? I know there is a great demand for nurse practioners. And I just recently heard of a "new" up and coming area of interest; as a "medical liason" between the clinical laboratories and the practioners and clinicians. Dr. Walter (Sunny) Dziek, who is the head of the Blood Bank at MGH, just told us of such a positon that he is trying to implement at a recent conferance I attended. There always seems to be this miscommunication between the two areas that we tend to need a sort of "referee". Well, I'm ranting. I'm not trying to sell you into coming back, but if you're from here, there's no place like home. You can probably go to some websites (Partners.; that's MGH,BWH,DFCI,CHMC, and some other little places: Caregroup.; that's Beth Isreal Deaconess Medical Center, Mt. Auburn Hospital, NE Baptist, and a few more.: Caritas Christi,: well, I'm sure you get my drift. I'm not sure if they are *dot* .org or .edu ) Look on the Boston Globe and Boston Herald websites, as well as Monster.com. I'm sure they all have some links. I don't know If I helped. Good luck in your quest. Let us know. Anna . . . From s_ings at yahoo.com Tue May 21 11:58:05 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 07:58:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Happy Birthday, Mirzam! Message-ID: <20020521115805.76775.qmail@web14603.mail.yahoo.com> *stumbles, sleepy-eyed, into the room bearing balloons and various party decorations* Today's birthday honouree is Mirzam. Birthday owls can be sent care of this list or directly to Mirzam at mirzamblack at yahoo.com I hope your day is special and filled with joy and magic. Happy Birthday, Mirzam! Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Find, Connect, Date! http://personals.yahoo.ca From SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com Tue May 21 13:32:41 2002 From: SKTHOMPSON_1 at msn.com (Kelley Thompson) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 08:32:41 -0500 Subject: Fw: X-Files Message-ID: <023701c200cc$0391a440$0f1221cc@oemcomputer> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rachel Bray" To: Sent: Monday, May 20, 2002 6:33 AM Subject: X-Files > I won't talk about the series finale on this list after > being (gently) scolded for talking about Buffy last week. > BUT.... > > Interesting ending, eh? And...... > > S > P > O > I > L > E > R > > > > > > > I LOVED that kiss in the prison cell!!! > > Rachel Bray > The Ohio State University > Fees, Deposits and Disbursements > > LORD OF THE SNITCH > Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky > Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood > Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly > One is the dork Ref all on his own > On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. > One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it > One game may take three months, or may take but a minute > On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. > > http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm > > From lupinesque at yahoo.com Tue May 21 14:44:08 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 14:44:08 -0000 Subject: feeling sad Message-ID: One of my favorite writers died yesterday: Stephen Jay Gould, who was a rare creature, a scientist who wrote for laypeople without talking down to them or wrapping his subject in some kind of mystique. I have been devouring his essays almost as fast as he can turn them out for the past 15 years. When he survived cancer in the 80's, he explained that the natural treasures still to discover helped give him the will to live--"I could not dent the richness in a hundred lifetimes, but I simply must have a look at a few more of those pretty pebbles." It makes me very sad that there will be no more of Gould's pretty offerings. Amy From keegan at mcn.org Tue May 21 14:55:04 2002 From: keegan at mcn.org (Catherine Keegan) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 07:55:04 -0700 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] feeling sad In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20020521075052.00b63f20@mail.mcn.org> At 02:44 PM 5/21/2002 +0000, Amy wrote: >One of my favorite writers died yesterday: Stephen Jay Gould, When we subscribed to Natural History, his essays were the first thing I turned to. He leaves a tremendous legacy behind. It's so sad that he died so young. I was amazed that our local news took the time out to honor him. That sort of thing is generally reserved for movie stars, not great minds (said with a not-too-subtle sneer). Of course, Gould will never truly be dead. His essays will inspire people for many years to come. Still, *sniff* Catherine in California From drumforever at earthlink.net Tue May 21 04:21:18 2002 From: drumforever at earthlink.net (Betty Landers) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 00:21:18 -0400 Subject: Hey, how about a huge party? Message-ID: <3CE9CB3E.436D2F45@earthlink.net> Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 03:01:47 -0000 From: "dradamsapple" Subject: Re: Hey, how about a huge party? snip Congratulations on your Graduation! My own college graduation was exactly twenty years ago (May 16, 1982, 1:30pm to be exact; and no, I didn't remember it, I looked it up in my year book!). *Lol! I doubt I'll remember mine that clearly, either. I really didn't feel special or proud or anything. It was way too ritualistic for my liking...either that or I was just too tired to care about graduating officially by then. I have to agree with you, the ceremony itself is rather anti-climatic at times. I remember that one of our speakers was An Wang, the founder and president of Wang laboratories (it's an OLD company that no longer exists here in Massachussetts), and the other speaker was Paul Tsongas the U.S. Senator from Massachussetts. I guess at the time they were pretty prominent people but I could'nt save my life if I had to tell you what they said. *we had a bu nch of University dignitaries and Sen. John Edwards come and speak. I was not impressed...I could have summed up their speeches in 3 sentences. "Congratulations! Welcome to your second permanent family! You have all the ingredients for success, so do it!" Same ol' thing. I was bored and it was chilly. I expected it to be warmer than it was... The really important part of college is yes, of course, that stupid piece of parchment that will open doors, but it is also the friendships you make and party's that you've gone to, and stupid things you've done in class (on the last day of my organic chemistry class, we started drinking at 9:30am; NOT a good idea!!).Well, you know what I mean; it's the (*breaking out in song*) MEMORIES!! *You know what? My fondest memories are of the marching band. I didn't have many friends outside the band and didn't do much outside the band, but that memory will be a sweet one the day I die. Anyhow, I'm rambling . . . sorry. I guess I'm getting little reminiscent (spelling?)of those good old days! God I feel old!! *Lol! well, I am rambling in response to your rambling, and maybe the other listees will join in the fun. From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Tue May 21 16:26:11 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 16:26:11 -0000 Subject: feeling sad In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Amy wrote: > One of my favorite writers died yesterday: Stephen Jay Gould Oh. I really like his books, though I have only read a couple. He helped me understand what the adaptationist controversy is about (it matters, if you care when scientists allege, for example, that women are biologically adapted to stay at home while men aren't), as well as why my kids' dinosaur books didn't have the Brontosaurus in them, whereas mine did. David From john at walton.vu Tue May 21 16:55:52 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 17:55:52 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: feeling sad In-Reply-To: Message-ID: davewitley wrote: > why my kids' dinosaur books didn't have the Brontosaurus in > them, whereas mine did. Mine had Brontosauri in them too, back in the mid-80s, and then IIRC some bright spark scientist realised that they'd been putting the wrong head on an Apatosaurus. Does that sound right? --John, who remembers singing "A hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth", which ended "Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex. GRR!" ____________________________________________ There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them. --'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' by JK Rowling John Walton || john at walton.vu ____________________________________________ From lupinesque at yahoo.com Tue May 21 17:06:05 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 17:06:05 -0000 Subject: feeling sad In-Reply-To: Message-ID: David wrote: > He helped me understand what the adaptationist controversy is about > (it matters, if you care when scientists allege, for example, that > women are biologically adapted to stay at home while men aren't), as > well as why my kids' dinosaur books didn't have the Brontosaurus in > them, whereas mine did. I was informed of the name change by a much higher authority than some hotshot Harvard paleontologist: a five-year-old boy. Supposedly Apatosaurus was made official in 1974, when I wasn't much older than that myself, but it took me until adulthood to learn the "new" name. Perhaps because the Peabody Museum, in whose echoing halls I learned most of my natural history, was so proud of its Brontosaurus that it had a vested interest in dragging its feet? Amy From macloudt at hotmail.com Tue May 21 17:18:31 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 17:18:31 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] feeling sad Message-ID: Amy wrote: >One of my favorite writers died yesterday: Stephen Jay Gould That truly is sad news. An anthropology professor of mine gave us "Ever Since Darwin" as a textbook. That was ten years ago, and I'm still collecting as many of SJG's books as I can. The great man was a great mind and a brilliant writer. He will be sorely missed. Mary Ann _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Tue May 21 19:24:01 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 12:24:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Happy Birthday, Mirzam! In-Reply-To: <20020521115805.76775.qmail@web14603.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020521192401.78621.qmail@web13705.mail.yahoo.com> Sheryll Townsend wrote: Today's birthday honouree is Mirzam. What a lovely name! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! Hope it is extra fun with extra presents of HP stuff! Have a fun today on your special day! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and Her Band of Very Merry Muggles 100% "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From anneb_in at yahoo.com Wed May 22 01:18:42 2002 From: anneb_in at yahoo.com (anneb_in) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 01:18:42 -0000 Subject: Career Advice? In-Reply-To: <20020520203938.88542.qmail@web20009.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I don't know if you would consider it, but there might also be a place for you in an area like pharmaceutical sales. Knowing a lot of people don't like sales, but you never know . . . Anne B in IN --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., zulyblue wrote: > Hello! > > > So after that long winded intro/explanation, what I am > really asking is this- Does anybody have an > suggestions or ideas about science jobs that don't > involve benchwork? > > Thanks! > > Zulyblue > From heidit at netbox.com Wed May 22 10:08:16 2002 From: heidit at netbox.com (heiditandy) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 10:08:16 -0000 Subject: For those in the US (or ordering from the US) - getting the dvd or videotape Message-ID: This has been approved by the HpfGU mods, because it covers an HPfGU issue - namely, hosting fees for our website at http://www.hpfgu.org.uk Many of you may not know that FictionAlley (the largest exclusively- HP-fanfic site online) hosts HPfGU's hpfgu.org.uk site on its dedicated server. Up until now, all hosting costs and fees for things like our chat software have been paid by various mods and admins of HPfGU, with donations from others on occasion. FictionAlley has recently set up Associate Relationships with Warner Brothers, and with Amazon as well, to cover our hosting and software fees - and those for HPfGU as well. Right now, the costs for HPfGU's portion are low - under $50/month - although theoretically they could grow. Now, the DVD and VHS versions of Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone (grrr at title) is about to be released in the US - and we're sure that a lot of you plan to buy it from Amazon anyway - or possibly even from the WB's store. If that's the case - or if you were just going to order it online and didn't really care where - could you please order it via FictionAlley's Kiosk, which is located here: http://www.fictionalley.org/fictionalleypark/forums/forumdisplay.php? &forumid=17 - or you can use the direct link to the WB here: http://www.qksrv.net/click-1126345-8233886 ? If you order it from WB, almost $2.00 goes to hosting fees, and if you order it from Amazon, about 50 cents goes to hosting fees - both sums are much appreciated (but as you can see, it'll take a pretty number of orders before it even eliminates one month's fees). Actually... anything you order from the WB sends 10% of the purchase price towards hosting fees (Batman, Superman, Powerpuff Girls - anything!) and many things on Amazon send at least 5%, occasionaly more. So please, click on our links when you're shopping at the WB's store, or Amazon's US or UK store - you'll be helping HPfGU! In fact, add them to your bookmarks *now* so you click on them automatically when you shop. Later on Wednesday, we'll have links up to order things from Chapters as well, in Canada, where they sell the film with the proper title. heidi, on behalf of HPfGU's website hosting team (and also FictionAlley) From j.wolf at sympatico.ca Wed May 22 12:19:13 2002 From: j.wolf at sympatico.ca (~J. Wolf~) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 08:19:13 -0400 Subject: Some Sad News, Some Good News References: <1022069269.561.92752.m12@yahoogroups.com> Message-ID: <3CEB8CC0.B88EF4A2@sympatico.ca> Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've posted anything, but I figured that I'd keep you all updated on what is happening in Jamieson Town at the moment. Some sad news: My parents cat, Jennifer Beth, was put to sleep yesturday. She was 17 years old, so she's been around for a long long time. She was fine one day and then like two days later, wasn't eating and had fluid in her lungs. My parents are pretty broken up about it, and so am I, but I'm trying not to let it bother me too much cus I'm at work. Just think a nice thought for her in kitty heaven, Okay? She was a grumpy little poop in her younger years, but in her old age she was a big sucky baby. I'm gonna miss that cat. So, just think a happy thought for her, I'd appriciate it very much! On a brighter side, I have met a wonderful man. His name is Aaron, and he thinks I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. :) He makes me feel special and sexy and brilliant, and he's just the cutest thing!! Our one month aniversery (yeah, I know, I know, how freaking mushy) is coming up on Saturday, and I know it will be the first of many aniverseries! So that's some good news!!! I've moved into my new place. It's 800 square feet, has beautiful harwood floors, plush carpet, wonderfully colourful walls (teal blue in the livingroom, butternut yellow in the bedroom and lilac purple in the kitchen, with a vine and leaf stenciling done in the bathroom) and has it's own washer and dryer (yay no more paying for laundry!) and front porch. It's great!!!!!! Other than that, not much new. Just living day to day, and enjoying the rays of sunshine when they appear. I hope everyone is doing well, and that you all feel special, beautiful and wonderful!!! Cheers and hugs, Jamieson -- j.wolf at sympatico.ca Hopeless romantics are only hopeless in the eyes of those who don't believe in romance. ~Jean Zheng~ From bray.262 at osu.edu Wed May 22 09:18:03 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 09:18:03 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: hosting fees Message-ID: <11F78F108B3@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> OK, I'm completely naive when it comes to this topic....I know there are fees to be paid but I don't now how much it is, where it comes from, etc. I'm just one of the happy fools who take it for granted that the HP sites are just "there". Unfortunately, I ordered Harry a long time ago when Amazon offered $4 off (and I got my notice this morning that it's been shipped...*giggle fit*) but I would like to help out money-wise. I mean...I'd CERTAINLY like to help out money- wise seeing that these are the sites I look at the most (HP sites). And I so rarely buy things online..... Is there somewhere to just send a donation? Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements LORD OF THE SNITCH Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly One is the dork Ref all on his own On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it One game may take three months, or may take but a minute On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm From drednort at alphalink.com.au Wed May 22 10:54:23 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 20:54:23 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] feeling sad In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3CEC057F.32074.134AC8F@localhost> > Amy wrote: > > >One of my favorite writers died yesterday: Stephen Jay Gould > > That truly is sad news. An anthropology professor of mine gave us "Ever > Since Darwin" as a textbook. That was ten years ago, and I'm still > collecting as many of SJG's books as I can. The great man was a great mind > and a brilliant writer. He will be sorely missed. Interesting to see so many admirers of a man who has (indirectly, it's possible) caused a great deal of pain and suffering to people I care a lot about. I work with profoundly gifted kids - kids for whom IQ tests, etc, are very important for them to gain access to appropriate education. Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" published just over 20 years ago has caused massive harm to these kids needs and their chances of getting the education they need and they deserve. Gould couldn't be blamed for this if the work was credible - but it's one of the most biased pieces of literature I've ever encountered. It's a work of political theory - not really the scientific work that Gould claimed it was. He certainly raised some good and valid points - he showed how testing could be, and has been, used to discriminate unjustly. The trouble is, he threw the baby out with the bathwater. His work on paleontology and biology is first rate, no doubt - but unfortunately, here he moved into areas he wasn't qualified to write about - and people assumed that because he was a scientist, he knew what he was talking about. And having read his book, some of them took it as gospel, and they chose to use it to set educational policy. And every single week, I run up against people who use his work and his ideas to deny kids the education they need to reach their potential. Which leads to some of them leading very painful lives - and to some of them losing them. Just another perspective (-8 I do admire Gould for his work in the areas he was trained in - but in this area, he wasn't - and so many people seem to have assumed that because he wrote a book he must have been. As I'm delurking, I guess I'd better introduce myself. I'm a 27 year old Computer Security and Intelligence specialist working for various departments of the Australian government. I do a lot of voluntary work with profoundly gifted children, as I've mentioned, and that's how I first encountered the Harry Potter books - when Philosopher's Stone first came out, the books started spreading like wildfire among gifted kids - a kids book that didn't treat kids like idiots was seriously appealing - especially with Hermione's presence because she was someone for the kids to relate to (as time has gone on, a lot more of these kids relate to Ron and Harry as well - but Hermione really leaped out, especially for gifted girls). Because I work with these kids, I decided to give the book a go - and thought it was one of the most enjoyable new things I had read in a while. Growing up, I had very few friends so I could relate to Harry's loneliness, and at 13, I suddenly found myself sent to a school where for the first time in my life I fitted in, and actually enjoyed my life, so I could relate on that score as well (-8 I even had a teacher who was *EXTREMELY* Snapish. I'm still lurking around on the main group - trying to get the feel for the list. Um... let's see, anything else about me - I play role playing games and ran a Harry Potter based game at an Easter gaming convention this year. I'm an e-mail addict (on over 50 mailing lists of various sorts) due to only needing 3 hours sleep a night, and having a low tolerance for boredom... Probably it, at the moment. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From heidit at netbox.com Wed May 22 17:43:49 2002 From: heidit at netbox.com (heidi tandy) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 10:43:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] hosting fees In-Reply-To: <11F78F108B3@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> Message-ID: <20020522174349.87149.qmail@web9505.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rachel Bray wrote: > Real-To: Rachel Bray > > OK, I'm completely naive when it comes to this > topic....I > know there are fees to be paid but I don't now how > much it > is, where it comes from, etc. I'm just one of the > happy > fools who take it for granted that the HP sites are > just > "there". The hosting fees, and fees for things like the chatroom software we've been using this spring, have been paid for mostly by HPfGU and FictionAlley moderators, although there have been some user donations. > > Unfortunately, I ordered Harry a long time ago when > Amazon > offered $4 off (and I got my notice this morning > that it's > been shipped...*giggle fit*) but I would like to > help out > money-wise. I mean...I'd CERTAINLY like to help out > money- > wise seeing that these are the sites I look at the > most (HP > sites). And I so rarely buy things online..... There's two ways to do it - you can send a check to HPfGU/FAWC 61 East 8th Street, PMB #122 New York, NY, 10003 Or you can visit our Amazon.com Paypage at http://s1.amazon.com/paypage/P1RX38XFDF1FLO/103-6170839-7783025 And if you ever want to order something from Amazon, you can do it through the URLs I posted a few hours ago. Thanks for asking! heidi __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From zulyblue at yahoo.com Wed May 22 20:06:43 2002 From: zulyblue at yahoo.com (zulyblue) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 13:06:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Career Advice? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020522200643.21429.qmail@web20007.mail.yahoo.com> Anna, Joanne0012, and Anne B Thanks for the ideas! I have considered teaching, but I have absolutely no experience and never was at all interested in it until recently. I may consider it in the future, but I think I would like to take some education classes or at least do some volunteer work first to get an idea if it is something I can do or may enjoy. I am looking into research management and would be interested in being a lab manager, but haven't found many openings yet. I am also looking into a CRA position (clinical research associate) which involves overseeing clinical trials. Anna- Yes, entomology is bugs and there are a few of us weirdos that chose entomology around :-) I haven't done anything entomology related since I left school and I actually kind of miss it! I will check out the websites you mentioned and I have been checking monster and bostonworks.com regularly. I've actually picked a few jobs to send resumes to, just to see what kind of response I get. I'm not really interested in pharmaceutical sales, I don't think I'm aggressive or outgoing enough to do it! I'm also considering applying for a USDA job, Plant Protection and Quarantine Officer. It's basically working at the airport inspecting international shipments and flights for illegal food or produce that may be carrying insects or diseases that we are trying to keep out of the country. It would actually be putting my entomology degree to use, but I'm not sure if I want to wear a uniform, work at the airport, and possibly work odd hours or lots of overtime. Once again....thanks for the input and I'm sure I'll figure it out eveuntally! --- anneb_in wrote: > I don't know if you would consider it, but there > might also be a place > for you in an area like pharmaceutical sales. > > Knowing a lot of people don't like sales, but you > never know . . . > > Anne B in IN > > --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., zulyblue > wrote: > > Hello! > > > > > > So after that long winded intro/explanation, what > I am > > really asking is this- Does anybody have an > > suggestions or ideas about science jobs that don't > > involve benchwork? > > > > Thanks! > > > > Zulyblue > > > > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Wed May 22 20:34:28 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 13:34:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: William is Home! OT Message-ID: <20020522203428.93486.qmail@web13703.mail.yahoo.com> William is home! He came home yesterday! The Doctors where amazed with his progress! 4 days! But he is home and adjusting very well! Just letting you all know, we were and still watching comedies and action movies! Making up for lost movie time together! Will be in touch. Love and Hugs, Wanda and Her 3 Stooges(now complete) "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From lupinesque at yahoo.com Wed May 22 20:39:54 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 20:39:54 -0000 Subject: feeling sad In-Reply-To: <3CEC057F.32074.134AC8F@localhost> Message-ID: Shaun (welcome!) wrote: > I work with profoundly gifted kids - kids for whom IQ tests, etc, are very important > for them to gain access to appropriate education. Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" > published just over 20 years ago has caused massive harm to these kids needs and > their chances of getting the education they need and they deserve. Gould couldn't > be blamed for this if the work was credible - but it's one of the most biased pieces of > literature I've ever encountered. > > It's a work of political theory - not really the scientific work that Gould claimed it > was. > > He certainly raised some good and valid points - he showed how testing could be, > and has been, used to discriminate unjustly. The trouble is, he threw the baby out > with the bathwater. I have only read excerpts from The Mismeasure of Man, but I never knew it got used this way. Why on earth would people take the problems of intelligence testing as a reason to deny special needs? It sounds as if they are misusing his work for their own ends. It is supremely ironic, because one of SJG's sons is both profoundly mentally challenged and intelligent--IIRC, he is autistic and a mathematical savant. I think IQ is B.S. (I didn't need to read Mismeasure of Man to reach that conclusion--all I needed to do was read the tests; they are patently not testing inherent ability, but knowledge and experience), but I would have shriveled up and died if I hadn't had access to talented-and-gifted education, as it was called in my school system. I don't think IQ testing was needed in order to identify the fact that I would have been desperately bored without this kind of education; in fact, I don't believe I was given any intelligence tests except as a very young child. We got placed in "enrichment" classes based on standardized achievement tests (also B.S., but different), class performance/the recommendation of our teachers, and other simple observable facts. The fact that tests are flawed, misused, and abused doesn't mean that everyone has the same educational needs. It's scary to think that your students could lose out because tests are shown to be flawed. Amy From drednort at alphalink.com.au Wed May 22 22:28:39 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 08:28:39 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: feeling sad In-Reply-To: References: <3CEC057F.32074.134AC8F@localhost> Message-ID: <3CECA837.29059.36E969@localhost> > Shaun (welcome!) wrote: > > I have only read excerpts from The Mismeasure of Man, but I never knew > it got used this way. Why on earth would people take the problems of > intelligence testing as a reason to deny special needs? It sounds as > if they are misusing his work for their own ends. Many were - their decisions were political rather than based on reality - Gould's book simply gave them a pseudo-scientific justification for their actions. > It is supremely ironic, because one of SJG's sons is both profoundly > mentally challenged and intelligent--IIRC, he is autistic and a > mathematical savant. > I think IQ is B.S. (I didn't need to read Mismeasure of Man to reach > that conclusion--all I needed to do was read the tests; they are > patently not testing inherent ability, but knowledge and experience), I really wonder which tests you have read. Most of the tests people think are IQ tests aren't IQ tests at all - the tests schools use are generally achievement tests and I would suspect that's what you have read. Unless you are a qualified psychologists, you should not have been able to read a proper IQ test - the manuals for these are tightly controlled to try and avoid anybody seeing the questions (there's been a minor scandal recently based on the discovery that some university libraries have been placing the manual for the Stanford-Binet Form LM test on publically accessible shelves because they didn't realise that test was still in use for certain limited purposes. This is part of the problem - people have seen the test used in schools - such as the Woodcock Johnson, Ravens, Slosson, etc - or the online 'IQ' tests - and this leads them to believe that that's what true IQ tests are like. It's not. Administering a proper full IQ test takes a very significant amount of training and is limited to psychologists and psychiatrists, and they can only be administered individually, and they can take upwards of three-four hours (much longer in some cases) to administer. These are tests like the WAIS, the SB-LM, The SB-IV, the WISC-III - there's only a few of them, and people are not allowed to read them as making them public diminishes their value. And they do measure ability far more than they do knowledge or experience. They're not perfect by any means - but it isn't fair to judge these proper clinical IQ tests based on the tests that are publically available - they are very different. > but I would have shriveled up and died if I hadn't had access to > talented-and-gifted education, as it was called in my school system. > I don't think IQ testing was needed in order to identify the fact that > I would have been desperately bored without this kind of education; in > fact, I don't believe I was given any intelligence tests except as a > very young child. We got placed in "enrichment" classes based on > standardized achievement tests (also B.S., but different), class > performance/the recommendation of our teachers, and other simple > observable facts. The fact that tests are flawed, misused, and abused > doesn't mean that everyone has the same educational needs. It's scary > to think that your students could lose out because tests are shown to > be flawed. The problem is that over 50% of gifted children are underachievers - and the higher you get up the scale of giftedness (there are generally considered by experts to be three or four levels of giftedness - each with significantly different educational needs) - the higher that proportion is - and a significant number of these kids are underachievers because their school environment is inappropriate to them. Achievement tests, somewhat obviously, miss a lot of underachievers. Class performance - the same problem applies. Recommendation of teachers - teachers, as a whole, are actually extremely bad at identifying underachieving gifted children, unless they have been specially trained to do so. Observable facts - again, underachievers may show no clear observable sign. All the above methods can be useful in placing kids in enrichment classes - but all have significant flaws as well, and miss kids who should be identified. IQ tests are the same. They have flaws. They do miss some kids whose abilities are outside the areas that IQ tests measure (generally logic and reasoning ability). But for underachieving gifted kids, they are their best chance at getting identified and, once identified, getting an appropriate education. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From lupinesque at yahoo.com Thu May 23 14:41:20 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 14:41:20 -0000 Subject: Intelligence (was feeling sad) In-Reply-To: <3CECA837.29059.36E969@localhost> Message-ID: Shaun wrote: > IQ tests are the same. They have flaws. They do miss some kids whose abilities are > outside the areas that IQ tests measure (generally logic and reasoning ability). Yeah, I guess that's the kind of thing that makes me think they miss the boat. From teaching, taking care of children, being a student, and just generally being a living human being, I think of intelligence as a multidimensional (infinite-dimensional) phenomenon that includes not only logic and reasoning but other things such as: resourcefulness, ability not to panic when faced with a completely unfamiliar problem, patience, willingness to do a lot of drudge work, willingness to distinguish between one's own wished-for outcome and what logic demands, ability to defer gratification and so make decisions that are best for the long term, ability to know when short-term solutions are more important, ability to tolerate uncertainty, creativity (which varies widely in its meanings depending on the medium--a creative poet uses very different skills than a creative geologist), willingness to ask questions that may make one appear stupid or ignorant, empathy (it's very important to be able to imagine what things look like from a different perspective--any historian or political scientist who couldn't do this would be very handicapped), intuition, willingness to trust intuition . . . the list goes on. I am aware that these are as much emotional or moral qualities as intellectual, but that just goes to show that "intelligence" is not a category of the brain separable from the rest of the package. It makes me think of Binet, I think it was, who when asked, very reasonably, what intelligence is, replied, "It is what my test measures." Now that was a man who knew the definition of a valid test--which few parents or teachers do. I.Q. tests measure "intelligence as defined by I.Q."--but that is not what most of us think of when we say "Person X is so intelligent!" or "Person Y is so stupid!" You are absolutely right, though--I have never seen an I.Q. test (aside from taking one when I was 5 or whatnot), just "improve your I.Q." books and such. They may well measure more than I fear they do. This leads to another problem, of course, which is that kids get a label put on them that only a few experts understand. But that could be addressed by people explaining to parents what they are all about. Amy clearly off on one of her favorite subjects From bray.262 at osu.edu Thu May 23 11:34:23 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 11:34:23 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: USA Today poll Message-ID: <139BF0B17C4@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> There's a poll today on USA Today online that asks: "Which author would you most like to take to the beach?" So far, John Grisham is in first place with 27% but Rowling is in second place with 16% with Nora Roberts coming in third with 15%. The other choices are Tom Clancy, Stephen King, Toni Morrison and Anne Rice. Question is....do they mean the author themselves or their books? (ha ha) Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements LORD OF THE SNITCH Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly One is the dork Ref all on his own On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it One game may take three months, or may take but a minute On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm From moongirlk at yahoo.com Thu May 23 16:13:44 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 16:13:44 -0000 Subject: Intelligence (was feeling sad) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Wow, This is a really interesting topic - there's much more that goes into the testing, the educational decisions and the experiences of the kids involved than I ever really thought. As someone who was placed in the gifted (or whatever they called it) program as a kid, I personally don't think it did me any favors. Of course, that's probably more about the program I was in and the way it was handled than it is about gifted programs in general or testing or intelligence. In my case it was a bad idea to set me apart at a very young age without giving me some sort of understanding as to how/why the decision was made. I was left trying to figure out why I should get particular attention, or to do fun things the other kids didn't. I don't remember it ever being explained to me beyond being told that I was "bright" or "smart". The result of this, for me, was disbelief about half the time, and enormous fear of failure the other half. Any minor failure that I had left me fearing that I was a fraud, that they'd gotten it wrong, and that any moment someone was going to figure it out. Like I said, it was probably all about the way it was handled in my school system (and about my sad, twisted psyche), but I've never felt that warm and fuzzy about gifted programs as a result. Except for the fact that I got to hang out with the other "gifted" kids and goof off a lot instead of doing spelling tests, which was good. kimberly reliving feelings of inadequacy From drednort at alphalink.com.au Fri May 24 11:23:00 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 21:23:00 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Intelligence (was feeling sad) In-Reply-To: References: <3CECA837.29059.36E969@localhost> Message-ID: <3CEEAF34.3349.7252C8@localhost> > Shaun wrote: > > > IQ tests are the same. They have flaws. They do miss some kids > whose abilities are > > outside the areas that IQ tests measure (generally logic and > reasoning ability). > > Yeah, I guess that's the kind of thing that makes me think they miss > the boat. From teaching, taking care of children, being a student, > and just generally being a living human being, I think of > intelligence as a multidimensional (infinite-dimensional) phenomenon > that includes not only logic and reasoning but other things such as: The problem is that if you include too many things, you can wind up making the term virtually meaningless. Educationally speaking, it is very important to be able to identify specifically where issues are - by using a tight definition of intelligence (as is done in IQ testing), it allows us to look for problems revealed by the testing. Other things are important as well - some of them can be significantly more important - but if you cast the net too wide, there is a real risk that if a problem is noted, you won't know where to look. Intelligence is generally defined for psychological purposes as the ability to comprehend cognitive complexity - a very tight definition. While this isn't the same as logic or reasoning ability, it correlates very highly with them (estimated correlation is better than 0.9) - you don't often get correlations that high in psychologicial tests. It still means it's not perfect - but it's very close, and extremely useful. To give an idea of how these tests are useful - studies have shown that teachers can, if trained properly, identify around 60% of gifted kids. Proper clinical IQ tests identify about 80%. Significantly though - IQ tests will catch over 90% of the kids teachers miss - and teachers will catch over 70% of the kids testing misses. Use one method - and at most you get 80% of the kids. Use both, and you get around 95%. Most gifted programs today use both methods for this reason. The other things you mention - some are related to intelligence. Some are very different, though very important, and I think need to be considered separately. > I am aware that these are as much emotional or moral qualities as > intellectual, but that just goes to show that "intelligence" is not a > category of the brain separable from the rest of the package. Well, to me, I have had to treat it that way. I am in the business of helping people deal with their gifts in a very specific area - the realm of intellectual giftedness. I'm an expert in that area. But I am not an expert in dealing with their creative skills, and especially not with their empathic skills. If they need help in those areas, they're better off with someone else. These things need to be viewed separately so that problems can be dealt with separately. There are, of course, occasions where a person may need help with multiple areas or issues, and the best way to deal with those may be as a whole. But it's easier to bring together separate areas if that's needed, than to have to try and break down things into components on the run. It might have been better if some other term rather than intelligence had been used for what these tests measure - but the inertia of a century is now behind the use of that term, and having had to face the problems of people denying the existence of gifted kids, and of ideologically motivated attacks on their needs, personally I have become very resistant to the idea of using a different term - any changes are exploited by people as 'proof' that the tests are invalid, or shouldn't be used. And that harms people. It's not that I think 'my' definition is the best one - but it's a tool I need to keep kids learning, to keep kids happy, and in some cases, to keep kids alive. So I'll use it. > It makes me think of Binet, I think it was, who when asked, very > reasonably, what intelligence is, replied, "It is what my test > measures." Now that was a man who knew the definition of a valid > test--which few parents or teachers do. I.Q. tests > measure "intelligence as defined by I.Q."--but that is not what most > of us think of when we say "Person X is so intelligent!" or "Person Y > is so stupid!" It is my experience (-8. Better than 99% of the high IQ people - and that's hundreds of them - I know would be described as very intelligent by those who've met them. Most people do seem to equate the ability to think logically and to reason well with intelligence, in my experience. > You are absolutely right, though--I have never seen an I.Q. test > (aside from taking one when I was 5 or whatnot), just "improve your > I.Q." books and such. They may well measure more than I fear they > do. This leads to another problem, of course, which is that kids get > a label put on them that only a few experts understand. But that > could be addressed by people explaining to parents what they are all > about. That's generally done now - though it's still not universal. A lot of mistakes have been made with the way these tests and definitions have been handled. But we have learned from those mistakes - and we try not to make new ones (-8 Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From drednort at alphalink.com.au Fri May 24 11:32:08 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 21:32:08 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Intelligence (was feeling sad) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3CEEB158.22420.7AB04F@localhost> > Wow, > > This is a really interesting topic - there's much more that goes into > the testing, the educational decisions and the experiences of the > kids involved than I ever really thought. > > As someone who was placed in the gifted (or whatever they called it) > program as a kid, I personally don't think it did me any favors. Of > course, that's probably more about the program I was in and the way > it was handled than it is about gifted programs in general or testing > or intelligence. That's always a problem - some programs aren't much good - and even a good program may be totally wrong for a particular kid. > In my case it was a bad idea to set me apart at a very young age > without giving me some sort of understanding as to how/why the > decision was made. I was left trying to figure out why I should get > particular attention, or to do fun things the other kids didn't. I > don't remember it ever being explained to me beyond being told that I > was "bright" or "smart". The result of this, for me, was disbelief > about half the time, and enormous fear of failure the other half. > Any minor failure that I had left me fearing that I was a fraud, that > they'd gotten it wrong, and that any moment someone was going to > figure it out. Like I said, it was probably all about the way it was > handled in my school system (and about my sad, twisted psyche), but > I've never felt that warm and fuzzy about gifted programs as a > result. Except for the fact that I got to hang out with the > other "gifted" kids and goof off a lot instead of doing spelling > tests, which was good. Not all gifted kids benefit from gifted programs. If the programs are well designed, most will benefit - but even then you won't get 100% success. To me, from the very limited information I have about your experiences, I would guess that you're spot on about one of the problems - what giftedness meant was not explained to you. And if your program was more fun than what the other kids had to do in regular class, then there was likely a real problem with what they were being offered. But the thing is - the 'hanging out' with other gifted kids you mention is often one of the advantages of such a program. I don't know how it was for you - but a lot of gifted kids have a hard time making friends with their general classmates, especially when they are younger, and haven't got very developed social skills yet. Gifted programs for some of these kids, make it easier for them to make friends - and from there to develop the social skills they need to function. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Fri May 24 12:50:07 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 12:50:07 -0000 Subject: Intelligence In-Reply-To: <3CEEAF34.3349.7252C8@localhost> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Shaun Hately" wrote: > The problem is that if you include too many things, [in the definition of intelligence] you can wind up making the > term virtually meaningless. Educationally speaking, it is very important to be able > to identify specifically where issues are - by using a tight definition of intelligence > (as is done in IQ testing), it allows us to look for problems revealed by the testing. > Other things are important as well - some of them can be significantly more > important - but if you cast the net too wide, there is a real risk that if a problem is > noted, you won't know where to look. I feel I am losing track of the terms of the debate. If the (presumed measurable) quantities that go into intelligence and/or educational achievement are multidimensional, aren't you bound to lose information by condensing to a single thing called 'intelligence'? If all the kids you deal with fall into a cluster in this space (especially if that cluster is at one end of a linear structure that represents the rest of the population) then it's OK to do that. But if, as I suspect is the case, the special educational needs population in general, and gifted kids in particular, are scattered widely, then surely you need to retain multiple measures to properly assess needs. Some of your post implies that you do do just that. But in that case it seems invidious to single out one dimension and call it 'intelligence', because, whatever the experts do, the public will latch onto it, and stigmatise their children accordingly. That seems to me to be just as important an issue as ensuring that particular groups of kids get the right educational provision for them. David From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Fri May 24 15:29:22 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 15:29:22 -0000 Subject: I rule! Message-ID: Today I had an exam again, in the subject "Projecting of Fishing- and Workboats". The exam was oral, rather than written, and consisted of two parts. First, we had to present the project we had done - we were two groups, each group doing a written project designing a vessel, and the project counted 50% towards the final grade. My group consisted of me, Marius and Solfrid. After this, there was an individual exam for each student. Of course I have tried reading for the exam the last few days, but it's been so damned hot (26-27 degrees centigrade) that all I have read has melted and run straight out of my head again. So today, at 12 midday, I appeared at the meeting-room at the second floor at the Centre of Marine Technology, more than just a bit nervous. The presentation took one hour, and went as well as could be expected, although we did get a nervous feeling when we noticed just how dwarfed our reports was by the report from the other group. The nervousness only increased when we spoke with the other group, and realised that they had completed linedrawings with ShipShape (tm), and all sorts of things - I myself had hoped that we could have achieved a bit more on our project. Nothing to be done by that, however - all we could do, was to present the project as it was, though it paled in comparison to that of Group 1 - but Professor E. informed me that the other group had produced the best project he had ever seen in his long time as a professor. Anyway, after the persentation, my group was up for the individual exams, and I really did not feel I was in control of the subject. Of my group, I was the last to go, with Solfrid going first. Both Marius and Solfrid said they were really unhappy about how things went when they were done, and the last few minutes waiting to be called in were of the nervous sort. Then Professor E. poked his head out the door, and I walked in to an uncertain fate. I go in, and as instructed seat myself at the end of the table there. I was then asked to draw two pieces of paper from seventeen on the table (one for each chapter in the curriculum) - I did so, and got the numbers 6 and 9. what doe it mean? The professor also is curious, and strives to find out what no. 6 was (with me thinking to myself: "If he, the Professor, doesn't know what no. 6 is about, how am I supposed to remember anything?"). Then he finds it: ship-boards hydraulics and deck-equipment. "No! I don't know that chapter!" was what I thought. A small core of panic makes its presence known. Professor E. starts by asking what factors are used to dimension ship- borne hydraulics on fishing-vessels, and I respond, using a trawler as example, explaining that first you shoot the trawl (set it out), but that isn't particularly demanding, but hauling it, while it gets ever heavier is a strain, and recovering it is the big factor. As this part goes on, I realise that, contrary to what I expected, I am doing OK. Questions go on, and I miss only a small bit on one question. Then: No. 9. Turns out it is about propulsion-machinery, and that was one of the topics that was my responsibility to write about on the project - the questions were easy, and Professor E. and the censor felt compelled to stop me talking, so they could ask questions from other areas in this chapter. The 15 minutes pass quickly, and I am sent out while the Professor and censor discuss our grades. At this point I fully expect to get a C - a C in Norway is the equivalent of the upper quarter of a US C and the lower half to two thirds of a US B, while a Norwegian B covers the upper half of a US B, and the lower quarter to half of a US A. Some minutes pass by, while I gather the others - we are seven in total. We are then called in, and the censor takes a sheet and starts reading: (names) (mumble) (mumble), Solfrid G.: C, (mumble) (mumble) Marius L.: C, (mumble) (mumble) (somebody gets an A) (mumble), Christian S.: B! Now that shocked me! I had the feeling that the report was less than perfect, to say it mildly - I expected the reports was around C or D - and I managed to lift myself to a B! After this announcement I was free to go home and relax - noting in passing that Marius and Solfrid were not particularly keen on discussing the report with me all of a sudden. Presently I am watching the Royal Wedding on TV - after Nidaros Cathedral Boy-Choir sang a Norwegian version of "I Was Glad" (same text as used for English coronations, different melody), the choir Schola Sanctae Sunnivae walked through the cathedral, singing "Lux Illumit" - very, very serene. And Princess M?rtha Louise looks more like a queen than any Queen Reignant, Queen Consort, or Queen Dowager I have ever seen - this gown is far more beautiful in my eyes than the one worn by HRH Crown Princess Mette Marit when she married HRH Crown Prince Haakon (even if a fashion-expert commented that it made her think of Princess Leia from Star Wars). Best regards Christian Stub? From naama_gat at hotmail.com Fri May 24 15:30:14 2002 From: naama_gat at hotmail.com (naamagatus) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 15:30:14 -0000 Subject: Mixed Couples on TV Message-ID: Hi, Thanks a lot to everybody who responded. I read all the posts and found them fascinating. After years of watching American culture filtered and simplified through the telelvision, it's fascinating to get the opinions of real people on these issues. There were just a few points I wanted to clarify and respond to. Amy Z quoted me: >I have a question to the Americans amongst you. I couldn't help > noticing that on practically all the American TV shows (sitcoms, > dramas, soaps) there are no mixed - black and white - couples. I > know it's not an expression of racism And replied shortly: I would say it is. What else should we call a discomfort with interracial relationships if not racist? Me: I'll try to explain a bit what was the background (of my mind) when I asked that question. Obviously, I know there was and is a lot of racism in the USA. The thing is, that American TV, at least, always seems very eager to present the most advanced, least prejudiced attitude available. I see quite a bit of American T.V. shows and most of them strike me as painfully politically correct. Almost as though the screen writers have a "PC without Tears" manual they are required to consult before each episode. You can see how changes in what is considered PC are almost immediately reflected in TV shows (particularly, of course, in court dramas). When it comes to race, each show is careful (or so it seems to me) to have at least one black character who is a paragon of virtue. (Oh, and did you ever calculate the percentage of black judges based on their number in TV shows? And doctors? And lawyers? One would have to urge that affirmative action is taken on behalf of white students in all the prestigious law and medicine schools, since black students must outnumber white students by a factor of 1 to 100.) So, with this in the back of my mind, I thought that maybe there was some PC reason for the dearth of interracial couples on TV. The Eric LaSalle incident also seemed to lend support to that idea. I started to wonder whether the black community (or parts of it) did object to interracial marriages (based on, I don't know, ethnic pride or something?). Anyway, that's why I asked the question, instead of simply assuming racism as the operating factor. Ebony: >Actually, Eriq La Salle was quoted in several national black > magazines (Ebony, Essence, Savoy, Jet, etc.) as saying that *he* > >was the one who didn't like the plotline, and felt as if the > writers/producers were forcing it on him. So unless he was lying > > to the black community, he's the one who requested the change. Me: I know. That's what caught my attention - that he, as a black person, felt uncomfortable with the affair. I was puzzled at what seemed a kind of inverse racism. Kimberly: >I was a little disappointed with Eriq LaSalle >myself, because ER is one of the few shows that has had an inter- >racial romance in the recent past, and I though he had far more >chemistry with Alex Kingston than Anthony Edwards. I so agree! Kingston and Edwards just aren't as believable as a couple, are they? Naama From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Fri May 24 15:31:53 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 15:31:53 -0000 Subject: Such impudence! Message-ID: Today we had a royal wedding here in Trondheim - Princess M?rtha Lousie and Mr. Ari Behn said yes ten minutes ago as I am typing. After the ceremony the happy couple (and a significant number of kings, queens, crown princes and crown princesses, princes and princesses, grand dukes and grand duchesses, dukes and duchesses, and other priority guests) walked from the Cathedral to the Governor's Palace, which is the Royal Residence in Trondheim. As the couple walks out of the cathedral, they pass one of the TV- reporters, and what does the reporter do? He shoves a microphone into the face of the groom, and asks "How does it feel?" Did not his mother teach him any manners?! And this is supposed to be one of Norwegian TV's most experienced reporters! Mr Behn only stared at the reporter as though he was crazy, before walking on while shaking his head a bit. Best regards Christian Stub? From tabouli at unite.com.au Fri May 24 18:00:01 2002 From: tabouli at unite.com.au (Tabouli) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 04:00:01 +1000 Subject: Gifted children Message-ID: <001801c2034c$ebbb1760$4120ddcb@price> Well, well, well. I turn my back on both OT and main list digests for a couple of days, and look what happens! I peek tentatively at my latest OT digest and it's bulging with one of my pet subjects: gifted children! And begun by a post from a fellow Melburnian, no less! Well. Shaun: > I work with profoundly gifted kids - kids for whom IQ tests, etc, are very important for them to gain access to appropriate education. Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" published just over 20 years ago has caused massive harm to these kids needs and their chances of getting the education they need and they deserve. Gould couldn't be blamed for this if the work was credible - but it's one of the most biased pieces of literature I've ever encountered.< I have read "The Mismeasure of Man". In fact, it was required reading for me in the "Intelligence" unit of my undergraduate psychology course. Of course, that was a long time ago, so I may be misremembering by now, but I'll risk making some comments here. IIRC, a major aim of this book was demonstrating how IQ tests and results on said tests were commandeered by what could be termed "social Darwinists" to demonstrate the "hierarchy of races". That is, the finding that white people almost unfailingly obtained much higher average scores than black people and somewhat higher scores than 'yellow' people demonstrated proof of Darwin's theory of evolution, proving that 'black' people were the least evolved and the 'white' people were the most evolved. This view was, I believe, widely held among western intellectuals at the time, and they were delighted that IQ tests provided such incontrovertible evidence of their superiority to the savages. Hmmm. The fairly glaring point said white intellectuals didn't think of was that, well, um, who wrote those tests? Western middle class intellectuals. It seems pretty logical for white intellectuals to invent an "intelligence" test which measured what Western intellectuals considered to indicate intelligence, no? And therefore hardly surprising that Western middle class intellectuals scored the highest on it. My Intelligence lecturer (Ted Nettelbeck) used the book as a starting point for discussing the attempt to develop a "culture-free" measure of intelligence. > It's a work of political theory - not really the scientific work that Gould claimed it was. > >He certainly raised some good and valid points - he showed how testing could be, and has been, used to discriminate unjustly. The trouble is, he threw the baby out with the bathwater.< I think making those points about how IQ tests were used in this way was a very good idea, myself. I could rant for pages on the difficulties of using psychometric tests across cultures and languages, and have in fact been called in to give advice on this very subject to grad students writing questionnaires for comparing cultural groups. Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic equivalence is a very, very complex issue, yet a worrying majority of psychologists, including very senior respected psychologists, still have this blithe notion that all they need to do is translate their tests and they will still work exactly the same in another culture. Anyway, that's a side issue. If we're using a well-standardised IQ test like the WISC or the Stanford-Binet to test children within the same cultural group this shouldn't be too big a concern. I'm curious, though, to hear the definition of "profoundly gifted". Should I assume the MENSA definition of an IQ over 150? Or something else? What percentage of children fit into this category? > The problem is that over 50% of gifted children are underachievers - and the higher you get up the scale of giftedness (there are generally considered by experts to be three or four levels of giftedness - each with significantly different educational needs) - the higher that proportion is - and a significant number of these kids are underachievers because their school environment is inappropriate to them.< My, my, but we're getting close to home here. I am a serial collector of underachieving "gifted children". They comprise about 30% of my social circle, and two of the most significant of my past relationships. I was also identified as one of this gifted children category myself, having the usual high IQ, social difficulties in primary school, placed in the gifted children class at secondary school to be extended and so forth. Once upon a time I was absolutely gung-ho about the whole gifted children education business, trumpetted the cause from the rooftops. These days I'm not so sure. It's not that I no longer believe that children with very high IQs have special needs which are handled very badly by the standard education system. I do. It's more that I have become increasingly convinced that the way "giftedness" is typically handled by well-intentioned parents and teachers is a disaster, and contributes massively to the sort of life breakdowns I have witnessed. (What is the current plan for gifted children in Melbourne, Shaun?) Kimberly: > In my case it was a bad idea to set me apart at a very young age without giving me some sort of understanding as to how/why the decision was made. I was left trying to figure out why I should get particular attention, or to do fun things the other kids didn't. I don't remember it ever being explained to me beyond being told that I was "bright" or "smart". The result of this, for me, was disbelief about half the time, and enormous fear of failure the other half. Any minor failure that I had left me fearing that I was a fraud, that they'd gotten it wrong, and that any moment someone was going to figure it out< Precisely. It's as if that IQ score is magic. The hapless child, typically aged 4-7, is suddenly told that s/he is a genius, a creature superior to other mortals, who is, and this is the worst bit, Destined For Greatness. Yes, by the time you're 25, little one, your name will be up in lights, because you are SUPERIOR! You are Better Than Other Children! You have magic powers which guarantee you success in any field of endeavour you choose! You will be rich, famous, a rocket scientist, a brain surgeon! And, all too often, the terribly chuffed parent is delighted at this new symbol of status. "They did these tests at school and found that Katie's *gifted*, you know!" Now, they mean well. They mean to be encouraging and inspiring. They sincerely believe what they say. But the problem is, life doesn't actually work that way. A high IQ score is *not* magic, and does *not* guarantee anything other than an easy ride academically until one's mid-teens or so, and it certainly doesn't guarantee success or happiness. The problem is, by the time the child has cruised to his or her mid-teens, they take effortless success and adulation for granted. It is their right. It is *normal*. It is their identity. And then, all of a sudden, a new and terrible element enters the success equation: effort. The child has never had to stoop to such a thing before. They see it as beneath them. Other children have to do that stuff, but not me. But slowly, inexorably, as the effort component increases in importance, some of those lowly inferior children start to catch up. How dare they? At this point, there seems to be a split. Some gifted children bite the bullet and grudgingly apply themselves to working within the system. And excel. Others seem to hit a point of disillusionment with the whole education process and more or less resign from it. Drop out of school, or limp into university and stop turning up because there are no longer any awed teachers on their backs. And from then on, every single lowly non-gifted peer who becomes a success (my, but failed child prodigies hate Madonna!), every single day that passes without them achieving fame and glory, is a deep, deep failure. They end up with bizarre self-esteem profiles, on one hand still devoutly believing that they are superior to all other mortals, on the other deeply insecure and depressed, because they have failed to deliver, and perhaps they were just frauds all along. Sometimes they turn elsewhere for challenges. My last boyfriend, who dropped out of school the day he turned 16 is, as I gradually discovered, busy destroying his brilliant mind with marijuana and devotes what's left of it to finding ingenious loopholes in legal and administrative systems so that he can continue to get away with being $30,000 in debt and counting because he spends all of his dole money on drugs. And still believes that he will one day be a great political leader because of his superior intelligence. It's hideous. Then we have the social element, on which other people have already commented. Giving a child special attention is hardly going to endear him or her to the other children. It creates resentment among the "not-gifted". What to do? Turn the child into a recluse, or a bored troublemaker who either still does brilliantly, or deliberately underachieves? Put the child up a few grades where the academic gap is narrowed, but the social gap is almost unbridgeable? Put "gifted" children together so they have each other to talk to? Amy: > I am aware that these are as much emotional or moral qualities as > intellectual, but that just goes to show that "intelligence" is not a > category of the brain separable from the rest of the package. > Shaun: >Well, to me, I have had to treat it that way. I am in the business of helping people deal with their gifts in a very specific area - the realm of intellectual giftedness. I'm an expert in that area. But I am not an expert in dealing with their creative skills, and especially not with their empathic skills. If they need help in those areas, they're better off with someone else.< I think the real issue here is the Western education system. After all, I believe that Binet specifically *invented* the IQ test as a test which would predict performance within this system, and subsequent tests, though more sophisticated, are presumably designed along similar lines. Therefore, in terms of Shaun's need to identify children whose *educational* needs will not be met effectively by this system because their aptitude is too high, an IQ test is a pretty good indicator. OTOH, I think Amy is looking at a broader issue: that of the child as having a full range of needs outside and beyond the scholastic domain in which s/he has been identified as exceptional. How does picking out children on the basis of only one domain, and defining them by it thenceforth benefit the child as a whole person, not just as an academic achiever? This, I think, is the crux of my problem with the gifted children issue. What I see happening is children building their entire identity around the fact that they score better than other people on IQ tests, and in the long-term, once they get out of the system in which they have superior aptitude, this can become a serious problem, because the truth is that IQ score magic does not provide everything you need to be happy and successful and to build yourself the adult life you want. After years of buying into the IQ magic philosophy (easy to do: when being superior to others is central to your identity, of course you want to believe that what you're good at is the best measure of personal worth), watching what happens to gifted children *after* they leave school has convinced me that what really counts is not "intelligence" at all. I now plump for the first quality Amy listed: resourcefulness. My dope-smoking ex had plenty of intelligence. All the IQ tests said so. But was he happy, or successful, or even functional because of his high IQ? Not at all! What he completely lacked was resourcefulness. One day he was busy proclaiming his intellectual superiority, and I said yes, but if you're so intelligent, why haven't you figured out a way to get the kind of life you want to lead? He got very upset and angry with me, and I backed down (no stomach for the fight, me), but on the inside I was unrepentant. It's not what you got, it's how you use it, and IQ tests only measure what you got. Perhaps I should sneak off one day and write an RQ test... Tabouli. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From drednort at alphalink.com.au Fri May 24 13:39:55 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 23:39:55 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Intelligence In-Reply-To: References: <3CEEAF34.3349.7252C8@localhost> Message-ID: <3CEECF4B.19791.EFAFDC@localhost> > --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Shaun Hately" wrote: > > I feel I am losing track of the terms of the debate. > > If the (presumed measurable) quantities that go into intelligence > and/or educational achievement are multidimensional, aren't you bound > to lose information by condensing to a single thing > called 'intelligence'? Yes, you will lose information. But if you give someone a blood test, and all you check for is cholesterol, again you lose information - but the test is still useful for a particular purpose. The problem is any definition is based on assumptions - you point out one yourself 'If the... quantities.. are multidimensional...' There's no real dispute that what goes into educational achievement is multidimensional - I've never heard of a single expert who doesn't think that is so. But there is a lot of debate as to whether intelligence is multidimensional - some experts (Gardner most notably) say it is, some (Spearman, most notably) feel it isn't. Depending on which model is adopted, you end up with very different definitions and ideas. > If all the kids you deal with fall into a cluster in this space > (especially if that cluster is at one end of a linear structure that > represents the rest of the population) then it's OK to do that. Basically they do. In this one specific area, there is a great deal of similarity with regards to their educational needs - there are variations as well, but so many similarities that treating them as a specific group addresses most issues easily, and prevents effort and resources being wasted, that can then be directed to addressing any differences that arise. I specialise in helping profoundly gifted children with few or no learning difficulties. I also know how to idenfity those difficulties and who to refer the child and their parents to for help with those. The simplest analogy is between a family doctor, and the whole range of medical specialists. I can handle the general stuff (about 95% of cases) - and I have the expertise to work out when something is beyond my skills and to refer the person on. I also do it on a voluntary basis - which allows parents to save their money to deal with the more unusual problems. > But if, as I suspect is the case, the special educational needs > population in general, and gifted kids in particular, are scattered > widely, then surely you need to retain multiple measures to properly > assess needs. Some of your post implies that you do do just that. Yes we do. But the thing is we *do* use multiple measures. We do retain them. We use IQ tests (such as the WISC-III and SB-LM) to assess Intelligence level. The WISC-III is also useful for determining the existence of learning disabilities. Creativity can be partially assessed by the Torrance Test, Developmental levels by the Geselle, motor development by the VMI, etc. And, other methods besides testing are used as well - observation, reports by teachers, interviews with parents. We use specific methods for specific issues. Proper IQ testing typically costs hundreds of dollars, and takes hours of time. Many of these other tests are the same. We won't waste time and money on tests - we use the right test to identify and address the issues we suspect are in place. Speaking on personal experience, I had a number of IQ tests in childhood - because that's what my issues related to. I had no developmental issues, no motor development issues, no creativity issues - so using other tests would have been a waste of times (I did have some social issues, and work was done on those, but I can barely remember the details). You use the right tool for the job. That's the key. > But in that case it seems invidious to single out one dimension and > call it 'intelligence', because, whatever the experts do, the public > will latch onto it, and stigmatise their children accordingly. That > seems to me to be just as important an issue as ensuring that > particular groups of kids get the right educational provision for > them. We analyse things in this way because 60 years of experience has shown us that if we fail to do so, we fail to identify significant numbers of these kids. And if we fail to identify them, a very significant number of them will not receive even a basic education - let alone an education that is appropriate to their needs. A significant proportion will wind up suffering significant psychological trauma, and a greatly inflated number will, literally, not survive adolescence. While avoiding stigmatisation is worthwhile, it pales in comparison to the other problems. And avoiding the use of the term 'intelligence' or broadening its dimensions does not diminish stigmatisation - it's been tried. It doesn't diminish those problems, and it winds up creating new ones by giving the impression that the needs of these kids aren't as serious as has been claimed for years. They are. Fortunately, they aren't too hard to address in most cases - but we can't afford to jeapourdise our chances. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From cindysphynx at comcast.net Fri May 24 22:37:46 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 22:37:46 -0000 Subject: Such impudence! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Christian wrote: >He shoves a microphone >into the face of the groom, and asks "How does it feel?" Did not >his mother teach him any manners?! I could live forever and never understand journalists who ask, "How does it feel?" Why do editors even allow that question, particularly of someone skilled with the press? People who are asked that question should simply reply, "Why do you ask?" and keep right on walking. Cindy (who thinks too many journalists are getting too lazy) From catlady at wicca.net Fri May 24 23:05:11 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 23:05:11 -0000 Subject: a few things / Brontosaurus / Gifted Children Message-ID: Riet, your 'grown-up Harry' in the photograph can't be Harry; his hair is FAR TOO TIDY. Oh, Jen, what a stinky problem! I'm so glad that people have come up with creative methods to try to get it fixed. I hope some of them work. I missed last Sunday's chat and couldn't even e-mail or YM my regrets to anyone, because my computer was sick. A new 'power cord' (that's what Tim calls it, altho' I used to call it 'AC convertor' because the convertor box sits between two (parts of) cord(s)) made it all better now. And I have missed so MANY top-class people's birthdays! And William's surgery (I'm so glad it worked out well!), Jamieson's life going well (except for his old cat going to Heaven to wait for him), Betty's graduation, Christian's good grade, and the discussion of great writer Stephen Jay Gould's astonishingly young death (age 60). Let me apologize to the birthday people: Scott (Scott who was the first to suggest a Harry Potter musical on Broadway, back in '00?) Minzzer (who is from New Orleans? and speaks in the third person?) Megan rhiannon333 Michelle the Penguin Elf Mirzam Black John wrote: << IIRC some bright spark scientist realised that they'd been putting the wrong head on an Apatosaurus. Does that sound right? >> IIRC (which is Far From Certain) the beast had the right head, but two competing paleontologists each named it at about the same time. The rule is that the name that was given first is the true name (no matter how much better or how much more familiar the second name is). It had been thought that the name Brontosaurus was given first, but the bright spark scientists found out that the name Apatosaurus had beat it (by a few days IIRC). I can't remember the damn NAMES of the competitors, IIRC one from Harvard and one from American Museum of Natural History? Cope, Drinker, and Marsh? The topic of Gifted Children elicits outbursts of self-pity from me. Kimberly wrote: << I was left trying to figure out why I should get particular attention, or to do fun things the other kids didn't. >> You must be a far more innately virtuous a person than me: it never comes naturally to doubt that *I* have a *right* (an unmet right!) to favorable attention and fun activities. David wrote: << it seems invidious to single out one dimension and call it 'intelligence', because, whatever the experts do, the public will latch onto it, and stigmatise their children accordingly. >> Intelligence IS the stigma! Words like nurd, geek, and wonk were NOT intended favorably! You can tell by the words accompanying them, like fat, ugly, weird, drinks from the toilet, slut... Hitting you and taking your bicycle from the bike rack to put it in a patch of poison ivy are NOT signs of friendliness despite what my mother always said! Maybe they should tell the kids that they are being put in a special remedial class to learn to deal with their handicaps: poor social skills and addiction to reading and thinking, rather than telling them that they are 'bright' or 'gifted'. However, it may not be necessary for them to STATE that: I was in regular school (regular school is a subset of Hell, a place where all adults ignore you except to punish you, and all kids hate you and try to harm you in every way they can) from pre-school and kindergarten (actually, pre-school wasn't bad!) through fourth grade, when I very luckily ESCAPED to -- even tho' they called it a school for gifted chldren, I knew that I was being put in a kindly protective shelter for total losers. << That seems to me to be just as important an issue as ensuring that particular groups of kids get the right educational provision for them. >> In USAmerican, it appears to be believed that the correct education for high-IQ children is one which reduces their school- and verbal- ability to normal, or, failing that, destroys them. I could go off on a seperate rant about the 20th century school methods being intended for the PURPOSE of seperating winners from losers ... TABOULI, I disagree with you so much that I can't write! I wish I lived in some universe where schools taught high-IQ children that they were superduper just because of being book-smart! I had the vague impression (stereotype) that Australians had an even stronger egalitarian (except for sports) idea than USAmericans, and would therefore be even more eager to punish anyone who got better than average grades... From catlady at wicca.net Fri May 24 23:05:11 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 23:05:11 -0000 Subject: a few things / Brontosaurus / Gifted Children Message-ID: Riet, your 'grown-up Harry' in the photograph can't be Harry; his hair is FAR TOO TIDY. Oh, Jen, what a stinky problem! I'm so glad that people have come up with creative methods to try to get it fixed. I hope some of them work. I missed last Sunday's chat and couldn't even e-mail or YM my regrets to anyone, because my computer was sick. A new 'power cord' (that's what Tim calls it, altho' I used to call it 'AC convertor' because the convertor box sits between two (parts of) cord(s)) made it all better now. And I have missed so MANY top-class people's birthdays! And William's surgery (I'm so glad it worked out well!), Jamieson's life going well (except for his old cat going to Heaven to wait for him), Betty's graduation, Christian's good grade, and the discussion of great writer Stephen Jay Gould's astonishingly young death (age 60). Let me apologize to the birthday people: Scott (Scott who was the first to suggest a Harry Potter musical on Broadway, back in '00?) Minzzer (who is from New Orleans? and speaks in the third person?) Megan rhiannon333 Michelle the Penguin Elf Mirzam Black John wrote: << IIRC some bright spark scientist realised that they'd been putting the wrong head on an Apatosaurus. Does that sound right? >> IIRC (which is Far From Certain) the beast had the right head, but two competing paleontologists each named it at about the same time. The rule is that the name that was given first is the true name (no matter how much better or how much more familiar the second name is). It had been thought that the name Brontosaurus was given first, but the bright spark scientists found out that the name Apatosaurus had beat it (by a few days IIRC). I can't remember the damn NAMES of the competitors, IIRC one from Harvard and one from American Museum of Natural History? Cope, Drinker, and Marsh? The topic of Gifted Children elicits outbursts of self-pity from me. Kimberly wrote: << I was left trying to figure out why I should get particular attention, or to do fun things the other kids didn't. >> You must be a far more innately virtuous a person than me: it never comes naturally to doubt that *I* have a *right* (an unmet right!) to favorable attention and fun activities. David wrote: << it seems invidious to single out one dimension and call it 'intelligence', because, whatever the experts do, the public will latch onto it, and stigmatise their children accordingly. >> Intelligence IS the stigma! Words like nurd, geek, and wonk were NOT intended favorably! You can tell by the words accompanying them, like fat, ugly, weird, drinks from the toilet, slut... Hitting you and taking your bicycle from the bike rack to put it in a patch of poison ivy are NOT signs of friendliness despite what my mother always said! Maybe they should tell the kids that they are being put in a special remedial class to learn to deal with their handicaps: poor social skills and addiction to reading and thinking, rather than telling them that they are 'bright' or 'gifted'. However, it may not be necessary for them to STATE that: I was in regular school (regular school is a subset of Hell, a place where all adults ignore you except to punish you, and all kids hate you and try to harm you in every way they can) from pre-school and kindergarten (actually, pre-school wasn't bad!) through fourth grade, when I very luckily ESCAPED to -- even tho' they called it a school for gifted chldren, I knew that I was being put in a kindly protective shelter for total losers. << That seems to me to be just as important an issue as ensuring that particular groups of kids get the right educational provision for them. >> In USAmerican, it appears to be believed that the correct education for high-IQ children is one which reduces their school- and verbal- ability to normal, or, failing that, destroys them. I could go off on a seperate rant about the 20th century school methods being intended for the PURPOSE of seperating winners from losers ... TABOULI, I disagree with you so much that I can't write! I wish I lived in some universe where schools taught high-IQ children that they were superduper just because of being book-smart! I had the vague impression (stereotype) that Australians had an even stronger egalitarian (except for sports) idea than USAmericans, and would therefore be even more eager to punish anyone who got better than average grades... From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Sat May 25 01:19:30 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 01:19:30 -0000 Subject: With regards to the recent wedding-debates here Message-ID: At the royal wedding in Trondheim today, Ari Behn, the groom, gave a speech during the wedding-dinner which was of the more impressive samples of flowery language in modern Norway - and he pulled it off, making it sound just right for the occasion. To give you a taste of it, below is my feeble attempt of a translation: ---- Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, MR. President of the Parliament, Dear M?rtha. Dear M?rtha, We met in our dreams when we were little. Let us keep meeting in our dreams. It will make the time we shall now have together, twice as long. Thank You, King Harald. Thank you for those good and warm words we were given for sustenance, they bring strength and nourishment to M?rtha and me on the long journey that is now ahead of us. Dear Sonja and Harald. First I must thank you for being the best parents in the world. For the like of your daughter I have never met! Yes, it is quite obvious whose daughter she is. You are two quite unique persons. And I am not then thinking about the role you have as our country's beloved King and Queen. I am thinking of the unique strength of heart and goodness you possess. I thank you for having from the first moment met me with trust and a friendliness which deeply moved me. Thank you for having taken the time to learn to know me; it has given me safety when I needed it as most. To fall in love with the Princess of the nation is one thing. But to get her yes ensures that a whole nation keenly pays attention to the beat of our love, as though it is a piece of music played before open doors. Thank you that you as my parents in law to be have warmly taken care of me when I felt as though I was stumbling and loosing my footing. I have come to love you both, and I look very much forward to spending more time with you in the years that will follow. I also thank you with all my heart for this magnificent celebration you have created for us! Dear Mette-Marit and Haakon. You radiate of common wisdom and vitality. Thank you for the advice and comfort you gave me when it became clear for the near family that M?rtha and I wish to share our lives with each other. The conversations with you two have a quite special place in my heart, and I thank you for having welcomed me with insight and joy. There was of course not much joy to be seen when the Crown Prince completely wiped the deck with me on a skiing-trip in the mountains. But I can tell you all that it gave a valuable insight. "Race you to the top" is an excellent exercise to do with unfit brothers in law. Thank you for that race, dear Haakon. It taught me that you are cut from the same cloth as your sister, and this bodes well for Easter- holidays and times to come. A wise man once said that it is just the same in marriage as when skiing in the mountains: You have to be strong in the up-hills, or you'll crash straight out of the track in the first downhill turn. Dear Mother and Father. Thank you for after first having given me life, you have not a single moment not taken me seriously. It is the greatest value a child may be given from home. It is this spring which is the cause of me standing here as the one I am, and for this I thank you. Dear Anja and Espen! Thank you for being the open and talented persons that I am so proud to call sister and brother. I also will thank with the deepest gratitude the rest of my family which is gathered around us. You have all been part of giving me a childhood and growing up filled with cultural and creative values. Dear M?rtha. Never have I met a person with greater strength than you. Never have I met a human with greater strength of heart than you. Never have I seen a woman so intensely beautiful as you. You radiate an irresistible mixture of wisdom and beauty, grace and determination. You are irresistibly sparkling and forceful, playful and serious at the same time. Yes, you are irresistible when you always let me finish a discussion with these words: Yes, my darling, you are entirely right! With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls; for stony limits cannot hold love out, and what love can do that dares love attempt. These are the words of Romeo, he who lost his beloved Juliet. A bitter misunderstanding made it so they could not be joined in life. An exaggeration and thoughtless lie may often make love between two humans an impossibility. Even in our time, which in moments may alter itself to times we like to think of as masterfully painted intrigues of Shakespeare's. There were nights when I thought ten years was the measure of time for a wandering of the deserts for each of us, awaiting what has happened today. What caused the tangle to be unravelled was the pure and clear tone singing through the night. Ten years is not an impossibly long wait. We will manage this too, as long as it will be us. Dear M?rtha, You are like the light that conquers darkness. To know that you exist, makes me know that God too is present. When I am with you I no longer fear death. Through you, M?rtha, life is eternal. Through you, M?rtha, life is liveable. You are a seer, and you are not frightened to tell what you see. You are the human who has seen me like I have never before been seen, in an open look where my weaknesses were lined up without frightening you in the slightest. You are a miracle of a woman, in no other way can one explain the wonderful that you today have said yes to become my wife! Many may be lead to think that it is a pure fairytale that we found each other. Of course they are right. It is without exception a fairytale each time two humans find each other and decide to live their lives together. Certainly you are the Princess of Norway, and this one may not be separated from all the other that you also represent. You have been shaped and built by your legacy and your role, it makes you the person you are today. Mature and ready for the tasks you have set for your life, you are a revelation of intensity and drive for all of us who know you. And in all the time that I have known you, I have thought of nothing but this: If it really is the two of us that is meant to be, then God also will arrange so that it becomes us two. Today life has come to us and joined us. Today you and I are life itself. I love you! I request that those gathered here join me and toast in love of the bride! ---- Best regards Christian Stub? From drednort at alphalink.com.au Sat May 25 02:18:10 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 12:18:10 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children In-Reply-To: <001801c2034c$ebbb1760$4120ddcb@price> Message-ID: <3CEF8102.1102.13DBED@localhost> > Well, well, well. > > I turn my back on both OT and main list digests for a couple of days, and look what > happens! I peek tentatively at my latest OT digest and it's bulging with one of my > pet subjects: gifted children! And begun by a post from a fellow Melburnian, no > less! Well. > > Shaun: > > I work with profoundly gifted kids - kids for whom IQ tests, etc, are very important > for them to gain access to appropriate education. Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" > published just over 20 years ago has caused massive harm to these kids needs and > their chances of getting the education they need and they deserve. Gould couldn't > be blamed for this if the work was credible - but it's one of the most biased pieces of > literature I've ever encountered.< > > I have read "The Mismeasure of Man". In fact, it was required reading for me in the > "Intelligence" unit of my undergraduate psychology course. Of course, that was a > long time ago, so I may be misremembering by now, but I'll risk making some > comments here. > > IIRC, a major aim of this book was demonstrating how IQ tests and results on said tests > were commandeered by what could be termed "social Darwinists" to demonstrate > the "hierarchy of races". That is, the finding that white people almost unfailingly > obtained much higher average scores than black people and somewhat higher > scores than 'yellow' people demonstrated proof of Darwin's theory mf evolution, > proving that 'black' people were the least evolved and the 'white' people were the > most evolved. This view was, I believe, widely held among western intellectuals > at the time, and they were delighted that IQ tests provided such incontrovertible > evidence of their superiority to the savages. Actually, this is the primary problem with Gould's book - it gives the impression that this occurred far more often that it did. Gould identified a problem that was quite rare and frowned upon by most of the people using tests and presented it as a dominant characteristic. Genetic theory, and blood tests were misused in the same way - by a small minority of bigots to push their agendas. That's not a problem with the testing - it's a problem with the bigots. They chose to abuse the tests for their own political gain. Those who actually understood the testing, and designed the tests, generally (though not totally - there are bigots in any field) believed and showed that the tests showed how severe social discrimination was - from the 1920s onwards they were pointing out that the 15 point average IQ difference between blacks and whites on the test in America was *precisely* what was predicted by nutritional differences in childhood, and access to appropriate education, and that therefore any perceived differences were a creation of society rather than inherent. > Hmmm. > > The fairly glaring point said white intellectuals didn't think of was that, well, um, who > wrote those tests? Western middle class intellectuals. It seems pretty logical for > white intellectuals to invent an "intelligence" test which measured what Western > intellectuals considered to indicate intelligence, no? And therefore hardly > surprising that Western middle class intellectuals scored the highest on it. They didn't - that's another misrepresentation from Gould. The 'racial' group that actually scored the highest on average was middle and upper class Asians, followed by middle and upper class Jews, followed by middle and upper class Whites, followed by middle and upper class Blacks, followed by working class Jews, followed by working class whites, followed by working class blacks, followed by working class Asians. (And all the differences were within 20 points - as 15 points was considered the range that could be affected by social and educational conditions on those tests, a 20 point difference indicated virtually no inherent racial difference - 5 points on an IQ test is not a relevant distinction, especially not at the 100 IQ level where this difference was seen). The largest single group to score highly were the upper and middle class whites - but that's because they were the group most tested. The way society was structured there weren't many middle and upper class Asians or Blacks to be tested - but those that were tested were found to have results very close to anyone else with a similar socioeconomic standard. Gould has a political axe to grind - it's clear from the dedication of his book onwards - which I might add also shows the lack of quality of his research in this area. "To the memory of Grammy and Papa Joe, who came, struggled, and prospered, Mr. Goddard notwithstanding". A common misrepresentation by those opposed to IQ testing is that Henry Goddard used IQ tests to prove the Jews were intellectually inferior and should be kept out of the United States. Gould has apparently accepted this, hook, line and sinker. It's not true - Goddard, if anything, went the other way - he claimed that studies showed Jews were smarter than Gentiles, and he worked tirelessly to help Jews immigrate to America following the rise of the Nazi's in Germany. (He's not beyond reproach by any means - he was a eugenicist who believed that the 'mentally retarded' should be prevented from having children -but he wasn't anti-Semitic - those claims come from one piece of work he did in 1917, where he found 83% of Jews arriving at Ellis Island tested as 'Feeble Minded' - and that is precisely what he found, and he pointed out to others that it showed the tests being used were *severely* flawed - mostly because they assumed the refugees arriving from Europe could speak fluent English. He was one of the earliest proponents of 'culture-free' testing to avoid problems like this. Gould's research seems to have been very limited. It really isn't surprising that he came to the conclusion he did about Goddard, because he's been attacked on this basis for a long time - but deeper research shows it's not true. > My Intelligence lecturer (Ted Nettelbeck) used the book as a starting point for > discussing the attempt to develop a "culture-free" measure of intelligence. Yes - and that's the ideal, certainly - they are getting closer to it. The SB-V (due for release sometime next year, and currently undergoing norming studies) is much closer to culture-free than any previous clinical test. > > It's a work of political theory - not really the scientific work that Gould claimed it was. > > > >He certainly raised some good and valid points - he showed how testing could be, > and has been, used to discriminate unjustly. The trouble is, he threw the baby out > with the bathwater.< > > I think making those points about how IQ tests were used in this way was a very good idea, > myself. I could rant for pages on the difficulties of using psychometric tests > across cultures and languages, and have in fact been called in to give advice on > this very subject to grad students writing questionnaires for comparing cultural > groups. Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic equivalence is a very, very complex > issue, yet a worrying majority of psychologists, including very senior respected > psychologists, still have this blithe notion that all they need to do is translate their > tests and they will still work exactly the same in another culture. Anyway, that's a > side issue. If we're using a well-standardised IQ test like the WISC or the > Stanford-Binet to test children within the same cultural group this shouldn't be too > big a concern. Some of the points, Gould raised, about the misuse of tests at times, were important ones. But Gould wasn't the first to raise them, and others did so in a far less biased (you don't fight bias by using bias) and scientifically more credible way - 'The IQ Controversy' by Block and Dworkin, 1976, and 'Science and Politics of IQ' by Kamin, 1974, both predate Gould's book, and are far better works on these issues, having been written by people qualified in the areas. The best, IMHO, is 'The Intelligence Controversy' which takes the form of a debate between Kamin and Eysenck. > I'm curious, though, to hear the definition of "profoundly gifted". Should I assume > the MENSA definition of an IQ over 150? Or something else? What percentage > of children fit into this category? The Mensa definition is actually IQ 130 (Wechsler) or 133 (Stanford-Binet). That's about 1 in 50 people. EG/PG kids - Exceptionally gifted/profoundly gifted - sometimes just referred to as profoundly gifted - are those with an IQ of over 160. It's around 1 in 5,000 kids - or around 1% of gifted kids. These are the type of kids who benefit, educationally, from radical acceleration at school - skipping multiple grades, etc. > My, my, but we're getting close to home here. I am a serial collector of underachieving > "gifted children". They comprise about 30% of my social circle, and two of the > most significant of my past relationships. I was also identified as one of this gifted > children category myself, having the usual high IQ, social difficulties in primary > school, placed in the gifted children class at secondary school to be extended and > so forth. Once upon a time I was absolutely gung-ho about the whole gifted > children education business, trumpetted the cause from the rooftops. These days > I'm not so sure. My background, so you can see where I am coming from. I was a PG child, who had to go through his schooling where no programs existed for gifted children, especially not for those who were in the higher ranges of giftedness. It's because the decisions on education were being made by the lovely Mrs Kirner. Joan Kirner was herself a gifted child - she was accelerated through school, and went to University early. And, for some reason, she wound up very hostile towards gifted children, and was opposed to special educational provision for them (interestingly, the only program she *didn't* actively opposed was University High School's - the one she'd gone through). Most programs were shut down, or at least had to be run 'unofficially' while she was involved in Educational decisions (from 1982-1992, basically - first as Chair of the Curriculum Committee, then as Education Minister, and eventually as Premier). So I went through a period where access to such programs was, even more than normally, limited and largely a matter of luck. I needed access to such programs - and they weren't available - programs survived in a few schools because their principals thought they were important enough to continue running them, without special funding, but there weren't many. I've seen first hand the damage done by there being no support. I was one of a cohort of 12 EG/PG kids studied by Melbourne Uni from 1987-1997 (aged 12-22) Of the 12, 3 managed to get reasonable support - all have had generally happy lives, and are employed in decent jobs. 2 managed to get some sort of accomodation outside the state system (this includes me). Both are successful, but both suffered significant psychological trauma as a result of their experiences. Of the remaining 7 who had no support relating to their giftedness, 3 didn't survive to 17, having taken their own lives. 2 more attempted suicide on at least one occasion. One of the other 2 became heavily involved in drug use (though thankfully has got off it over the last three years), mostly as an attempt to deal with depressive illness. 1 has had no real problems - she seems to have handled everything fine. But out of a group of 9, who weren't supported properly, 8 wound up with depressive illnesses, 3 to the extent, they killed themselves and two more tried. That's only one study group - and it's not entirely reprentative - a suicide rate of 25% is unusually high. 10% is more commonly found. And bear in mind, the fact we were being studied, probably reduced the rate somewhat - experts were watching, and if they noted problems, there were attempts to deal with them. > It's not that I no longer believe that children with very high IQs have special needs which > are handled very badly by the standard education system. I do. It's more that I > have become increasingly convinced that the way "giftedness" is typically handled > by well-intentioned parents and teachers is a disaster, and contributes massively > to the sort of life breakdowns I have witnessed. (What is the current plan for > gifted children in Melbourne, Shaun?) Plan? There's meant to be a plan? (-8 There really isn't one. From 1993-1998, the Bright Futures program was in place, but that's been more or less shut down as a proper organised plan. Individual schools have programs in place, but these range from the totally pathetic (the school where the gifted program involves making ice cream) to the very good (University High's Extension Program, MLC's Compass Centre. Most school programs are very rudimentary and not very good. The program I volunteer in takes place outside the school environment simply because most schools don't handle things at all well. That's becoming more and more common. > Precisely. It's as if that IQ score is magic. The hapless child, typically > aged 4-7, is suddenly told that s/he is a genius, a creature superior to other > mortals, who is, and this is the worst bit, Destined For Greatness. Yes, by > the time you're 25, little one, your name will be up in lights, because you > are SUPERIOR! You are Better Than Other Children! You have magic > powers which guarantee you success in any field of endeavour you choose! > You will be rich, famous, a rocket scientist, a brain surgeon! And, all too often, > the terribly chuffed parent is delighted at this new symbol of status. > "They did these tests at school and found that Katie's *gifted*, you know!" This shouldn't happen - and in well run programs, it doesn't. Kids are told what giftedness (another term I wish hadn't been used, but we're stuck with it - CHIP is the term I favour, Child of High Intellectual Potential) is. It means that they have a great potential to achieve very high standards in academic and intellectual realms *if* that is what they want, and *if* they are willing to work at it. But it has to be what they want. and they shouldn't assume it's going to be easy. In fact, one of the first problems we generally have to deal with is that they don't know how to work hard - most gifted kids aren't identified to around age 10 or 11 at the moment, because testing is only commonly used when problems start to develop. And it often means they've been through 5 years of school without ever breaking a mental sweat. They don't know how to put effort into schoolwork, because they've never had to. The first step is generally to teach them this, by giving them a level of work that actually requires them to think and put some effort in. Generally no more than their classmates are doing, but hopefully no less - they need to learn that if you want success, you need to put the effort in. And schools often don't teach them this at all. And the parent who treats giftedness as a form of social enhancement is actually a minority - but where they do exist, decent programs will disillusion them of that attitude pretty quickly, as they are told precisely what giftedness can mean. It means a greatly heightened risk of psychological problems *unless* the parents take it seriously. Often it means, the parents will have to spend extra money and time ensuring their child gets what they need educationally, given that schools really don't provide it a lot of the time, etc. > Now, they mean well. They mean to be encouraging and inspiring. They sincerely > believe what they say. But the problem is, life doesn't actually work that way. A > high IQ score is *not* magic, and does *not* guarantee anything other than an > easy ride academically until one's mid-teens or so, and it certainly doesn't > guarantee success or happiness. The problem is, by the time the child has > cruised to his or her mid-teens, they take effortless success and adulation for > granted. It is their right. It is *normal*. It is their identity. And then, all of a > sudden, a new and terrible element enters the success equation: effort. Yes, this is a real problem - but it's one of the primary problems that decent programs set out to address. One of the primary 'mottoes' in out program is 'The Prize Cannot Be Won Without the Effort.' Schools, without gifted programs, are actually disastrous in this regard - when a gifted child is simply expected to do the same work as everyone else, they will often find it *incredibly* easy. And that means they will not learn the skills and discipline needed to deal with schoolwork when it starts requiring more than just the ability to think fast. The schooling I went through for example, was meant to require 15 minutes of homework per night from age 5-8, 30 minutes from 9-11, 1 hour at 12, 90 minutes at 13, two hours from 14-15, and two and half hours from 16-17. For most kids, these numbers were accurate - for me, no way. From age 5-13, I very rarely needed to do more than 5 minutes a night. Suddenly at 14, the work load increased dramatically - I had about an hour to do a night. It was still less than most were doing - but where they had had a gradual chance to develop the skills and discipline needed, I didn't. I had to make a big jump. I did it - but a lot don't. With the kids I work with now, we encourage them to work to their potential. We encourage them to develop decent skills that will help them learn to work - not just to cruise. That's what properly designed programs do. What you've described here is not a good, or well designed program. Unfortunately, there's a lot of those around. > Then we have the social element, on which other people have already commented. > Giving a child special attention is hardly going to endear him or her to the > other children. It creates resentment among the "not-gifted". What to do? Turn > the child into a recluse, or a bored troublemaker who either still does brilliantly, or > deliberately underachieves? Put the child up a few grades where the academic > gap is narrowed, but the social gap is almost unbridgeable? Put "gifted" children > together so they have each other to talk to? The last is actually the best solution, according to dozens of studies and years of research. Grouping gifted children together and then educating them based on that grouping works incredibly well if it is done while they are young enough. If it's done while they are young enough, other kids don't realise what is happening, and so the resentment issue doesn't arise - and by the time kids are old enough to realise the difference, it is normal to them, not worthy of resentment (the bigger problem is potential resentment by parents, not the kids). The kids in the gifted program have a much better chance of making friends within that program, than they do in an aged based classroom, and this allows them to develop their social skills to the extent that they are more likely to make friends from all groups later on. As for putting up grades, for EG/PG kids (though often not for others) this often decreases the social gap, as well as the academic gap - a EG/PG 5 year old is more likely to make friends, especially close friends, in a class of 10 year olds than one of 5 year olds. This is a very specific group - not necessarily representative of gifted children in general - but for them it works. > I think the real issue here is the Western education system. After all, I believe that > Binet specifically *invented* the IQ test as a test which would predict performance > within this system, and subsequent tests, though more sophisticated, are > presumably designed along similar lines. Therefore, in terms of Shaun's need to > identify children whose *educational* needs will not be met effectively by this > system because their aptitude is too high, an IQ test is a pretty good indicator. > OTOH, I think Amy is looking at a broader issue: > that of the child as having a full range of needs outside and beyond the scholastic > domain in which s/he has been identified as exceptional. How does picking out > children on the basis of only one domain, and defining them by it thenceforth > benefit the child as a whole person, not just as an academic achiever? Because, for some kids, addressing that domain leads to *major* improvements in other areas. If you take a 5 year old with an IQ of 170, and place them into a class of 9 year olds, you won't just be addressing their intellectual and academic needs. You will be addressing their need to learn decent study skills, and self discipline, by actually requiring them to put effort into the work expected of them. You will be addressing their social needs by putting them in a group where they have a lot more in common socially than they would with the five year olds - a group for whom friendship is more sophisticated, for whom games are more sophisticated, etc, a group the kid fits into more than they would the 5 year olds. This is what all the evidence concerning these kids shows. There's not a lot of them - 1 in 5,000 kids - but these are the ones I deal with. What's required for more moderately gifted kids can be very different - generally their needs can be addressed in regular classes if the teacher is willing and able to make suitable accomodations to deal with differences - which hopefully any teacher is willing and able to do. > This, I think, is the crux of my problem with the gifted children issue. What I see > happening is children building their entire identity around the fact that they score > better than other people on IQ tests, and in the long-term, once they get out of the > system in which they have superior aptitude, this can become a serious problem, > because the truth is that IQ score magic does not provide everything you need to > be happy and successful and to build yourself the adult life you want. With decent programs, this doesn't happen. Unfortunately, a significant number of these programs are not decent ones. > After years of buying into the IQ magic philosophy (easy to do: when being > superior to others is central to your identity, of course you want to believe that > what you're good at is the best measure of personal worth), watching what > happens to gifted children *after* they leave school has convinced me that what > really counts is not "intelligence" at all. What you've seen - what you've watched - is anecdotal, basically by definition. And I'm sure you are aware that anecdotal evidence has serious limitations. What the detailed research shows is that when gifted children are given access to *appropriate* and *well designed* programs, when they are adults, they are far more likely to be succesful in their chosen fields - and what is more significant, by far - they are far more likely to be contented with their lives, to be happy, to avoid significant psychological problems. If the programs aren't well designed, and aren't appropriate, things are very different. And unfortunately a *lot* of programs aren't - most are a matter of schools playing lip service to a need. > I now plump for the first quality Amy listed: resourcefulness. I think resourcefullness is more important than IQ. So is self discipline and a variety of other things. I also thing sight is more important than hearing - but that, of course, doesn't mean I don't think deafness needs to be addressed. Just because something is more important, isn't a reason not to address other issues. You mentioned you are a Melbournian, so I'll use Aussie material - are you aware that since 1988, it has been formally acknowledged within Australian education that it can "be argued that gifted children are currently among the most disadvantaged of (educationally disadvantaged) groups." This isn't because giftedness produces worse issues, per se, than those that afflict other groups, such as the disabled, etc. It's because these other groups have received so many more resources, and assistance over the years that their issues are now addressed far better than those affecting the gifted. It hasn't improved since 1988, either - none of the recommendations of the Senate Committee that arrived at that conclusion, were ever acted on. And given how poorly some disabled issues are dealt with, it does point to how badly in need the gifted are. > My dope-smoking ex had plenty of intelligence. All the IQ tests said so. But was > he happy, or successful, or even functional because of his high IQ? Not at all! > What he completely lacked was resourcefulness. One day he was busy > proclaiming his intellectual superiority, and I said yes, but if you're so intelligent, > why haven't you figured out a way to get the kind of life you want to lead? He got > very upset and angry with me, and I backed down (no stomach for the fight, me), > but on the inside I was unrepentant. It's not what you got, it's how you use it, and > IQ tests only measure what you Yes - but what you got, is still important. Especially when what you got, creates special needs. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From drednort at alphalink.com.au Sat May 25 02:30:07 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 12:30:07 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] re: a few things / Brontosaurus / Gifted Children In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3CEF83CF.25169.1ED067@localhost> > TABOULI, I disagree with you so much that I can't write! I wish I > lived in some universe where schools taught high-IQ children that > they were superduper just because of being book-smart! I had the > vague impression (stereotype) that Australians had an even stronger > egalitarian (except for sports) idea than USAmericans, and would > therefore be even more eager to punish anyone who got better than > average grades... Actually, this is true to a great extent. As someone who has a heavy involvement in dealing with these issues, things are far worse for gifted children in Australia *in general* than they are in the US *in general* (there are good areas in Australia, and REALLY lousy ones in the US, so it is only a generalisation). In fact, the 1988 Report I mentioned in a previous post held the US up as the model we should be aspiring to - that's how much better America is - it looks *GOOD* from here in that regard. And that really shows how bad Australia is at dealing with these things. Much of the difference here does come from the relative importance of egalitarian ideas - in particular those held by one of the teacher's unions. They are opposed to special provisions for gifted children on egalitarian grounds - despite the fact that their position actually increases inequality, if it does anything (teachers union opposes gifted programs in state schools => gifted programs in state schools are shut down => only kids in private schools have access to gifted programs). Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From huntleyl at mssm.org Sat May 25 02:56:24 2002 From: huntleyl at mssm.org (Laura Huntley) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 22:56:24 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children References: <001801c2034c$ebbb1760$4120ddcb@price> Message-ID: <002101c20397$c20be660$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Alright...as, um..one of...um..*blushes hard* "Maine's Best and Brightest"..I feel an intense need to weigh in on the whole "gifted" thing. (BTW:...the whole "Maine's Best and Brightest" thing -- it's sort of the tag-line for the magnet school that I go to..Maine School of Science and Mathematics) Tabouli said: >I'm curious, though, to hear the definition of >"profoundly gifted". Should I assume the MENSA >definition of an IQ over 150? Or something else? >What percentage of children fit into this category? Hmm..no one at my school ever talks about IQ tests...SAT, ACSL, AIME, etc. scores, yes...but no one's ever mentioned a straight-up IQ test. In my experience here at MSSM, however, "gifted" falls into three categories: 1) Kids of above average intelligence who work their asses off (both here and at their sending schools) to get consistently excellent grades in all their classes. 2) Kids of above-above average intelligence who do well in all classes (this is me...*blushing again*)...and never really had to do any work at their old schools, at least. 3) The geniuses. Normally these people are only amazingly good at one thing though. We've got math geniuses who can't follow the basic rules of grammar, as well as English buffs who can barely do algebra. I don't think I've ever met someone who was "genius" in more than one area. The problem is, if you only accept the third category as "profoundly gifted", you're going to get kids that can solve any math equation set before them, but might also be illiterate. And to count the second category but not the first seems pretty unfair, IMO. Shaun said: > The problem is that over 50% of gifted children are underachievers - and the higher >you get up the scale of giftedness (there are generally considered by experts to be >three or four levels of giftedness - each with significantly different educational >needs) - the higher that proportion is - and a significant number of these kids are >underachievers because their school environment is inappropriate to them. That's the whole premise of a magnet school -- to get gifted students into an environment where they can flourish. Of course, not all of the Maine students I would consider gifted come here. Many type 1's are pretty happy at a regular school, while type 2's tend to be pretty miserable at public high schools but might continue to get good grades. Additionally, not everyone hears about us..or is emotionally ready to leave their family/friends/whatever. I think you're referring to type 3's the most here. And I'd like to add to your reasons why they don't do well public high school: When you say "genius"...most people think "math and science whiz". However, as I said before, allot of these geniuses have ZILCH for reading skills -- and the entire traditional school system is based upon being able to read well. To the extent that those who *can't* read well do extremely poorly in school, even if they are geniuses (Albert Einstein is a classic example of this). This is also manifested in LD kids (like my brother) who might not be geniuses underneath their various disabilities, but are still smarter than most will give them credit for, because of their inability to read well. Tabouli again: >I was also identified as one of this gifted children >category myself, having the usual high IQ, social >difficulties in primary school, placed in the gifted It's interesting that you mentioned social difficulties here, b/c this is what I, personally, had the most trouble with. I had no trouble getting "good" grades at my sending school (or at least "good" comparatively...they were nothing to what I would have been getting if I gave a darn about school/friends/anything at all)...but I was miserable. Even now, I know I'll never be incredibly popular in my own right -- the kind of person everyone wants to be around all the time. Me and other people -- we have a hard time understanding each other. But at least at MSSM I'm around kids who I understand/understand me a little bit more. It's helped immeasurably. As for gifted programs...we didn't have any at my sending school (it IS Maine, after all), which is why MSSM was founded. Whereas larger, richer states have programs and such for gifted students at regular schools -- Maine just can't/doesn't fund these things. So wa-la, MSSM. Tabouli again: >It's not that I no longer believe that children with >very high IQs have special needs which are handled >very badly by the standard education system. I do. >It's more that I have become increasingly convinced >that the way "giftedness" is typically handled by >well-intentioned parents and teachers is a disaster, >and contributes massively to the sort of life >breakdowns I have witnessed. Which is another reason I think MSSM is so special. It was created as a substitute for what most people *really* wanted -- gifted programs in regular high schools. However, IMO, it's infinitely better than any gifted program. Sure, it's not perfect...sometimes I can't stand the administrative types. However, MSSM is such an improvement over my sending school -- I have a hard time expressing why. It's just that -- people *care*. The students care, the teachers care...they make me care too. Plus, the independence of living away from home was something I really needed. Honestly, I don't think I could ever go back to living with my parents full-time again. I've just -- changed and grown so much, it would kill all that new growth inside of me to go back to the way things used to be. Furthermore, I think cutting a "gifted" kid off from all the old is really essential in teaching he or she to be a stronger person. Gifted programs at regular high schools seem to -- coddle a person so much. MSSM does nothing of the sort. It's sort of like -- a mother bird pushing her chick out of the nest to teach him to fly -- there's simply no other way to go about it. It's not pretty at first, but it's what has to happen for the chick to learn his own strength/weakness and gain his independence. Kimberly: >The result of this, for me, was disbelief >about half the time, and enormous fear of failure the other half. >Any minor failure that I had left me fearing that I was a fraud, that >they'd gotten it wrong, and that any moment someone was going to >figure it out I never had this fear -- probably because 1) there weren't, of course, any special programs to begin with and 2) no one was really paying attention to me anyway. When I was young, it was accepted that I was never going to have trouble in school and therefore no one really paid attention to what I was doing. My mother, of course, had my little brother to worry about...ADHD and a Learning Disorder really make it hard on a kid to do well in school, and she just expected me to do my work and do it well. In retrospect, I think that if I ever *had* come home with a bad grade on my report card, she would have been livid, but at the time, I used to wonder at my friend's fears that their parents would get upset if they got bad marks. It never occurred to me that my mom would get upset with me over bad grades -- it seemed silly. So I didn't worry and got into the habit of not worrying. Call it over-confidence, but that really helped me when I went to MSSM. Allot of kids, unused to receiving bad marks, simply fall apart at first of shame and whatnot. All I had to deal with was the fact that I was unaccustomed to being challenged. It was stressful, nerve-wracking, depressing, and TERRIBLE, of course, but I never felt ashamed of myself. I never fretted about what people would think if I didn't get A's or whatever. I think that helped me allot. Tabouli again: >Precisely. It's as if that IQ score is magic. The >hapless child, typically aged 4-7, is suddenly told >that s/he is a genius, a creature superior to other >mortals, who is, and this is the worst bit, Destined >For Greatness. Yes, by the time you're 25, little >one, your name will be up in lights, because you are >SUPERIOR! You are Better Than Other Children! You >have magic powers which guarantee you success in any >field of endeavour you choose! You will be rich, >famous, a rocket scientist, a brain surgeon! Again...I *was* told all of this at one point or another...but these moments were short-lived. My mom had better things to worry about, and my teachers -- they HATED that I was "gifted" because it meant more work for them...so mostly they just ignored it whenever they could. This might sound like a bad thing...but honestly, it wasn't -- it let me be a normal kid. >It is their identity. And then, all of a sudden, a >new and terrible element enters the success equation: >effort. >The child has never had to stoop to such a thing >before. They see it as beneath them. Other children >have to do that stuff, but not me. But slowly, >inexorably, as the effort component increases in >importance, some of those lowly inferior children s >start to catch up. How dare they? At this point, >there seems to be a split. Some gifted children bite >the bullet and grudgingly apply themselves to working >within the system. And excel. >Others seem to hit a point of disillusionment with the >whole education process and more or less resign from >it. EXACTLY. Again, this wasn't specifically what happened to me -- having to make an effort was horrible and unfamiliar for me, but I didn't feel that it was beneath me -- actually, I just felt incredibly annoyed and stupid. But allot of other "gifted" people I meet have this problem...we just aren't prepared for hard work, and that is bad enough in and of itself. My study skills are *still* pretty sketchy. However, if you've been told from childhood that you will never *have* to work hard -- that just makes things so much worse. When people like this are faced with hard work and possible failure for the first time, they tend to give up without even trying -- because they never were taught *how* to try. It's also a bit of a security measure -- to people like that, failure (in their own eyes and the eyes of others) is the worst possible thing that could happen to them. If they think they're going to fail anyway -- it's less painful to fail when they haven't tried then to fail when they've given it their best and found it wasn't enough. Which brings me back to what I was trying to get across earlier...that gifted programs stifle a student's ability to have personal confidence in his strengths and acceptance of his weaknesses -- whereas MSSM forces one to do both (again with the mother bird scenario). anyway...*looks up* Oh wow...if any of that makes any sense to anyone besides me I'll be very surprised...oh well. laura [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From catlady at wicca.net Sat May 25 03:32:01 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 03:32:01 -0000 Subject: a very old moldy topic Message-ID: A Old Pueblo Traders catalog arrived today (that's a ladies' clothing store which has Nothing to do with its name) http://www.OldPuebloTraders.com/pagebuilder/ and I found that it is offering that bra I like, which I mentioned during the hard-to-find bras topic ... uh, last year? http://www.OldPuebloTraders.com/pagebuilder/Item?item=41937 Anyway, someone else in the thread mentioned the difficulty of finding size 36DDD bras, which actually I hadn't noticed until it was pointed out to me (20+ years ago when *I* wore 36DDD, *any* DDD was agonizingly difficult to find -- after all those years of steadily gaining weight, I *wish* I could fit into 36DDD!!), so I noticed that there were some in this catalog. One is even Colorful, Lacey, and Inexpensive! http://www.OldPuebloTraders.com/pagebuilder/Item?item=41645&skurange=D DD This one is only white, but some what lacey, and On Sale http://www.OldPuebloTraders.com/pagebuilder/Item?item=41894&skurange=D DD And this is Satin Fantasy, even tho' the rosepink isn't in DDD http://www.OldPuebloTraders.com/pagebuilder/Item?item=42586&skurange=D DD From tabouli at unite.com.au Sat May 25 04:02:30 2002 From: tabouli at unite.com.au (Tabouli) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 14:02:30 +1000 Subject: Gifted children: The debate rages on! Message-ID: <002c01c203a1$178c8be0$4f31c2cb@price> Catlady: > TABOULI, I disagree with you so much that I can't write! I wish I lived in some universe where schools taught high-IQ children that they were superduper just because of being book-smart! I had the vague impression (stereotype) that Australians had an even stronger egalitarian (except for sports) idea than USAmericans, and would therefore be even more eager to punish anyone who got better than average grades...< Now haaaaang on a minute here. I wasn't saying this at all. I know all too well that Australians are apt to see "gifted children" as some sort of un-Australian blight on society, how dare they make other people feel inferior, the swine, they should shut up and be like everyone else, cut down the tall poppy and trample it into the dirt. I was totally stigmatised and reviled in primary school for being too smart. At high school I went to a much more academic school and was put in the gifted class (the PLC PEGS program, Shaun, any thoughts?), and the other six classes stereotyped us totally, were convinced they'd thrash us in sporting competitions because we were geeky intellectuals, etc.etc.etc. As an example, I remember talking to a friend of mine after an Intelligence lecture about gifted children and hearing the disgust in her voice when she declared that gifted education was a total waste of funds, if they're so clever, they can bloody well figure out ways to stimulate themselves, so we can allocate funds to people who really *need* it (i.e. people who are below average). Moreover, when I tried to argue with her, she said "That's just because you think you're gifted." I wasn't talking about the parents and teachers with the above attitude, or denying their existence. I was talking about the people on the other side of the war, fighting against these people, telling gifted children about the glories of their high IQ. Hence the skewed self-esteem profile, feeling both socially persecuted/inferior and defiantly superior to spite the first group, turning to their superior IQ as a source of comfort and vindication. The anti-gifted warriors only fuel the need to believe that the thing they are being stigmatised for makes them superior to their tormentors. Shaun: > What you've seen - what you've watched - is anecdotal, basically by definition. And I'm sure you are aware that anecdotal evidence has serious limitations. > >What the detailed research shows is that when gifted children are given accss to *appropriate* and *well designed* programs, when they are adults, they are far more likely to be succesful in their chosen fields - and what is more significant, by far - they are far more likely to be contented with their lives, to be happy, to avoid significant psychological problems.< Sure, sure, obviously anecdotal evidence regarding a sample of maybe 20 people I've observed over the years isn't the sort of thing around which research papers and policies are built. All the same, it was interesting for me to read your reply to my post and see how many of my informal observations seemed to tally with yours, notably in the effort issue. Me: >> It's not what you got, it's how you use it, and IQ tests only measure what you got<< Shaun: >Yes - but what you got, is still important. Especially when what you got, creates special needs.< As for appropriate and well-designed programs, I have no doubt that if you have an exceptional level of "resources" available to you, programs which teach you how to capitalise on them effectively have a very good chance of helping you become highly successful in your chosen field. That's pretty obvious. I support the development of programs which help the children manage their abundance of intellectual resources, instead of being crushed under them. However, the people I have observed, and as I suspect you'd agree *most* gifted children, have *not* had the chance to attend a well-designed program, but have been exposed to varying degrees of well-intended stop-gap attempts to "do something for them" from parents and educators. I just identified a pattern, a typical psychological profile, after having a lot of contact with people who were identified as "gifted" as children (not the least of which is my father), a profile which was more detailed than the basic findings I'd read but seemed to hold. I did at one stage consider exploring giftedness formally in my postgrad degree, but decided to do cross-cultural psychology instead. I suspect the competitive nature of the education system doesn't help much. How well do non-competitive systems like Steiner schools deal with giftedness? Better? I in fact recently spoke to a friend of mine (whose 7yo daughter is at a Steiner school) about giftedness and she is very anti "gifted" education, says that from what she's read her daughter is probably "gifted" but the last thing she wants to do is isolate her from other children on the basis of this, and she is very glad that her daughter is in an environment where her individual potential is being addressed without fanfare or stigmatising labels. Interesting. Tabouli. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From joyw at gwu.edu Sat May 25 04:15:18 2002 From: joyw at gwu.edu (- Joy -) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 00:15:18 -0400 Subject: Discworld Novels Message-ID: <002b01c203a2$c7bf8d40$53263244@nrockv01.md.comcast.net> I finally had time to read a Discworld novel, which has been on my reading list for a long time, since it was recommended here ages ago. Thinking I was being logical, I read the one that was written first: "The Colour of Magic". Of course, I loved it. Now that I'm looking to read another, I vaguely remember hearing that they shouldn't be read in the order they were written. So, help me out here... Which one do I read next? I'm torn... I want to know what happens after they fall off the edge, I want to know more about Unseen University... heck, I just want to know everything. I'm sure I'll eventually read them all, but I'd appreciate suggestions on the best order to read them in. Being an anal kind of person, I like to do things properly. Thanks for getting me hooked! ~Joy~ From kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk Sat May 25 04:49:25 2002 From: kcawte at kcawte.freeserve.co.uk (Kathryn) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 05:49:25 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Discworld Novels References: <002b01c203a2$c7bf8d40$53263244@nrockv01.md.comcast.net> Message-ID: <3CEF17D5.000001.37485@monica> You should probably read the Light Fantastic next because it's really the second half of Colour of Magic, they should have been one big book. Interesting Times is sort of a sequel to them. The Lost Continent follows that one. Guards, Guards and men at arms go together and are set in Ankh Morpork, Jingo sort of follows them. Mort, Reaper Man, Hogfather and Soul Music are a series and are all about Death who is my favourite character. K -------Original Message------- From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Date: 25 May 2002 05:15:36 To: hpfGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Discworld Novels I finally had time to read a Discworld novel, which has been on my reading list for a long time, since it was recommended here ages ago. Thinking I was being logical, I read the one that was written first: "The Colour of Magic". Of course, I loved it. Now that I'm looking to read another, I vaguely remember hearing that they shouldn't be read in the order they were written. So, help me out here... Which one do I read next? I'm torn... I want to know what happens after they fall off the edge, I want to know more about Unseen University... heck, I just want to know everything. I'm sure I'll eventually read them all, but I'd appreciate suggestions on the best order to read them in. Being an anal kind of person, I like to do things properly. Thanks for getting me hooked! ~Joy~ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. From drednort at alphalink.com.au Sat May 25 05:09:05 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 15:09:05 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Discworld Novels In-Reply-To: <002b01c203a2$c7bf8d40$53263244@nrockv01.md.comcast.net> Message-ID: <3CEFA911.21490.B05EDB@localhost> > I finally had time to read a Discworld novel, which has been on my reading > list for a long time, since it was recommended here ages ago. Thinking I > was being logical, I read the one that was written first: "The Colour of > Magic". Of course, I loved it. Now that I'm looking to read another, I > vaguely remember hearing that they shouldn't be read in the order they were > written. So, help me out here... Which one do I read next? I'm torn... I > want to know what happens after they fall off the edge, I want to know more > about Unseen University... heck, I just want to know everything. I'm sure > I'll eventually read them all, but I'd appreciate suggestions on the best > order to read them in. Being an anal kind of person, I like to do things > properly. Thanks for getting me hooked! The following is the order I recommend to friends The Colour of Magic Sourcery (Faust)Eric Interesting Times The Last Continent Guards Guards Moving Pictures Pyramids Men at Arms Feet of Clay Jingo The Fifth Elephant The Truth Small Gods Carpe Jugulum Equal Rites Wyrd Sisters Lords and Ladies Witches Abroad Maskerade Mort Soul Music Hogfather Reaper Man Thief of Time I haven't read The Last Hero yet Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From ch001d4564 at blueyonder.co.uk Sat May 25 05:49:15 2002 From: ch001d4564 at blueyonder.co.uk (Martin Hooper) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 06:49:15 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Discworld Novels In-Reply-To: <002b01c203a2$c7bf8d40$53263244@nrockv01.md.comcast.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20020525064844.00a12d40@pop3.blueyonder.co.uk> At 05:15 25/05/02, you wrote: >I finally had time to read a Discworld novel, which has been on my reading >list for a long time, since it was recommended here ages ago. Thinking I >was being logical, I read the one that was written first: "The Colour of >Magic". Of course, I loved it. Now that I'm looking to read another, I >vaguely remember hearing that they shouldn't be read in the order they were >written. So, help me out here... Which one do I read next? I'm torn... I >want to know what happens after they fall off the edge, I want to know more >about Unseen University... heck, I just want to know everything. I'm sure >I'll eventually read them all, but I'd appreciate suggestions on the best >order to read them in. Being an anal kind of person, I like to do things >properly. Thanks for getting me hooked! Joy for more Discworld info try http://www.lspace.org Martin J Hooper http://www.martinjh.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk AIM: Martinjh99 ICQ: 43933602 From mercia at ireland.com Sat May 25 11:34:34 2002 From: mercia at ireland.com (meglet2) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 11:34:34 -0000 Subject: Pet loss Message-ID: A year ago today, more or less at this exact moment, my much loved dog was eased out of this world at the point of a needle. (Put to sleep seems too anodyne a phrase for something so final in its effects.) I can't help feeling sad even though no one around me much will be aware of the anniversary. I still miss her loads for she was a cracking dog with a quirky and very loving personality. Perhpas it is daft to mourn so deeply for a dog when there are so many souces of grief in this world but as someone we know once remarked, 'Oh well. People can be a bit funny about their pets.' I thought I would share a few verses of doggeral (sorry about the pun) from Kipling, which though not in the realms of great poetry did sum up some of the feelings I had last year. The poem is called 'The power of the Dog' and I have taken a slight liberty with the verse order. When the body that lived at your single will, With its whimper of welcome is stilled (how still) When the spirit that answered your every mood Is gone - wherever it goes - for good. You will discover how much you care And will give your heart to a dog to tear, We've sorrow enough in the natural way When it comes to burying Christian clay; And when we are certain of sorrow in store Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers and Sisters I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear. Naturally he does not intend us to heed his warning. In an earlier verse he describes what the dog gives in the relationship as 'Love unflinching that cannot lie', a description I am sure any dog owner will recognise, and a gift that is more than worth the price of the grief. Perhaps these verses will help someone else in the same situation as they helped me a year ago. Mercia From racjom at yahoo.co.uk Sat May 25 11:45:15 2002 From: racjom at yahoo.co.uk (racjom) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 11:45:15 -0000 Subject: Discworld Novels In-Reply-To: <002b01c203a2$c7bf8d40$53263244@nrockv01.md.comcast.net> Message-ID: I agree with Kathryn's reccomendation: You should probably read the Light Fantastic next because it's really the second half of Colour of Magic, they should have been one big book. Interesting Times is sort of a sequel to them. The Lost Continent follows that one. And the Last Hero is THE best. The one I read was illustrated with Paul Kidby's work and it's just wonderful. I recently read The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents which is not connected to Rincewind at all but it was a fantastic read as well. Moya From pennylin at swbell.net Sat May 25 11:57:52 2002 From: pennylin at swbell.net (plinsenmayer) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 11:57:52 -0000 Subject: Pet loss In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Mercia -- I'm so sorry about your dog ... even if it was a year ago. Bryce and I are big "dog people" and in fact, Elizabeth's first & only word so far is "Dog." :--) We have 2 dachshunds, and we were both a complete wreck when the male had to undergo emergency back surgery about 18 mths ago. He recovered and is in fabulous shape.... but we were a complete mess until he was okay again. Penny From mdemeran at hotmail.com Sat May 25 13:11:37 2002 From: mdemeran at hotmail.com (Meg Demeranville) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 08:11:37 -0500 Subject: Gifted Children Message-ID: Laura wrote a marvelous post on her experiences as a gifted child. As another one who is "too smart for her own good" I felt compelled to weigh in with my two cents. Laura gave three categories of gifted 1) Kids of above average intelligence who work their asses off (both here and at their sending schools) to get consistently excellent grades in all their classes. 2) Kids of above-above average intelligence who do well in all classes (this is me...*blushing again*)...and never really had to do any work at their old schools, at least. 3) The geniuses. Normally these people are only amazingly good at one thing though. We've got math geniuses who can't follow the basic rules of grammar, as well as English buffs who can barely do algebra. I don't think I've ever met someone who was "genius" in more than one area. Well, I guess I would fall into the second category. On principle, I refuse to call myself a genius. Maybe it is just me, but it seems presumptuous. Since I was in private schools (here the public schools are bad) we had programs for "gifted" kids. The school figured out that I was "gifted" when I was very young, although my parents knew it long before that. I read everything I could get my hands on. The school finally figured it out when I turned in a book report on a Stephen King book (it is entirely too early to think straight on the weekend) in the third grade as my free choice summer reading book. It was sent home with a note to my parents to not do my book reports for me and to stay on the recommended list. My parents sent it back with a note explaining that I really had read the book. My parents never censored my choices, it wouldn't have worked anyway. I found ways to find books to read. At that point, I was in the accelerated math and literature classes and would stay in them for the rest of my schooling. I was also put in our "Expanding Horizons" and "Mathcounts" programs. Both of these were designed to occupy the gifted kids in my classes. Expanding Horizons introduced me to logic problems, computers and architecture among other things. The Mathcounts program was a national math competition. I continued in both of these programs of my own choice. My parents never pushed me to keep achieving. Since one of my little brothers is "gifted" as well, it lead to many competitions between the two of us, but that was more our competitive nature than anything our parents did. But I was one of those kids who could be an underachiever. Outside of my accelerated classes, I was socially awkward and bored. I found the kids too juvenile for my tastes. I was perfectly content to read during recess rather than run around chasing boys on the playground. I was an underachiever because I wanted to be like those kids but knew that I couldn't. I couldn't because it wasn't who I was and as the quote goes "to thine own self be true". My parents would have let me drop all the accelerated classes, but I knew that I wouldn't have been any happier. When I went on to high school, I was placed in all honors/accelerated classes save three, PE (does that really count?), Spanish and Chorus (does that count?). I quickly figured out that I liked having the honors classes better than the regular classes. Regular classes seemed to have out of control students and the learning wasn't at the pace I wanted. But I also found the academic team, an outlet for all of the kids who were "gifted". After earning my spot, I was able to travel with the team and be around kids who were like me. When we drove to competitions, we would play word associations and Trivial Pursuit for hours. We also had our own specialties. Because we had two true math geniuses on the team, my specialties were art, music and literature. But we were all expected to know some of everything. I was offered a spot at our "gifted" school, Alabama School of Math and Science, but turned it down. I liked my school too much to leave. I was by no means popular but I had my own friends to hang out with and other clubs to hold my interest. By my senior year, I was president of both the Key Club (service organization) and Mu Alpha Theta (math club), a captain for the academic team, and special projects director for SADD. College was similar. Since I was a biology major in a small school, I worked hard. My college has a strong Biology/ Pre-medicine program which is very difficult. We started out with 65 freshman in the department (our of 250 freshman total) and graduated with 23. My class had some very gifted type 3 people in it and we all struggled for our grades and to top each other. The lowest GPAs in our class were still above a 3.0 (4.0 is the maximum). But we all seemed to have fun in our studies. Late nights in the labs seemed to bring that out in us. We played Frisbee in the corridors to blow off steam, we rearranged the skeletons into rude gestures, etc. . But we all did things outside of the biology department. I was in a sorority (even held committee chairs), a resident advisor, involved in a service club and on the sailing team. Where did all of my experiences get me? Well, I ended up taking a year off after college. Like most applicants, I didn't get into medical school my first year of applying. I have taken this year to work in a law firm doing computer work. Although it is far outside of my degree, I have been able to design and implement a program by which all exhibits are created and displayed virtually for this large firm. I have also had to design and implement several other projects for them. But, I did get into medical school at my first choice school for this upcoming year, based largely IMHO, on what I have learned in the past year, insofar as I have learned self-confidence from the situations I have been placed in. Presentations to the partners or to our largest client can be very intimidating when you have very little self-confidence. My boss refers to me as "too smart for my own good" on a regular basis and he is probably right. Although I can be very intelligent, I also lack common sense some days. That is partially why I have always envied my youngest brother, the "non-gifted" one. He is still very bright, but not as bright as my other brother or I. However, he is a much more well-rounded person than either of us. Where I focused solely on academics, he is the one who has been president of his class since he was in the sixth grade (he will be a senior in high school next year) and is well-liked by all that come into contact with him. But our parents never pushed him to achieve what my other brother or I had achieved. Both of us ended up with full scholarships to colleges but that was more because we wanted to achieve rather than our parents making us achieve. Kimberly said on being told she was gifted: The result of this, for me, was disbelief about half the time, and enormous fear of failure the other half. Any minor failure that I had left me fearing that I was a fraud, that they'd gotten it wrong, and that any moment someone was going to figure it out I also was also like this. As I said earlier, I have never called myself a genius. I know that I took several IQ tests as a child, but my parents made the decision to never reveal the results to me. As it stands now, I don't think they still have the results. So the only way I am going to find out how "smart" I am would be to sit through one of those tests. And I have no desire to do that. Part of me fears that it would come back as a mistake, that I really am not as smart as I thought all these years, but part of me just doesn't want the pressure to achieve greatness. I am much happier living with the unknown and being a well-rounded adult than knowing what my number is. Tabouli said: It's as if that IQ score is magic. The hapless child, typically aged 4-7, is suddenly told that s/he is a genius, a creature superior to other mortals, who is, and this is the worst bit, Destined For Greatness. Yes, by the time you're 25, little one, your name will be up in lights, because you are SUPERIOR! You are Better Than Other Children! You have magic powers which guarantee you success in any field of endeavour you choose! You will be rich, famous, a rocket scientist, a brain surgeon! I heard this allot from well-meaning teachers. I think they thought it would motivate me but all it ever did was make me shut down. I hated being "gifted" for a long time. I wanted to be a normal kid. I knew I wasn't and knew that I would never be, but statements such as the above just served to reinforce that notion. My parents never said this stuff to me. They knew my personality and knew that it would shut me down. But they made sure that I knew that I could fail, that I wasn't perfect. Between bad penmanship and poor math grades (from the third to the eighth grade I taught myself math because "gifted kids don't need a teacher" and believe it or not they do), there were things that I did not do well. My penmanship is slowly getting better (but I am going to be a doctor, so what does it matter :-p ) and I ended up tutoring math for the last 5 years. But there are still things that I don't do well. Organic Chemistry is the bane of my existence. And I know that I can fail and it will be ok. But that has everything to do with having parents that let me have my ups and downs. But where my experiences take me in the future is still anyone's guess. But this post is getting really long, so I am going to close. I hope this makes sense to someone other than me. Meg [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From caliburncy at yahoo.com Sat May 25 18:00:13 2002 From: caliburncy at yahoo.com (caliburncy) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 18:00:13 -0000 Subject: Announcing . . . The Prydain Guide! Message-ID: Hello, everyone--both those familiar with Prydain, and those who have yet to discover it! Luke here. You may recall that, back in message 8950, I tabled my intention to start up a new discussion group dedicated to Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles when one of the existing Prydain discussion groups that had previously been defunct for quite some time finally came back into activity. Well, since then, I have also banded together with two colleagues from that group and created a reference website that is for The Prydain Chronicles what Steve Vander Ark's HP Lexicon is for Harry Potter, at least in most respects. We have been working on this site for quite a while now, and finally feel it is filled with a sufficient amount of starter material to warrant public consumption. It will, of course, never be "completed": We intend it to be in a perpetual state of improvement, as we strive to make it the definitive resource on the Internet for all things Prydain-related. This site has been carefully designed to be of use to both existing fans of the Chronicles and potential fans for the future. To this end, we have made all spoiler information about the books separately clickable, so that no one has to browse in fear of ruining any significant surprises. There is also some introductory material about the books, for people who have not heard of them before and/or want to learn more. This Introduction page is probably the best place to start if you like to go into books knowing as little as possible, but still want to get a feel for whether the Chronicles are something you might be interested in reading. In short, if you've heard people mention The Prydain Chronicles in the past, this is your chance to get in on the secret of just what the heck they are! And if you already know and love this series of books, we especially intend The Prydain Guide to serve as a valuable resource for you, as well. And so, we are happy to invite you to come peruse The Guide at http://www.enkwiri.com/prydain/ and see what we have to offer! Of course, at the end of the day, this site is even more for you than for us . . . so we need your feedback! We already have ideas in mind about what further directions to take the site in once the encyclopedic entries are more complete in their current form, but we also want to know what ideas you have in mind for the site, too. So, if (or rather, when) you visit the site, please drop us a quick note to let us know what you think, using the "Contact Us" link on the left menu bar. We'll need the opinions of as many people as possible if we are going to make this the best site it can be. And, above all else, enjoy! -Luke (along with Ben and Bree) The Prydain Guide From foxmoth at qnet.com Sat May 25 18:53:45 2002 From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 18:53:45 -0000 Subject: Gifted children In-Reply-To: <3CEF8102.1102.13DBED@localhost> Message-ID: Shaun wrote: >>>>>Actually, this is the primary problem with Gould's book - it gives the impression that this occurred far more often that it did. Gould identified a problem that was quite rare and frowned upon by most of the people using tests and presented it as a dominant characteristic<<<< I have not read Gould's book but my father was a physician in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He told me with great anger how the intelligence tests for the military had deliberately been designed so that Blacks would score lower, to keep them from qualifying for special training. He spoke as one having first hand knowledge of this. It may have been only a few bigots who were responsible, but this testing had massive influence because it was done on such a huge population. I think it is probably very difficult to take an objective view of intelligence testing if your experience is that it has been abused in this manner. Shaun said: Put "gifted" children together so they have each other to talk to? > > The last is actually the best solution, according to dozens of studies and years of research. Grouping gifted children together and then educating them based on that grouping works incredibly well if it is done while they are young enough. > > If it's done while they are young enough, other kids don't realise what is happening, and so the resentment issue doesn't arise<<< Not my experience I'm afraid. --- Needless to say, my parents did not want me tested for giftedness. The school district did it any way, but my parents refused to put me in the gifted program. The classroom teacher said something like, "I wish I could put you in this group," when they were lining up the kids for the special program. I had just flunked a test, so I concluded she meant I hadn't made the cut. I'm troubled by your saying that if testing is done early enough the kids won't know what's going on. True enough, I *didn't* understand, I learned just enough to get the wrong idea. But even at age 6 or 7, everybody knew who the smart kids were, and what the testing was for. I skipped third grade, then got put in the accelerated program at 6th, (new principal) and thought it must be a mistake. I felt really pressured at having to do so much more work all of a sudden, especially since I *knew* I wasn't smart. Eventually I decided to study art as a means of escaping from academics. I am very glad I did it, but that is probably not what the gifted program was trying to accomplish with me. (Admittedly it didn't have a fair chance) Maybe I don't understand the statistic you used, but the average primary school size in the United States is 644 pupils--if that 1 in 5000 comes along, you can bet the teachers are going to have a hard time keeping it to themselves, professional secrecy be damned. I have never taken any kind of intelligence testing where there wasn't a whisper, whisper after it. (I don't know my IQ though) Also, if the profoundly gifted child is 1 in 5000, it would seem that only very large cities would have enough of these children to put in a program especially for them, while in the ordinary gifted program for the 1 in 50 they would still be out of place. That's certainly the way I felt in the gifted program. Pippin From huntleyl at mssm.org Sat May 25 19:09:48 2002 From: huntleyl at mssm.org (Laura Huntley) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 15:09:48 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] re: a few things / Brontosaurus / Gifted Children References: Message-ID: <004f01c2041f$bd667160$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Okay...more on this topic...this seems to be developing into a full-blown debate here. What fun. ^_^ Kimberly wrote: << I was left trying to figure out why I should get particular attention, or to do fun things the other kids didn't. >> catlady_de_los_angeles replied: >You must be a far more innately virtuous a person than me: it never >comes naturally to doubt that *I* have a *right* (an unmet right!) >to favorable attention and fun activities. Oh, you both make me insanely grateful for my own upbringing -- that I never had to deal with any of that. The only "special program" I've ever been in was one for helping kids with speech impediments in second grade...(I've had a paralyzed vocal cord since 6 days after my birth...unfortunately no one figured this out until I was about 12 or 13. Until then I had to put up with all kinds of well-meaning types trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with my voice and "fix" it...I actually got diagnosed with asthma once...*chortles*) Anyway, that kind of program wasn't likely to make me feel..erm...special or privileged. Actually, it's sort of weird that I didn't feel inferior because of it. One thing that *did* bother me however, was in first grade...there was this boy in my class whose parents were forcing the teacher to give him special advanced math lessons. I remember wandering over just about every day and trying to convince Mrs. Dennison to teach me too. She wouldn't. In fact, she got very upset with me for asking and made me stay in for recess several days in a row. I was quite livid. Looking back though..that boy is now just about ruined. Engaged in just about every self-destructive activity I can think of. I think he may have even dropped out of school at this point. Maybe being singled out in school like that had something to do with it. Although, now that I think about it...his family life was really screwed up..so it could have been that. Anyway, as I remember it, it was always *my* choice whether I did things differently than the other kids. Skipping grades and such -- my mom always presented these options to me and let me decide whether I wanted to or not. To this day I can't decide if that was a good thing or not. On one hand, I passed up allot of opportunities that I now wish I hadn't. Honestly, I can't count the times I'd wished I'd skipped a few grades here and there or went to one of those special summer program things. Right now, I'm kicking myself for not coming to MSSM a year earlier. However, would it have been good to *make* me do these things? I mean..the reasons I didn't were all pretty stupid -- I didn't want to leave my friends (craziness here...we couldn't stand each other anyway) or go to high school early (ooo...those big scary teenagers)...but, would it have hurt me mentally to have these choices made for me? I think it might have. I may have made bad choices...but at least they were *my* choices. And, eventually...I did make a good one. Coming to MSSM -- that was hard. But I knew it would be hard, and I made a conscious decision to take it on. If the choice had been made for me -- or if I was used to such choices being made for me -- I don't think I would have been very successful here. catlady_de_los_angeles: >Intelligence IS the stigma! Words like nurd, geek, and wonk were NOT >intended favorably! You can tell by the words accompanying them, like >fat, ugly, weird, drinks from the toilet, slut... Hitting you and >taking your bicycle from the bike rack to put it in a patch of poison >ivy are NOT signs of friendliness despite what my mother always said! Eep...Now I'm really grateful for my childhood. Maybe if I had stayed at the public school I attended from k-3 I would have had these problems...but in fourth I switched to this tiny little private Christian school (my choice also..another one I'm proud of). There were no special programs here either..but the work was admittedly a little harder, and the teachers cared allot more about the students than at my old school. There, being smart was a good thing. There weren't really any boys there (for some reason they couldn't seem to handle the schoolwork), and the girls in my class (all 8 or us ^_~) had a vigorous competition going as far as grades were concerned. When we got to public high school that sort of changed (it makes me sick to think what all my proud, opinionated, passionate, and intelligent friends have turned into) but for awhile I had the advantage of an atmosphere that was pretty encouraging to the learning process. Of course, I was at one of my most miserable there...but I think that had the most to do with going through puberty and getting hit with depression for the first time and not knowing how to deal with it (I also have a biological major depressive disorder, btw). I shudder to think what it would have been like if I had still been at public school. catlady_de_los_angeles: >Maybe they should tell the kids that they are being put in a special >remedial class to learn to deal with their handicaps: poor social >skills and addiction to reading and thinking, rather than telling >them that they are 'bright' or 'gifted'. I'm sort of assuming that you're being facetious here. I don't know how destructive telling kids they are gifted is, but I KNOW what telling kids they have a "handicap" is. One of the biggest problems with LD is that 1) It's something that needs to be addressed with special attention, but 2) telling a kid they have an LD is a sure way to create problems down the road. One of my brother's biggest problems is that he *expects* to do bad. He's always done bad and people have always told him that he's going to do bad. So he doesn't even try most of the time. As for the fact that he's got ADHD...it's the same thing. People have been telling him forever that he's got behavioral problems and he always will -- therefore he makes no effort to behave himself -- he's been told it's impossible. Although, on a good note, now that he's in high school, he's starting to get away from this stigma. The authority figures there have ALLOT better things to worry about than a kid who's a bit hyperactive. In comparison to kids who are nasty to teachers, do drugs, and get into fights, Jason's an angel. catlady_de_los_angeles: >I was in regular school (regular school is a subset of Hell, a place >where all adults ignore you except to punish you, and all kids hate >you and try to harm you in every way they can) from pre-school and >kindergarten (actually, pre-school wasn't bad!) through fourth grade, >when I very luckily ESCAPED to -- even tho' they called it a school >for gifted chldren, I knew that I was being put in a kindly >protective shelter for total losers. Again, it was my choice to go to a private school that incidentally offered a better education -- I didn't see it as being put in a protective shelter...I saw it as ME bettering MY position. As far as the social thing went, though...it wasn't much better. As I said before, learning wasn't such a stigma as it was at public school -- but my friends -- even now all I can do is smile and shake my head and thank my lucky stars that I got away from them. They were just -- so PERFECT. They were smart and beautiful and confident and they KNEW it. I mean, I remember in 6th or 7th grade one of my friends was dating a *popular* sophomore at the local high school..and they were so nonchalant about it. It never occur to any of us that that was unusual or special. Both I and they believed that they were simply entitled to such things. In some ways I admire them more than anyone else in the world. They had so much power and they used it without hesitation...but they also had a tendency to BREAK people, and they almost broke me. I guess the thing I hate(d) the most about them is that when I'm around them -- they bring out the bits of my own personality that I hate the most. The insecurity mostly, but other things too. When I've been near them, even now...I start to -- *notice* things that I just don't want to notice. Terrible or weird or undesirable things about myself and other people that I just don't want to think about. And their attitude toward other people, too. I hate it when I start to think like them in that respect. I mean, they hardly even think of boys as *people*. Boys, to them, are objects -- status symbols. I guess, in some ways, this was almost a good thing. My female friends now have a tendency to act insanely when it comes to boys. Hate each other forever because so-and-so took the love of so-and-so's life. Do incredibly stupid things in the name of love -- come crawling back over and over to some jerk who's awful to them, because they "love" him. My old friends would never do something like this...or let boys get between them in that way. They were a bunch of back-stabbing b***hes, but they -- I don't know...they never let a boy come between them, at least not for very long. In some ways, I was even worse than this -- I didn't just dehumanize boys..I tended to..um, demonize them. I have allot of close male friends now..but it's hard for me to trust them or give them credit for having the same feelings and insecurities as I do. I guess I just spent a long time seeing the very worst of them -- it's very hard now to make myself vulnerable to them. Which brings me to how the boys were at my old high school. If anyone ever gave me a hard time for being smart or different, it was them. I didn't have much contact with the "normal" boys...I suppose they were allot better...but they "popular" idiots that my friends hung out with...they were just about the worst people I've ever met. It was like -- they were awful to me and they expected me to *like* it or something. I'll never understand it...they made fun of just about everything about me. My voice, my grades, the fact that I'm a very tiny, young-looking person, that I'd never dated anyone -- that I was different and undesirable in every way possible. I never did anything to them, why couldn't they just leave me alone? I didn't ask much back then -- I just wanted to be able to hang out near people that I knew and was most comfortable being around and remain unharrassed. I didn't mind being ignored, I'll never understand why they just couldn't pretend I wasn't there. *lets out a deep breath* um..that kind of turned into a rant...*sheepish smile* sorry. laura [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From naama_gat at hotmail.com Sat May 25 22:50:24 2002 From: naama_gat at hotmail.com (naamagatus) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 22:50:24 -0000 Subject: Gifted Children In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Meg Demeranville" wrote: >I hated being "gifted" for a long time. I wanted to be a normal kid. Yup. When I was eleven, my greatest wish was to be short and stupid. Naama, 1:50 From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Sat May 25 23:31:05 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 23:31:05 -0000 Subject: Discworld Novels In-Reply-To: <002b01c203a2$c7bf8d40$53263244@nrockv01.md.comcast.net> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., - Joy - wrote: > I finally had time to read a Discworld novel, which has been on my reading > list for a long time, since it was recommended here ages ago. Thinking I > was being logical, I read the one that was written first: "The Colour of > Magic". Of course, I loved it. Now that I'm looking to read another, I > vaguely remember hearing that they shouldn't be read in the order they were > written. Being rather old, I have read them all pretty nearly in the order they were written, and I see no real reason to read them in any other order - oops, that didn't sound quite right: I think you can read them in any order, so why not as published? I have the same comment on the Narnia series: people rearrange them into the internal chronological order, but there is no great virtue in this IMO. David From tabouli at unite.com.au Sun May 26 07:11:57 2002 From: tabouli at unite.com.au (Tabouli) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 17:11:57 +1000 Subject: Terry Pratchett novels, CS Lewis Message-ID: <009401c20484$a1a5ff80$5e21ddcb@price> Just peeked at the website and saw much rumination on good ol' Terry. After an initial burst of enthusiasm I got a bit bored with the Discworld stuff, but I have to chip in with my deep love of his "Nomes" children's series (the first of which, I believe, won the Smarties award later won by HP). Very entertaining, and also a fascinating exercise in junior cultural relativism, I always thought. The Johnny series also has its moments, though sadly my attempts to stir HPFGU into fervent and copious comparisons of Hermione and Kirsty as portrayals of a very bright girl in her early teens with all-male friends have come to no avail. Always looked at Pratchett's female characters with a curious eye. I've long suspected him of earnestly and honestly *meaning* to have strong, stereotype-bustin' women in his books, but never quite pulling it off convincingly. They tend to be very outnumbered by male characters in the books I've read of his (the first part of Equal Rites aside, though perhaps that's the exception that proves the rule), and are trying just a bit too hard. Grimma, in the Nomes books, is a good example. Mind you, I've raised this before as well, and no-one got excited enough to argue or agree with me or make any comment. On the subject of Narnia, I've always loved 'The Magician's Nephew' best, partly because it's the most... hopeful, to my mind (love the creation scene!). The freshest. I also love it because it makes a simply wonderful prequel. The wardrobe being the apple tree is great stuff. I suppose an argument for reading the books in publication order is that you rather miss the cleverness of it reading it chronologically. The first time around I had 'The Lion etc.' read to me first in primary school, so I did experience the cleverness of 'Nephew', but these days I reread them in chronological order. Tabouli. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From drednort at alphalink.com.au Sun May 26 09:44:49 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 19:44:49 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children: The debate rages on! In-Reply-To: <002c01c203a1$178c8be0$4f31c2cb@price> Message-ID: <3CF13B31.4558.425340@localhost> > Now haaaaang on a minute here. I wasn't saying this at all. I know all too well > that Australians are apt to see "gifted children" as some sort of un-Australian > blight on society, how dare they make other people feel inferior, the swine, they > should shut up and be like everyone else, cut down the tall poppy and trample it > into the dirt. I was totally stigmatised and reviled in primary school for being too > smart. At high school I went to a much more academic school and was put in the > gifted class (the PLC PEGS program, Shaun, any thoughts?), I don't know anything about it, actually. I know what PLC has on its website looks OK - but I also know that doesn't necessarily mean anything in the real world. It's not one that I know anyone who was in it. > Sure, sure, obviously anecdotal evidence regarding a sample of maybe 20 people > I've observed over the years isn't the sort of thing around which research papers > and policies are built. All the same, it was interesting for me to read your reply to > my post and see how many of my informal observations seemed to tally with > yours, notably in the effort issue. Oh, yes, you're spot on on many of the problems and why they can occur. > As for appropriate and well-designed programs, I have no doubt that if you have an > exceptional level of "resources" available to you, programs which teach you how > to capitalise on them effectively have a very good chance of helping you become > highly successful in your chosen field. That's pretty obvious. I support the > development of programs which help the children manage their abundance of > intellectual resources, instead of being crushed under them. However, the people > I have observed, and as I suspect you'd agree *most* gifted children, have *not* > had the chance to attend a well-designed program, but have been exposed to > varying degrees of well-intended stop-gap attempts to "do something for them" > from parents and educators. Definitely - there's a great deal out there that simply pay lipservice to dealing with the issues, rather than being any use in reality. And some can create problems instead of solving them. > I suspect the competitive nature of the education system doesn't help much. How > well do non-competitive systems like Steiner schools deal with giftedness? > Better? It really depend on a whole range of factors - the primary one being flexibility in their approaches. Schools like Steiners, Waldorfs, Montessori, etc - those which are based on a very precise educational philosophy - have a big positive in that most of the teachers in the school tend to be highly committed (this can be true of teachers in any school, but more mainstream schools tend to get some teachers for whom teaching is just a job - these 'philosophy-specific' schools generally don't) and committed teachers are very important. *But* they also tend to be very committed to the philosophy in question - and that in some cases leads to total inflexibility to any modification to the curriculum etc - for example, Steiner's philosophy stated that children should not be asked to learn to read until they are ready to learn to read - that's not a problem, except that he also said that they weren't ready until age 7. There are some Steiner and Waldorf schools therefore that actively prevent children reading until that age. As gifted kids often reach developmental milestones earlier than other children, this can be a serious problem. A lot depends of the personality of the child, and many Steiner-based schools are flexible. If they do have a reasonable level of flexibility, they tend to do a good job with most gifted kids. > I in fact recently spoke to a friend of mine (whose 7yo daughter is at a Steiner > school) about giftedness and she is very anti "gifted" education, says that from > what she's read her daughter is probably "gifted" but the last thing she wants to do > is isolate her from other children on the basis of this, and she is very glad that her > daughter is in an environment where her individual potential is being addressed > without fanfare or stigmatising labels. If her daughter is happy, then the school is probably doing an excellent job. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From drednort at alphalink.com.au Sun May 26 09:44:47 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 19:44:47 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children In-Reply-To: <002101c20397$c20be660$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Message-ID: <3CF13B2F.24894.424E8D@localhost> > 2) Kids of above-above average intelligence who do well in all classes (this is > me...*blushing again*)...and never really had to do any work at their old > schools, at least. > > 3) The geniuses. Normally these people are only amazingly good at one thing > though. We've got math geniuses who can't follow the basic rules of grammar, as > well as English buffs who can barely do algebra. I don't think I've ever met > someone who was "genius" in more than one area. > > The problem is, if you only accept the third category as "profoundly gifted", you're > going to get kids that can solve any math equation set before them, but might also > be illiterate. And to count the second category but not the first seems pretty > unfair, IMO. The thing is that isn't what is done. Out of the categories you've listed, most PG kids are closer to the 2nd than the 3rd. Most profoundly gifted kids are fairly 'evenly' gifted - their level of academic ability is about the same across all areas of learning (about - not totally). There are some with domain specific gifts, as there are among all people - but that's a minority. I'm not sure why the people you see don't fit this category - well, I have theories but nothing else. The one that immediately comes to mind is that any PG kids in the 2nd category in your school, don't obviously stand out - that's good, if so, because these kids are far more noticeable, the worse the mismatch between schooling and their needs. Kids with obvious problems or issues - such as a mismatch in ability between different areas of skill - are nearly always more noticeable. But most PG kids have a fairly even spread of intellectual skills. > That's the whole premise of a magnet school -- to get gifted students into an > environment where they can flourish. Of course, not all of the Maine students I > would consider gifted come here. Many type 1's are pretty happy at a regular > school, while type 2's tend to be pretty miserable at public high schools but might > continue to get good grades. Additionally, not everyone hears about us..or is > emotionally ready to leave their family/friends/whatever. I think you're referring to > type 3's the most here. And I'd like to add to your reasons why they don't do well > public high school: I'm not referring to type 3s as you've defined them - but I agree with everything else you've said here. > When you say "genius"...most people think "math and science whiz". However, as I > said before, allot of these geniuses have ZILCH for reading skills -- and the entire > traditional school system is based upon being able to read well. To the extent that > those who *can't* read well do extremely poorly in school, even if they are > geniuses (Albert Einstein is a classic example of this). This is also manifested in > LD kids (like my brother) who might not be geniuses underneath their various > disabilities, but are still smarter than most will give them credit for, because of > their inability to read well. There's certainly truth here - but we are are talking about different groups. Most PG kids have excellent reading and writing skills, along with everything else. Some do have LDs - many LDs have nothing to do with intelligence, and so PG kids are just as likely to have them as anyone else. And LDs, of course, can mask ability - make it less obvious to people. The ability is still there - though some may not see it. > Which brings me back to what I was trying to get across earlier...that gifted > programs stifle a student's ability to have personal confidence in his strengths and > acceptance of his weaknesses -- whereas MSSM forces one to do both (again > with the mother bird scenario). It sounds like what you have is very good - but, please remember, while some gifted programs can stifle student's abilities, and while some can coddle students, those faults are not universal, nor are they required. There are good programs around that don't do this. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From drednort at alphalink.com.au Sun May 26 10:26:27 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 20:26:27 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Gifted children In-Reply-To: References: <3CEF8102.1102.13DBED@localhost> Message-ID: <3CF144F3.6404.687556@localhost> > Shaun wrote: > >>>>>Actually, this is the primary problem with Gould's book - it > gives the impression that this occurred far more often that it did. > Gould identified a problem that was quite rare and frowned upon > by most of the people using tests and presented it as a > dominant characteristic<<<< > > I have not read Gould's book but my father was a physician in the > U.S. Navy during World War II. He told me with great anger how > the intelligence tests for the military had deliberately been > designed so that Blacks would score lower, to keep them from > qualifying for special training. He spoke as one having first hand > knowledge of this. It may have been only a few bigots who were > responsible, but this testing had massive influence because it > was done on such a huge population. > > I think it is probably very difficult to take an objective view of > intelligence testing if your experience is that it has been abused > in this manner. Yes - but Gould was a scientist. And more specifically, he was a specialist in (among other things) the history of science. As such, he had a responsibility to be objective. There have been other objective and balanced works on these issues that exposed all the same practices that Gould did. But they did it without ignoring evidence, and without misrepresenting studies. Gould did both of those things in 'Mismeasure of Man'. > Shaun said: > Put "gifted" children together so they have each other to talk to? > > > > The last is actually the best solution, according to dozens of > studies and years of research. Grouping gifted children together > and then educating them based on that grouping works > incredibly well if it is done while they are young enough. > > > > If it's done while they are young enough, other kids don't > realise what is happening, and so the resentment issue doesn't > arise<<< > > Not my experience I'm afraid. --- Individual experience can always differ from the norm. > Needless to say, my parents did not want me tested for > giftedness. The school district did it any way, but my parents > refused to put me in the gifted program. The classroom teacher > said something like, "I wish I could put you in this group," when > they were lining up the kids for the special program. I had just > flunked a test, so I concluded she meant I hadn't made the cut. > I'm troubled by your saying that if testing is done early enough > the kids won't know what's going on. True enough, I *didn't* > understand, I learned just enough to get the wrong idea. > But even at age 6 or 7, everybody knew who the smart kids were, > and what the testing was for. Yes - and it sounds very likely the school made this happen, by lining kids up in the way they did, and expressing their views on who was in the program publically. Kids will obviously know if it's made to stand out like that. > Maybe I don't understand the statistic you used, but > the average primary school size in the United States is 644 > pupils--if that 1 in 5000 comes along, you can bet the teachers > are going to have a hard time keeping it to themselves, > professional secrecy be damned. I have never taken any kind of > intelligence testing where there wasn't a whisper, whisper after > it. (I don't know my IQ though) The thing is most of the time teachers won't know. The tests typically used in schools can't differentiate at this level (most tests used in schools work up to the 1 in 30 level - but a kid at that level could be 1 in 30, or 1 in 500, or 1 in 1,000,000 - the test doesn't score high enough to tell. Very few people need to know these scores. A typical teacher doesn't. If the scores are being discussed, there's a significant problem that needs to be addressed - just as if teachers were discussing HIV status with people who didn't need to know (it's about the same frequency). If it's happening, it's a problem in itself. > Also, if the profoundly gifted child is 1 in 5000, it would seem that > only very large cities would have enough of these children to put > in a program especially for them, while in the ordinary gifted > program for the 1 in 50 they would still be out of place. That's > certainly the way I felt in the gifted program. Programs for PG kids aren't always practical because of the small population. That's certainly true. But quite often they are. First of all, while it is true that PG kids are out of place in a 1 in 50 situation, they actually fit quite well into classes based on 1 in 500 students (and the 1 in 500 students tend to benefit from their presence as well). There are a bit over 47,000,000 school students in the United States (my figures are from 1999/2000 - so they may be a little out, but they'll be close). A little over 31,000,000 are consolidated within the 500 largest districts. On average, these districts have around 62,000 students. That would indicate around 124 kids at the 1 in 500 level in these districts on average. To be practical any program really has to have at least 20 kids across the years of schooling. The thing is, even if only the 500 largest districts could accomodate these kids, that would give 2/3rds (65.8%) of PG kids in the US potential access to something. That's not perfect - but it has a potential to be a lot better than nothing. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From s_ings at yahoo.com Sun May 26 12:21:31 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 08:21:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Pet loss In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020526122131.16496.qmail@web14605.mail.yahoo.com> Mercia, Sorry not to have responded sooner, RL is playing havoc with my free time. I can totally relate to how you're feeling over this loss. My sister lost a couple of dogs to speeding cars on country roads when I was a teenager and finally got a black Labrador that she named Sasha. Sasha was getting very old, but had been with us forever it seemed. She had been the self-appointed guardian ever since my daughter was born. We were never allowed to punish Nyssa for anything, as the dog wouldn't allow it. And the things Nyssa did to that dog as a toddler....fingers in the ears, sleeping on the dog, once even lifting Sasha's head by inserting fingers in each of the dogs nostrils. When Nyssa was about 3, Sasha disappeared. She had been living at my parents' house while my sister was away taking a yearlong college programme. Mom and Dad just came home one day and the dog was gone. She usually spent the days on the back deck of the house, untied because she rarely wandered and she could have broken the chain if she wanted anyway. But she wasn't there when they got home and no one had seen her. Much as Dad professed not to like the dog (who had come to our family when he was away travelling), he spent night after night out in the car, driving country roads looking for her, even combing the ditches in case she was hurt. Nothing. Two other black Labs had disappeared from the same village on the same day. About a week later, someone asked the guy at the gas station if he had seen anything (he's a mile or so out of town). His wife had seen a van come by with three dogs in the car. That's all anyone ever heard. To this day I dread to think of what happened to poor Sasha. It was years before my sister got another dog, not until she had a family of her own and got a dog for her children. *Hugs* Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Find, Connect, Date! http://personals.yahoo.ca From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Sun May 26 15:08:33 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 08:08:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERYLL Message-ID: <20020526150833.43973.qmail@web13707.mail.yahoo.com> HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SHERYLL! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SHERYLL! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ONE OF OUR MANY LIST ELVES, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! Didn't think anybody would remember guess what, I put into my Yahoo calendar! Hope Andy gets you plenty of HP goodies because I know he'll make you a great cake! May you day be extra special! Schnoogles, Love, and Hugs, Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and Her Very Merry Band of Muggles 100%(willie is feeling really great, watching Looney tunes with big looney himself, Dad) "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From s_ings at yahoo.com Sun May 26 15:12:39 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 11:12:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERYLL In-Reply-To: <20020526150833.43973.qmail@web13707.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020526151239.37225.qmail@web14605.mail.yahoo.com> I greatly appreciate the birthday wishes, but before anyone else starts singing, it's not my birthday yet. Hold that thought, along with all cards and gifts, until June 9th. Sheryll, glad to know someone is thinking of her :) --- Wanda the Witch wrote: > > HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SHERYLL! > > HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SHERYLL! > > HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ONE OF OUR MANY LIST ELVES, > > HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! > > Didn't think anybody would remember guess what, I > put into my Yahoo calendar! > > Hope Andy gets you plenty of HP goodies because I > know he'll make you a great cake! > > May you day be extra special! > > Schnoogles, Love, and Hugs, > > Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and Her Very > Merry Band of Muggles 100%(willie is feeling really > great, watching Looney tunes with big looney > himself, Dad) > > > > > "When you come to the edge of all the light you > know, and > are about to step off into the darkness of the > unknown, faith is knowing one of two things > will happen; There will be something solid to stand > on, or you will be > taught how to fly."......Unknown. > > > > > --------------------------------- > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup > > [Non-text portions of this message have been > removed] > > > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor > > ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ > > Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the > group's Admin Files! > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ > > Remember to use accurate subject headings and to > snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're > replying! > > Is your message... > An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it > to HPFGU-Announcements. > Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. > Referencing *only* the books? Send it to > HPforGrownups. > None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. > Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf > or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com > > Unsubscribing? Email > HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com > ____________________________________________________________ > > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Find, Connect, Date! http://personals.yahoo.ca From john at walton.vu Sun May 26 15:20:20 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 16:20:20 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERYLL In-Reply-To: <20020526150833.43973.qmail@web13707.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Yes, the very happiest of birthdays to our Birthday Elf! *whips out present* Here you go! A delightful silk handkerchief, for use as a bandanna/bikini/top, depending on the weather :D --John ____________________________________________ "No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible." -W. H. Auden John Walton || Singer, Wailer, Tenor, Spy || john at walton.vu ____________________________________________ From editor at texas.net Sun May 26 15:36:42 2002 From: editor at texas.net (Amanda Geist) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 10:36:42 -0500 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERYLL References: Message-ID: <003901c204cb$28bc5aa0$cd7663d1@texas.net> > Yes, the very happiest of birthdays to our Birthday Elf! > > *whips out present* Here you go! A delightful silk handkerchief, for use as > a bandanna/bikini/top, depending on the weather :D John, what were you thinking? You just gave her *clothes*, you fool! She's free now to run amok with the Geists! I know, a handkerchief isn't an article of clothing, but you specified its use to be clothes..... --Amandageist, getting the new room ready in the Geist House From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Sun May 26 16:17:56 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 09:17:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERYLL In-Reply-To: <20020526151239.37225.qmail@web14605.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020526161756.47882.qmail@web13709.mail.yahoo.com> Sheryll Townsend wrote: I greatly appreciate the birthday wishes, but before anyone else starts singing, it's not my birthday yet. Hold that thought, along with all cards and gifts, until June 9th. Ok so I got aliitle anxious! My mistake, but hey more fun for you! Will correct that in my calendar! But HAPPY EARLY WISHES ANYWAY! For some reason I think Jamieson said it was around the 26th, oh well, Happy Early Birthday anyway! More fun time wishes to a very busy ELF! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere, Massachusetts and Her Very Merry Band of Muggles 100%, I'm like a pencil and make mistakes and use my earser to say I'm sorry for any confusion, made Sheryll's day though! "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From jenP_97 at yahoo.com Sun May 26 19:56:46 2002 From: jenP_97 at yahoo.com (jenP_97) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 19:56:46 -0000 Subject: It's Potty Time!!! Message-ID: Hey! Ginger's finally using the potty! Yay! Er... anyway, we've been stressing out about Ginger being potty trained for about a year now, but she kind of developed a mental block about it, so we decided to take a "hands-off" attitude and just let her decide when she was ready. We completely expected her to be in diapers on her first day of pre-school (September), and then finally be convinced (thanks to peer pressure) that the potty wasn't so bad. But lo and behold, day before yesterday, she decided that she wanted to go potty! And though that day wasn't very sucessful, yesterday was excellent! No accidents, no diapers until bedtime - it was great! She had a little accident this morning and got a little discouraged, but we convinced her to try again, and it's been just fine so far. We're just so excited that she is finally deciding to be a "big girl", and though she will probably regress back into diapers once the baby comes, we are confident that we won't hit such a daunting road block the next time. So hah! Take that, mother-in-law-who-thinks-I'm-a-bad-mom-for- not-having-Ginger-trained-by-age-2! Jen, who had a busy week last week, but got a free sushi birthday dinner thanks to her dad, and a WONDERFUL birthday present from her big-girl daughter!! From huntleyl at mssm.org Sun May 26 20:18:39 2002 From: huntleyl at mssm.org (Laura Huntley) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 16:18:39 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children References: <3CEF8102.1102.13DBED@localhost> Message-ID: <007201c204f2$861deca0$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Shaun said: >Schools, without gifted programs, are actually disastrous in this regard - when a >gifted child is simply expected to do the same work as everyone else, they will often >find it *incredibly* easy. And that means they will not learn the skills and discipline >needed to deal with schoolwork when it starts requiring more than just the ability to >think fast. The schooling I went through for example, was meant to require 15 >minutes of homework per night from age 5-8, 30 minutes from 9-11, 1 hour at 12, >90 minutes at 13, two hours from 14-15, and two and half hours from 16-17. >For most kids, these numbers were accurate - for me, no way. From age 5-13, I >very rarely needed to do more than 5 minutes a night. Suddenly at 14, the work load >increased dramatically - I had about an hour to do a night. It was still less than most >were doing - but where they had had a gradual chance to develop the skills and >discipline needed, I didn't. I had to make a big jump. >I did it - but a lot don't. Hmmm...I never really had to do any homework at all (aside from projects and research reports) until I came to MSSM. That is, if by homework, you mean schoolwork that is actually done at *home*...I had daily assignments of course, but I usually finished them just after the class was over/right before the class started/during lunch period after eating...basically whenever I was bored and/or had nothing to do. When I came to MSSM, I got my first experience with schoolwork with which I actually needed to spend a good chunk of time on...of course, all assigned work here is, by default, done at "home"...we have no study halls and teachers are *very* strict not letting you do the next day's assignment in class that day...also, if a teacher doesn't teach the entire period (very rare), we are let out for the remainder of the period...to go back "home". I get most of my homework done in the morning before classes or during second period MTWF and first and second periods TH, which I have free...which, now that I think about it, isn't much better than what I was doing at my old school -- as far as putting things off till the last minute goes..but it's alot harder to keep up this way than it used to be. >As for putting up grades, for EG/PG kids (though often not for others) this often >decreases the social gap, as well as the academic gap - a EG/PG 5 year old is more >likely to make friends, especially close friends, in a class of 10 year olds than one of >5 year olds. This is a very specific group - not necessarily representative of gifted >children in general - but for them it works. Although this is likely to turn the PG child into a bit of a mascot...some kids might not mind this..but in my experience, intelligent people really *hate* to be patronized. Also...as for the whole resentment issue...older kids getting showed up by some brainy squirt in their class are *very* likely to be cruel to said squirt. Or, at the very least, routinely pretend that he or she doesn't exist. >You will be addressing their social needs by putting them in a group where they >have a lot more in common socially than they would with the five year olds - a group >for whom friendship is more sophisticated, for whom games are more sophisticated, >etc, a group the kid fits into more than they would the 5 year olds. This is what all >the evidence concerning these kids shows. Evidence or no, my experience doesn't affirm your ascertain. Yes, it would seem that PG kids would have more in common with older children, however...older doesn't always mean better/more mature. For instance, putting a 8 year old with 12 year olds is a sure way to alienate the 8 year old. Esp. with girls. The whole puberty thing nonwithstanding...the attitudes of pre-teenage girls towards each other/boys/looks/whatever are sure to upset and confuse an 8 year old. I don't know about preteen guys...but 11-13 yr. old girls are tigers. You don't want to expose an 8 year old to them in a school environment. Best case scenario: they treat the PG child like a barely-sentient pet...Worst case scenario: they eat the kid alive. PG children are very likely to form close, healthy friendships with adults, yes. But not with older children. Older children are still just that -- CHILDREN...it'd be like pulling teeth to try to get an eight grader to look at child 2-5 years younger as a potential friend/peer. Even if that child was as or more emotionally mature than the eight grader... laura [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From macloudt at hotmail.com Sun May 26 20:56:49 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 20:56:49 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] It's Potty Time!!! Message-ID: Jen said: >Ginger's finally using the potty! Yay! :::::does happy dance::::: Hooray for Ginger! And well done to you, Jen, for letting Ginger do it herself. See how fast it happens once the child is ready? I've used this approach twice...the kids trained late, believe me, but once they were ready they were completely dry within a week (excluding nights, but who cares?). I'll be doing the same with David, especially since his overall physical development has been slow. I'm sure he'll be pushing 4 by the time he's trained, but there's no point in forcing anything on him if he's not ready. And my mother always told me that if I can't say anything nice about someone I shouldn't say anything at all, so I won't say *one word* about mothers-in-law! Mary Ann (who is convinced that by the time all her kids are out of nappies *she'll* be wearing them) ;) _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. From mercia at ireland.com Sun May 26 22:26:27 2002 From: mercia at ireland.com (meglet2) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 22:26:27 -0000 Subject: PS to pet loss Message-ID: We planted a miniature rose bush on the dog's grave last summer and on Thursday I picked the one rose bud on the bush. Yesterday it opened into full bloom. The roses are the most delicate peach colour tinged with lemon and they have a faint but distinct scent. The name of the variety is 'sweet dream' and the friend who gave it to me said it was a peach for a peach. It is sentimental perhaps but to see this one rose blooming so perfectly over these two days has felt like a gift. Thanks to Penny and Sheryll for their expressions of sympathy. Sheryll your story of Sasha was so sad. I would have been quite distraught in such a situation. It is horrific to think of something cruel happening to a helpless creature, especially one you have cared for so much. One of the reasons I was so close to my little dog was that she had been rescued from ill treatment and so she clung to my side as much as she could for the 12 plus years I had her. Penny I love that your little girl has learnt 'dog' as her first word. My parents had two dogs when I was a baby. I have no conscious memory of either of them as I was only ten months old when my mother brought me back to Ireland. (They had the dogs in Africa where I was born.) But I am convinced that my lifelong love of dogs comes from subliminal memories of one of them at least who apparantly used to stand guard over my pram. Nor have I ever had any fear of dogs. Again my mother tells a story of leaving me in my pushchair, aged under 2, outside a shop in the way one could do then without fear of abduction, and coming out to find me with my fist halfway down an Alsatian's throat, saying 'Nice doggie.' It must have been a remarkably placid Alsatian! Thanks again. Writing about her did help. Mercia From drednort at alphalink.com.au Sun May 26 23:57:57 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 09:57:57 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children In-Reply-To: <007201c204f2$861deca0$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Message-ID: <3CF20325.1784.3CC0E7@localhost> > > Shaun said: > >Schools, without gifted programs, are actually disastrous in this regard - when a > >gifted child is simply expected to do the same work as everyone else, they will often > >find it *incredibly* easy. And that means they will not learn the skills and discipline > >needed to deal with schoolwork when it starts requiring more than just the ability to > >think fast. The schooling I went through for example, was meant to require 15 > >minutes of homework per night from age 5-8, 30 minutes from 9-11, 1 hour at 12, > >90 minutes at 13, two hours from 14-15, and two and half hours from 16-17. > >For most kids, these numbers were accurate - for me, no way. From age 5-13, I > >very rarely needed to do more than 5 minutes a night. Suddenly at 14, the work load > >increased dramatically - I had about an hour to do a night. It was still less than most > >were doing - but where they had had a gradual chance to develop the skills and > >discipline needed, I didn't. I had to make a big jump. >I did it - but a lot don't. > > Hmmm...I never really had to do any homework at all (aside from projects and research > reports) until I came to MSSM. That is, if by homework, you mean schoolwork > that is actually done at *home*...I had daily assignments of course, but I usually > finished them just after the class was over/right before the class started/during > lunch period after eating...basically whenever I was bored and/or had nothing to > do. Well, homework can be a lot of things. What it was for me, was a mixture of projects/research type reports and extra work of precisely the same type as we'd done in class to 'reinforce' our learning - the last bit I didn't actually need. I didn't need reinforcement, but I had to do the work anyway. Generally it was pretty quick - about 5 minutes a night until I hit Year 9 when they started loading us with work that was designed to take time. And we basically did have to do it at home (well, I was a boarder for much of the time so I did it at school but in my own time after school). We didn't have any time between classes, our lunch time was very limited, etc. > When I came to MSSM, I got my first experience with schoolwork with which I > actually needed to spend a good chunk of time on...of course, all assigned work > here is, by default, done at "home"...we have no study halls and teachers are > *very* strict not letting you do the next day's assignment in class that day...also, if > a teacher doesn't teach the entire period (very rare), we are let out for the > remainder of the period...to go back "home". Heh - this sounds very familiar (-8 > >As for putting up grades, for EG/PG kids (though often not for others) this often > >decreases the social gap, as well as the academic gap - a EG/PG 5 year old is more > >likely to make friends, especially close friends, in a class of 10 year olds than one of > >5 year olds. This is a very specific group - not necessarily representative of gifted > >children in general - but for them it works. > > Although this is likely to turn the PG child into a bit of a mascot...some kids might > not mind this..but in my experience, intelligent people really *hate* to be > patronized. Yes, if it is patronising - most of the time it isn't. > Also...as for the whole resentment issue...older kids getting showed up by some > brainy squirt in their class are *very* likely to be cruel to said squirt. Or, at the > very least, routinely pretend that he or she doesn't exist. It depends on how it is done. This is something approaching my specialty - bullying was something I had to endure, and so I spend a lot of time looking to find ways of insulating the kids I work with from it. What research has shown - and I've seen it personally in over 50 cases, with only 1 exception - is that the type of cruelty you describe is only likely if there is a less than two year age gap between the older kids and the younger one. If the gap is larger than that, cruelty is exceedingly rare. PG kids, if they are accelerated, tend to have acceleration of more than two years - three or four is common - which bypasses that two year problem. And if it is done properly, they won't be showing up other students - the idea is to put them into a class where their ability level is about the same as the average student in that class. Acceleration, though, is quite often not handled very well at all - the most common form is the 'grade skip' where there is only a one year gap. That can work for some kids - but can also create real problems. You say, in you experience. Part of the problem here may be that I am talking about a particular group - EG/PG kids - for whom this does work. There's no way of knowing whether the experiences you have concerned them or not. And it's something people like me have to deal with a lot. Most people have virtually no experience of PGness - 0.0002 of the population, 1 in 5000 kids. What works for a lot of kids - including a lot of gifted kids - doesn't necessarily work for them. And vice versa. > >You will be addressing their social needs by putting them in a group where they > >have a lot more in common socially than they would with the five year olds - a group > >for whom friendship is more sophisticated, for whom games are more sophisticated, > >etc, a group the kid fits into more than they would the 5 year olds. This is what all > >the evidence concerning these kids shows. > > Evidence or no, my experience doesn't affirm your ascertain. Yes, it would seem > that PG kids would have more in common with older children, however...older > doesn't always mean better/more mature. Well, no, it doesn't - older, as a general rule, does mean more mature (the two terms are synonyms) but there are exceptions. When it comes to profoundly gifted children, these kids do to tend to be more mature, more emotionally and socially developed than their chronological age would indicate, in the vast majority of cases. There are exceptions - both among the PG kids, and the older kids - but PG kids do have more in common with older kids, as a rule. Profound giftedness has been studied formally for about 60 years now. Every single formal and organised study has made pretty much the same findings. > For instance, putting a 8 year old with 12 year olds is a sure way to alienate the 8 > year old. Esp. with girls. The whole puberty thing nonwithstanding...the attitudes > of pre-teenage girls towards each other/boys/looks/whatever are sure to upset and > confuse an 8 year old. I don't know about preteen guys...but 11-13 yr. old girls are > tigers. You don't want to expose an 8 year old to them in a school environment. > Best case scenario: they treat the PG child like a barely-sentient pet...Worst case > scenario: they eat the kid alive. Ah no - years of experience here, personal knowledge of over 50 cases, detailed knowledge of another 200 cases, and an intimate knowledge of 60 years of research (-8 This is part of the problem I have to deal with in advocating for these kids - people just *assume* they know what will happen, sometimes based on their experiences - unless their experiences have been with PG kids, they really do not know what will work and what is needed. Unfortunately most of the books on exceptionally and profoundly gifted children are fairly hard to get hold of (the best study "Exceptionally Gifted Children: What Research Tells Us" by Miraca Gross was last printed in 1995, and sold out completely by 1996), and most of the scholarly articles on them appear in a particular journal which relatively few libraries - even academic ones - bother to get copies of (The Roeper Review). These kids tend to flourish when radically accelerated - girls more so than boys. The cases where it works - in terms of happiness levels, etc (which are more important to whether it succeeds or not than the mere academic) outnumber those where it doesn't by over 20 to 1. > PG children are very likely to form close, healthy friendships with adults, yes. > But not with older children. Older children are still just that -- CHILDREN...it'd be > like pulling teeth to try to get an eight grader to look at child 2-5 years younger as > a potential friend/peer. Even if that child was as or more emotionally mature than > the eight grader... It doesn't work that way - because bear in mind, we don't need *all* the kids to want to be friends, nor even most of them. One will do. And while a lot of kids won't look at younger kids as friends, some will. A PG child in a *typical* aged based classroom has about a 5% chance of developing a close friendship. A PG child in an ability appropriate class has about a 60-80% chance of doing so depending on the level of schooling (it's around 60% up until 5th grade, 70% from 6-8th grade, and 80% after that) despite age differences. Not all will make friends - but the odds are far, far better. And speaking as a former PG child who endured 13 years of school, 12 of them without friendship, any improvement in the chances is worthwhile. Please - don't assume your experience is complete. It's not fair on these kids - because most people do not experience what they have to go through. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From golden_faile at yahoo.com Mon May 27 02:09:50 2002 From: golden_faile at yahoo.com (golden faile) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 19:09:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERYLL In-Reply-To: <20020526150833.43973.qmail@web13707.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020527020950.96034.qmail@web14604.mail.yahoo.com> > HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SHERYLL! > > I second that motion, have a very special day. You are a very special person. Laila > > --------------------------------- > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup > > [Non-text portions of this message have been > removed] > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com From skelkins at attbi.com Mon May 27 08:13:04 2002 From: skelkins at attbi.com (ssk7882) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 08:13:04 -0000 Subject: Gifted children In-Reply-To: <001801c2034c$ebbb1760$4120ddcb@price> Message-ID: Another ex child prodigy underachiever here, weighing in a bit late on this debate. Shaun wrote: > The problem is that over 50% of gifted children are > underachievers... Well, naturally they are! You say this as if you think that it's a *bad* thing. > . . . .and a significant number of these kids are underachievers > because their school environment is inappropriate to them. Why do you make this assumption? I was always under the impression that "underachiever" meant "somebody who has prioritized their values very differently than I have, and in a way that makes me feel upset and threatened." Certainly I have been labelled an "underachiever" all of my life, and that's always seemed to me to be what the word actually means. Usually when it is applied to a child, the it refers to iconoclasm and rule-breaking. As an adult, on the other hand, it more often seems to refer to money and lifestyle choices. So what precisely are you using the term "underachiever" to mean in this context? Surely not IQ tests, right? Your Gifted Children are the ones who did well on those, so presumably they "achieve" just fine when it comes to certain types of standardized tests. I am therefore curious: just where do you sense a failure in their achievement levels? Are they breaking rules? Not following orders? Not getting the right grades? Not reading the right books? Not earning enough money? Not sharing your own values or interests? Tabouli wrote: > The problem is, by the time the child has cruised to his or her mid- > teens, they take effortless success and adulation for granted. It > is their right. It is *normal*. It is their identity. And then, > all of a sudden, a new and terrible element enters the success > equation: effort. The child has never had to stoop to such a thing > before. They see it as beneath them. Other children have to do > that stuff, but not me. But slowly, inexorably, as the effort > component increases in importance, some of those lowly inferior > children start to catch up. How dare they? And that, my dear, is when one learns the all-important lesson that while all geniuses may be prodigies, *not* all child prodigies turn out to be geniuses. Some of them are just plain precocious. And precocity, by definition, does not last. Oooooh, yes. And it really *hurts,* too, when that happens. I can't deny it. I do, however, take some umbrage with this equation: > At this point, there seems to be a split. Some gifted children > bite the bullet and grudgingly apply themselves to working within > the system. And excel. Others seem to hit a point of > disillusionment with the whole education process and more or less > resign from it. And then there are those of us who bite the bullet, learn the trick of actually working for things, grudgingly accept the fact that sometimes you really do have to work within the system, and then in the end leave it anyway, because we eventually come to the realization that what the system has to offer wasn't actually what we wanted in the first place. Others tend to think that we have failed to "excel." We think differently. -- Elkins (who always appreciates the achievements of those so-called "underachievers") From drednort at alphalink.com.au Mon May 27 09:36:57 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 19:36:57 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Gifted children In-Reply-To: References: <001801c2034c$ebbb1760$4120ddcb@price> Message-ID: <3CF28AD9.8757.129B76F@localhost> > Another ex child prodigy underachiever here, weighing in a bit late > on this debate. > > Shaun wrote: > > > The problem is that over 50% of gifted children are > > underachievers... > > Well, naturally they are! > > You say this as if you think that it's a *bad* thing. Yes, given that the definition of underachiever used is as follows. "A person who is not achieving at a particular level, who is known to have both the ability and the desire to achieve at that level." > > . . . .and a significant number of these kids are underachievers > > because their school environment is inappropriate to them. > > Why do you make this assumption? Because I am aware of the tens of thousands of pages of research into these issues over the last 50 years that show this is the case, because I am personally aware of over 100 cases, and because I was one of them myself. > I was always under the impression that "underachiever" meant > "somebody who has prioritized their values very differently than I > have, and in a way that makes me feel upset and threatened." Well, you're free to use any definition you wish - but this is nothing like the definition we use. We don't consider those who choose a different path to be underachievers. The term is reserved only for those who would like to be achieving at a higher level. In our program, our primary aim is to ensure that the kids are, as much as possible, happy with their lives. Some are happy without academic achievement. That's wonderful. But there are also some who really do want to achieve - I've spent most of today talking to an 8 year old whose dream (at this point of his life) is to be an engineer. His mathematical abilities are those of a typical 16 year old. What is he required to do in his class at school? They are learning their multiplication tables, and doing two digit addition. He knew those things before he was 3. In three and a half years at school, he has learned basically nothing. He's very close to shutting down and giving up on school. If he was happy, we wouldn't be involved at this point - but he isn't. He wants to learn - and school is doing nothing to address his desire to learn. If something isn't done, he will lose that desire. If he decides later on that he doesn't want to be an engineer, or he has no interest in mathematics, or whatever, that's fine. But it should be his choice - not something that he is pushed towards because of inappropriate schooling. There's a big difference between choosing a particular path than finding it's the only one left to you. > Certainly I have been labelled an "underachiever" all of my life, > and that's always seemed to me to be what the word actually means. > > Usually when it is applied to a child, the it refers to iconoclasm > and rule-breaking. As an adult, on the other hand, it more often > seems to refer to money and lifestyle choices. > > So what precisely are you using the term "underachiever" to mean > in this context? Surely not IQ tests, right? Your Gifted Children > are the ones who did well on those, so presumably they "achieve" just > fine when it comes to certain types of standardized tests. I am > therefore curious: just where do you sense a failure in their > achievement levels? Are they breaking rules? Not following orders? > Not getting the right grades? Not reading the right books? Not > earning enough money? Not sharing your own values or interests? None of the above. Breaking rules is not a criteria, nor is obedient. Grades are only relevant if the child (and to a much lesser extent their parents) consider them important. Reading isn't considered, nor is money, and our kids have a very wide range of value and interests and are encouraged to discover their own paths. And most would be *very* resistant to any attempt to direct them in any event. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From lupinesque at yahoo.com Mon May 27 11:50:04 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 11:50:04 -0000 Subject: Discworld Novels, reading in order In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Joy W, not to be confused with Joywitch, wrote: Now that I'm looking to read > another, I > > vaguely remember hearing that they shouldn't be read in the order > they were > > written. David, who is rather old, wrote: > Being rather old, I have read them all pretty nearly in the order > they were written, and I see no real reason to read them in any other > order - oops, that didn't sound quite right: I think you can read > them in any order, so why not as published? Maybe fans tell newbies not to read them in order because they think the later books are better and more likely to get people hooked? I think Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic are two of the weakest, despite the Luggage being one of my favorite, ah, characters (though on a recent reread I liked them much better than the first time). Joy, if you loved Colour of Magic, great. Just keep on plugging in order and you'll have a grand time. Also, one might recommend another order because different threads appeal to different people. My first attempt to get someone hooked came about because of something she said about a realtionship with Death--that plus her sense of humor made me lend her one in the Death thread. For the theologically inclined I'd suggest one of those, Small Gods, or Feet of Clay; for New Age recoverees I'd suggest something in the witches thread; for the political junkies I'd suggest something in the City Watch thread. (Thus far this woman has failed to come back to me waving Reaper Man and demanding more, so I'm batting zero.) Or maybe all anyone is saying is that you don't *have* to read them in order. > I have the same comment on the Narnia series: people rearrange them > into the internal chronological order, but there is no great virtue > in this IMO. I agree with Tabouli--there is a great sense of discovery when you have read five books since The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before you finally come upon the account of the creation of the wardrobe. This came up on this list once before, and someone said that Lewis himself wanted the books to be numbered in internal chronological order, which to me just proves that authors don't always know best. Amy who has read them each about 10 times but has never sat down to read them in internal chronological order. Next time. From macloudt at hotmail.com Mon May 27 13:50:24 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 13:50:24 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Gifted children Message-ID: Shaun wrote: >In three and a half years at school, he has learned basically nothing. He's >very close >to shutting down and giving up on school. If he was happy, we wouldn't be >involved >at >this point - but he isn't. He wants to learn - and school is doing nothing >to address >his desire to learn. If I may point out, Shaun, some schools simply do not have the resources. In England schools are hopelessly underfunded. When the PTA donates its fundraising profits to buy *textbooks*, something is very wrong. The primary school my daughter (and next year my son) attends is one of the best in town, not because of the glorious facilities or the excess teaching staff, but because the headmaster is very committed (usual work day: 7:00 am to 9:00pm on school grounds) and the staff are committed and work well as a team. Except for the reception classes, all classrooms have 30+ children, with one LSA if the teacher is lucky. I won't go into detail about the state of the school buildings as I'm sure that is obvious. I help out several hours a week in my daughter's reception class. There is one teacher and one Nursery Nurse for 24 children, mostly 4 and 5 years old. They try desparately to accommodate all the children, but those way in front or far behind both suffer because the staff simply cannot give the children the individual attention they need. Obtaining funding for a special needs child is difficult enough (several friends are in this position, trying desparately to keep their children in mainstream schools); for a gifted child it is nigh on impossible. IMHO the fault lays squarely on the shoulders of the county council, which doesn't make the necessary funds available. The individual schools cannot be blamed if lack of funding is the sole reason for the lack of resources. I know of one child with a reading disability whose teacher gives up her own break time to help this child out. This is, of course, very commendable, but *it shouldn't be necessary*. When I help out I'm given a group of (usually) four children who have my undivided attention for up to half an hour. Even in this situation I wish I had more time for those children who are either bored with the work (several bright little buttons in this class) or who still don't recognize all their letters and numbers. I realize that it's possible that your student's school simply doesn't care, but I felt I had to defend those schools that do care--and very much so--but struggle to support their "normal" students, never mind the ones who do not fit in the mainstream for whatever reason. Mary Ann _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From bray.262 at osu.edu Mon May 27 15:14:59 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (duranduran88) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 15:14:59 -0000 Subject: Yay! I'm so excited! Message-ID: My brother and sister-in-law just told us they're pregnant! I'm so excited I'm crying. She was told years ago that she couldn't get pregnant and they were about to look into fertility pills. But not now!!! (Thank goodness....I can't imagine my brother the father of quads or quints! ha ha) Just wanted to share our joy! She's due in January. Fingers crossed for a safe pregnancy/delivery. Rachel Bray (who just suggested Harry for a boy name and they just stared at me. Oh well.) From macloudt at hotmail.com Mon May 27 16:56:24 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 16:56:24 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Yay! I'm so excited! Message-ID: Auntie Rachel-to-be wrote: >My brother and sister-in-law just told us they're pregnant! I'm so >excited I'm crying. She was told years ago that she couldn't get >pregnant and they were about to look into fertility pills. But not >now :::::doing a happy dance::::: Congratulations to you all! Is this the first time you'll be an auntie, or do you have nieces and nephews underfoot already? Good vibes are on the way to your sister-in-law for a trouble-free pregnancy. And keep working on Harry as Bump's name. Mind you, talking them into Hermione will be even harder... Mary Ann (auntie umpteen-times-over, great-auntie twice, and mum to too many ;) ) _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Mon May 27 17:23:57 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 17:23:57 -0000 Subject: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERYLL In-Reply-To: <20020526151239.37225.qmail@web14605.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Sheryll Townsend wrote: > I greatly appreciate the birthday wishes, but before > anyone else starts singing, it's not my birthday yet. > Hold that thought, along with all cards and gifts, > until June 9th. > So you have a real birthday and an official birthday now! Belated official wishes David From golden_faile at yahoo.com Mon May 27 17:37:21 2002 From: golden_faile at yahoo.com (golden faile) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 10:37:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Discworld Novels, reading in order In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020527173721.11424.qmail@web14604.mail.yahoo.com> > > they were written, and I see no real reason to > read them in any other order - oops, that didn't sound quite right: I think you can read > > them in any order, so why not as published? > > > > I have the same comment on the Narnia series: > people rearrange them > > into the internal chronological order, but there > is no great virtue > > in this IMO. > > I agree with Tabouli--there is a great sense of > discovery when you > have read five books since The Lion, the Witch and > the Wardrobe before > you finally come upon the account of the creation of > the wardrobe. > This came up on this list once before, and someone > said that Lewis > himself wanted the books to be numbered in internal > chronological > order, which to me just proves that authors don't > always know best. > > > Amy > who has read them each about 10 times but has never > sat down to read > them in internal chronological order. Next time. > I saw this post and I had to respond. I recently bought a boxed set of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA for my nieces' 11th birthday. It seems that the publisher/or Lewis' remaining family(I can't recall if he had any) took it upon themselves to right the wrong. The books are now numbered, and The Magicians Nephew is numbered as the first book in the series, not like when I first picked up the series many,many, moons ago. Judegeing from the varying ages of the postees this must be a fairly recent development. Laila __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Mon May 27 17:46:59 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 17:46:59 -0000 Subject: Gifted children / Intelligence Message-ID: Just to say I have found this thread immensely interesting. Amazing how many HPFGU identify themselves with aspects of what Shaun has described. Congratulations to Shaun for fielding so many questions and responses so calmly and helpfully David From caliburncy at yahoo.com Mon May 27 18:31:14 2002 From: caliburncy at yahoo.com (caliburncy) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 18:31:14 -0000 Subject: Narnia reading order (was Re: Discworld Novels, reading in order) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi, --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "lupinesque" wrote: > I agree with Tabouli--there is a great sense of discovery when you > have read five books since The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe > before you finally come upon the account of the creation of the > wardrobe. This came up on this list once before, and someone said > that Lewis himself wanted the books to be numbered in internal > chronological order, which to me just proves that authors don't > always know best. You know, what particularly bothers my about this re-ordering that has been done, is that the supposed "Lewis intent" to have the books placed in chronological order is, apparently, based merely on a letter to one of his young readers. Here's a quote from Into the Wardrobe (http://cslewis.drzeus.net/) that includes a quote from said letter: > In a letter written in 1957 to an American boy named Laurence, > Lewis wrote the following: > > 'I think I agree with your order {i.e. chronological} for reading > the books more than with your mother's [LUKE EDIT: His mother had > recommended, naturally, the original publishing order]. The series > was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I > did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian > as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and > when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last. > But I found as was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much > in which order anyone read them. I'm not even sure that all the > others were written in the same order in which they were > published.' Now personally, I hardly see this as a firm basis to draw the conclusion that Lewis wanted his Chronicles re-ordered post-mortem. That course of action was never even recommended by Lewis himself, but by his (presumably well-meaning) stepson Douglas Gresham, who used the aforementioned letter as corroboration. I suppose the reason this bothers me is that it disturbs me to think that, if I were in Lewis' shoes, people would snatch up every remaining scrap of everything I had ever said (that was recorded) or written, analyze it, and draw overreactive conclusions from it. How do we know Lewis really wanted this? He never said as much explicitly. Perhaps he was merely indulging a child, because, as Lewis says, the order doesn't matter all that much, and he therefore wanted the child to read the books in whatever order he preferred. Now I'm not saying this is what happened. I'm saying I don't know. But then, neither do the people who did the re-ordering, it seems. So, in their shoes, I would have left well enough alone. To do otherwise in this circumstance strikes me as rather presumptuous. Of course, part of the reason this annoys me is that I feel that I was sort of tricked into reading the books in chronological order the first time I read them. I am not one of those people that read Narnia as a child, so by the time I got around to it, the publishers had already started this re-ordering. When I picked up a boxed set of the books, I was surprised that The Magician's Nephew came first. "That's odd," I thought. "I could have sworn that it began with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." But, not being much aware of Lewis-related trivia, nor having any knowledge of the two alternate orders that had been proposed, I simply quickly assumed I had been mistaken, and therefore did not even check the copyright date or otherwise persist in trying to identify the source of my confusion. After all, why would the publishers be wrong? But as I read The Magician's Nephew, I felt a persistence of unease, because I knew, in the back of my mind, that this was not the order in which the universe was supposed to be unfolding. Something was definitely amiss. I eventually examined book more thoroughly and found a small notice on the copyright page that said the Chronicles had been re- ordered according to the wishes of C.S. Lewis. The worst part is that The Magician's Nephew is really the only story for which the re-ordering makes a significant difference. (The other book that is "out of order" is The Horse and His Boy, but since the events therein are so separate from the rest of the Chronicles, reading it pretty much whenever is okay.) And so, for someone who is unaware of the re-ordering that was done, by the time they realize it, the damage is done. The effect of The Magician's Nephew--which is so dependent upon familiarity with the rest of the Chronicles--has been spoiled for them. I know this sounds a tad melodramatic. But this is basically an accurate representation of how I felt at the time. Nowadays, it bothers me more on the basis of principle than any actual sense of emotion--perhaps because I'm not really a sufficient fan of Narnia in order to feel thoroughly scandalized. (I like them well enough, but am not as enamored with them as others are, perhaps because I didn't read them as a child.) But anyway, my point is that I don't really see sufficient justification for the re-ordering to be done in the first place. For people reading the Chronicles again, you may do so however you choose: forwards, backwards, upside down, whatever. But if you are looking into reading them for the first time, then I highly recommend you read them in the order in which they were published: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Prince Caspian The Voyage of the Dawn Treader The Silver Chair The Horse and His Boy The Magicians Nephew The Last Battle -Luke From catlady at wicca.net Mon May 27 20:17:06 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 20:17:06 -0000 Subject: Author's intentions (was Narnia reading order) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "caliburncy" wrote: > > You know, what particularly bothers my about this re-ordering that > has been done, is that the supposed "Lewis intent" to have the > books placed in chronological order is, apparently, based merely on > a letter to one of his young readers. > I suppose the reason this bothers me is that it disturbs me to > think that, if I were in Lewis' shoes, people would snatch up every > remaining scrap of everything I had ever said (that was recorded) > or written, analyze it, and draw overreactive conclusions from it. Isn't that exactly what we do to JKR? And *she* is still alive! From john at walton.vu Mon May 27 20:23:46 2002 From: john at walton.vu (John Walton) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 21:23:46 +0100 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Narnia reading order In-Reply-To: Message-ID: caliburncy wrote: > But if you are looking into reading them for the first time, then I > highly recommend you read them in the order in which they were > published: > > The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe > Prince Caspian > The Voyage of the Dawn Treader > The Silver Chair > The Horse and His Boy > The Magicians Nephew > The Last Battle I absolutely agree with Luke. The Magician's Nephew works much better with the hindsight you get after reading the other books (TLWW and TSC especially) than if you read TMN and then the others. There is a particular moment of epiphany in TMN (fellow Narnians may know the one I mean...) that is quite sublime. --John ____________________________________________ "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." John Walton || john at walton.vu ____________________________________________ From caliburncy at yahoo.com Mon May 27 20:35:30 2002 From: caliburncy at yahoo.com (caliburncy) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 20:35:30 -0000 Subject: Author's intentions (was Narnia reading order) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi, ---I wrote: > I suppose the reason this bothers me is that it disturbs me to > think that, if I were in Lewis' shoes, people would snatch up every > remaining scrap of everything I had ever said (that was recorded) > or written, analyze it, and draw overreactive conclusions from it. ---and Catlady deftly responded: > Isn't that exactly what we do to JKR? And *she* is still alive! Yes, it is--and to tell the truth it bothers me sometimes in this instance, too. ;-) I'm glad I'm not famous . . . -Luke From huntleyl at mssm.org Mon May 27 21:33:54 2002 From: huntleyl at mssm.org (Laura Huntley) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 17:33:54 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children References: <3CF20325.1784.3CC0E7@localhost> Message-ID: <00cd01c205c6$33a351c0$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> *sighs* who am I to argue against "years of experience here, personal knowledge of over 50 cases, detailed knowledge of another 200 cases, and an intimate knowledge of 60 years of research"...ah, someone who doesn't know when to quit, you say? Oh well, there's definitely an argument for that. But I stand by the opinions I expressed earlier. Shaun: >What research has shown - and I've seen it personally in over 50 cases, with only 1 >exception - is that the type of cruelty you describe is only likely if there is a less than >two year age gap between the older kids and the younger one. If the gap is larger >than that, cruelty is exceedingly rare. Exactly. Kids that are that much older than a given gifted child are unlikely to be cruel to him/her. But they will *never* look at that child as an equal or a peer -- even if they are friends with him or her. And that, IMO, is almost worse than the "cruelty" you were speaking of. In actuality, this type of treatment, although neither hostile nor intentionally harmful, will make a kid feel just as alienated as they had with less "mature" kids of their same age. And don't think a gifted kid in this position wouldn't notice that his friends don't quite treat/see him the same way they do each other. Children, whether gifted or not, generally are *allot* more aware than most adults will give them credit for. Shaun: >Well, no, it doesn't - older, as a general rule, does mean more mature (the two >terms are synonyms) but there are exceptions. *big sigh* Honestly. Of *course* "mature" is a synonym for "older" in a literal context. When comparing the *emotional* maturity of kids around 8 yrs. old and kids around 12 yrs. old, however, the biggest difference you are going to find is the awareness of sex. In some ways, it can be argued that the average 8 yr. old is more mature than the average 12 yr. old when it comes to such things as being accepting of people who are different than they are and being more sympathetic to those in pain. When kids hit the 11-13 year old range they get *very* aware of the differences between people -- and they are very, very likely to be hostile towards those who are different than them. And to kids who are, by definition, "different", this means allot. The only way the average 12 yr. old is going to be nice to another child whom they perceive "different" is if that child is young enough that he or she is no longer perceived as a peer, but as a "little kid"...which is why you don't find regular students who are 4 or 5 years older than a PG kid being "cruel" to that child -- they may be hormonal, insecure preteens -- but they aren't monsters. Most of them aren't going to be intentionally malicious to someone they think of as a little kid. Esp. the girls will want to play "parent" to someone that young. IMO, this is *not* a healthy relationship for a PG kid who needs REAL friends. BTW, I'm not trying to say that 12 yr. olds are all awful people. Their ostracism of freaks/weirdoes/etc. is an important part of their own development and discovery of their individuality. This is also the time when they start to become "disrespectful" towards their parents. It's all part of growing up and learning to be an adult. However, IMO, kids in this age bracket are about as far as they will ever get from being a healthy adult. Therefore, while I agree that PG kids are VERY likely to have natural, comfortable relationships with truly mature adults, and from that fact it's natural to come to the conclusion that since adults=older=better relationships for gifted kids, then 11 yr. old=older=better relationship for a 6 or 7 year old gifted child, this is simply not the case. And I know you're going to say that such and such number of studies dispute this -- to which I have no defense except to say that it's very easy to make the results of any study come out to what you want/expect them to be...unintentionally or otherwise. >When it comes to profoundly gifted children, these kids do to tend to be more >mature, more emotionally and socially developed than their chronological age would >indicate, in the vast majority of cases. Emotionally and socially, sure. But the things that make me feel that kids in the 12ish age bracket are such unsuitable peers for someone around 8 years of age are strongly influenced by *physical* factors. The personalities, emotions, etc. of kids approaching/going through puberty are *so* influenced by *physical* (esp. hormonal) changes that parents of such kids often complain that they don't recognize the person who has suddenly and inexplicably taken over their child's body. Also, I don't know about just PG kids, but *all* the gifted kids I know tended to have a different experience of puberty than their peers anyway. From my own experience and the stories that the other gifted girls I know tell me now, we tend to experience the change into adolescence as a period of deep depression and/or indifference or annoyance at the antics of our peers...as opposed to said peers, who spent most of their puberty years being quite MAD about boys. Now, don't get me wrong, I like boys and I've had my fair share of lunatic crushes. If anything, I may have "noticed" boys as sexual beings before any of my friends -- but there has been no point in my life where you could have caught me DEAD giggling over a picture of some baby-faced celebrity or engaging in any of the other activities that so characterize most pre-adolescent/adolescent girls' discovery of their sexuality. When my friends were going through this stage I felt completely alienated and depressed...I can't imagine how confused and left-out I would have felt if I was 8 or so when my classmates entered into this stage. Shaun: >This is part of the problem I have to deal with in advocating for these kids - people >just *assume* they know what will happen, sometimes based on their experiences - >unless their experiences have been with PG kids, they really do not know what will >work and what is needed. >Please - don't assume your experience is complete. It's not fair on these kids - >because most people do not experience what they have to go through. Now, wait a second. What (I think) you are trying to say is that putting a PG kid a more than 3 grades ahead of their age group is more beneficial than leaving them with kids their own age. *I* am trying to say that neither sounds like a very good option to me. I have no clue whether I would be considered PG or not -- probably not. I'm smart..but..I don't know.. I would definitely be uncomfortable with that label -- probably develop some of the feelings of being a fraud and needing to live up to other people's expectations such as another listie mentioned earlier in this discussion. And, either way, it's definitely unfair of me to base all my opinions on my *own* experience..first, because I am, obviously, just one example...and I would have probably been miserable anywhere they put me for reasons entirely unrelated to my "gifted" status. But I *have* met a number of kids who -- if they aren't PG, I don't know who is. Being part of a magnet school (which, BTW is just about the only place gifted kids can go in Maine)...I also probably come in more contact with these people than average person...And, yes, they do tend to be more mature than other kids their age -- even other "gifted" kids...(I was surprised when I came here at the number of very smart kids who were just as immature as my old set of peers...I had always equated "intelligent" with "mature") And I do see the difference between them and kids that are "gifted", but not EG/PG. However, I still think my arguments against putting them, as 8 yr. olds, in 7th or 8th grade are just as, if not more, valid. *sigh* Gifted or not, I'm probably the only person on this list stupid enough to try to argue with the amount of research that backs up your claims..but, there it is. laura [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From virtualworldofhp at yahoo.com Mon May 27 22:54:15 2002 From: virtualworldofhp at yahoo.com (virtualworldofhp) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 22:54:15 -0000 Subject: Narnia reading order In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., John Walton wrote: > I absolutely agree with Luke. The Magician's Nephew works much better with > the hindsight you get after reading the other books (TLWW and TSC > especially) than if you read TMN and then the others. There is a particular > moment of epiphany in TMN (fellow Narnians may know the one I mean...) that > is quite sublime. There is a certain magical quality to Narnia that one only gets when reading TLWW, and having Edmund and Lucy explore Narnia for the first time. It gives excellent and perfect introduction into Aslan and the unique universe Lewis creates. TMN is an excellent backstory, but if read first, I don't think the reader would hold the same appreciation for Narnia, or more importantly, Aslan. His introduction is perfect in TLWW and that is the book where he truly demonstrates his power and important figure-head role. Although TMN is the "creation" story (biblical allusions, galore), without proper introduction into the atmosphere of Narnia, the reader can't possibly have the same regard for the magic of the series as a whole. Was that coherent in any form whatsoever? ;-) -Megan From goku_n_vegeta_02 at yahoo.com Mon May 27 15:45:16 2002 From: goku_n_vegeta_02 at yahoo.com (goku_n_vegeta_02) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 15:45:16 -0000 Subject: OT: New List Message-ID: Hi! Last night I created a ML for the updates and discussion of the fics on my site. Shaynie :) You can find the group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The_Other_Side_ML/ and my site "The Other Side" at: http://www.geocities.com/goku_n_vegeta_02/ Please check them both out! Shaynie :) From drednort at alphalink.com.au Tue May 28 00:13:03 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 10:13:03 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children In-Reply-To: <00cd01c205c6$33a351c0$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Message-ID: <3CF3582F.21407.6300BA@localhost> > *sighs* who am I to argue against "years of experience here, personal knowledge > of over 50 cases, detailed knowledge of another 200 cases, and an intimate > knowledge of 60 years of research"...ah, someone who doesn't know when to quit, > you say? Oh well, there's definitely an argument for that. But I stand by the > opinions I expressed earlier. Heh - never be afraid to argue with someone if you think you're right. I doubt you need that piece of advice but it important. But please do understand that I have had to see a lot of pain with these kids. I've had to endure the misery that can develop when school isn't meeting their needs, when they find it impossible to make friends, when they are abused by teachers for not fitting into the teacher's neat little boxes... what I advocate is based on solid research, and also on personal experience of what I have seen work, and how I have seen it work. And I've also been there when a kid has finally got what they need, and they start to be happy again. And I've been there with kids who got what they needed from the start, and have never had to be miserable because of their schooling. I don't advocate these practices unless I know they work. Unless I know that (1) there is a solid body of research evidence to back them up, (2) that there is no significant level of evidence to oppose the, and (3) that I have seen them in action, working, and improving the lives of kids. > Shaun: > >What research has shown - and I've seen it personally in over 50 cases, with only 1 > >exception - is that the type of cruelty you describe is only likely if there is a less than > >two year age gap between the older kids and the younger one. If the gap is larger > >than that, cruelty is exceedingly rare. > > Exactly. Kids that are that much older than a given gifted child are unlikely to be cruel to him/her. > > But they will *never* look at that child as an equal or a peer -- even if they are friends with him or her. Some do - and you only need a couple in a class to give a child peers, when they may have never had them before. > And that, IMO, is almost worse than the "cruelty" you were speaking of. In > actuality, this type of treatment, although neither hostile nor intentionally harmful, > will make a kid feel just as alienated as they had with less "mature" kids of their > same age. And don't think a gifted kid in this position wouldn't notice that his > friends don't quite treat/see him the same way they do each other. Children, > whether gifted or not, generally are *allot* more aware than most adults will give > them credit for. The thing is, profoundly gifted kids only very rarely have kids they relate to as peers in regular aged-based classes. About 5% of PG kids will find any type of peer relationship in a chronological age based class. Other kids do not "look at that child as an equal or peer" in aged based classes - not when the child is PG, not in 19 out of 20 cases. If you regard having peers as important - and I do - then it has to be accepted that these kids generally shouldn't be in aged based classes. When they are radically accelerated, between 60 and 80% find at least one 'peer' in a class. The odds are much higher in their favour. Now the peer relationship sometimes (a little less than half the time) is somewhat different from a typical one. It can be true that the child can notice that "his friends don't quite treat/see him the same way they do each other." But faced with a 60% chance of any type of peer relationship and friendship, versus a 5% chance of the same (because the fact is the "friends don't quite treat/see him the same way they do each other" is a problem that could occur in the aged based class as well), it's pretty clear what the better choice is. Not the perfect choice - but we rarely have perfect choices. We have to go with what is best. > Shaun: > >Well, no, it doesn't - older, as a general rule, does mean more mature (the two > >terms are synonyms) but there are exceptions. > > *big sigh* Honestly. Of *course* "mature" is a synonym for "older" in a literal > context. > > When comparing the *emotional* maturity of kids around 8 yrs. old and kids > around 12 yrs. old, however, the biggest difference you are going to find is the > awareness of sex. In general yes. With PG kids, not really. A PG child of 8 is actually likely to be more aware of matters sexual, and more able to deal with them, than other kids at 12. I wasn't convinced of this until recently but work on asynchronous development at the GDC in Denver is pretty clear. There's even some indication that PG kids (especially girls) may go through puberty 2-3 years earlier than the average, as a matter of course, though, so far, AFAIK, nobody has worked out any solid reason why this should be so (though there are theories... there are always theories). > In some ways, it can be argued that the average 8 yr. old is more mature than the > average 12 yr. old when it comes to such things as being accepting of people who > are different than they are and being more sympathetic to those in pain. When > kids hit the 11-13 year old range they get *very* aware of the differences between > people -- and they are very, very likely to be hostile towards those who are > different than them. Yes, true to a great extent - but practice and research shows this has a very minor impact on any radically accelerated child in their class. > And to kids who are, by definition, "different", this means allot. > > The only way the average 12 yr. old is going to be nice to another child whom > they perceive "different" is if that child is young enough that he or she is no longer > perceived as a peer, but as a "little kid"...which is why you don't find regular > students who are 4 or 5 years older than a PG kid being "cruel" to that child -- they > may be hormonal, insecure preteens -- but they aren't monsters. Most of them > aren't going to be intentionally malicious to someone they think of as a little kid. > Esp. the girls will want to play "parent" to someone that young. IMO, this is *not* > a healthy relationship for a PG kid who needs REAL friends. So - where are you going to GET these real friends from. Less than 5% of PG kids develop real friendships in age based classes. At least 60% of PG kids in classes based on their level of ability make at least one real friend. *If* these kids had a better chance of making friends in aged based classes, then denying acceleration on a friendship basis would make sense. But they don't - 95% of them will not make friends in aged based classes. I went through 13 years of school, and I had one friend for less than one year in all that time. That's fairly typical for a PG child. They don't make friends when forced into the aged based regular classroom. They're just too different. Acceleration reduces the differences dramatically. Instead of being different socially, intellectually, in terms of maturity, in terms of interests, they are suddenly much closer to the norm. Yes, they have a different date of birth - but that's far less significant than other differences. > Therefore, while I agree that PG kids are VERY likely to have natural, comfortable > relationships with truly mature adults, and from that fact it's natural to come to the > conclusion that since adults=older=better relationships for gifted kids, then 11 yr. > old=older=better relationship for a 6 or 7 year old gifted child, this is simply not > the case. So the 5 kids I had contact with in the last week who quite clearly say that this is how it is working for them, don't exist? They certainly made a lot of mess for a bunch of phantasms (-8 > And I know you're going to say that such and such number of studies dispute this -> - to which I have no defense except to say that it's very easy to make the results > of any study come out to what you want/expect them to be...unintentionally or > otherwise. It's also very easy for a study to show what actually happens. There are dozens of studies on this - they virtually all show similar results, including studies that were deliberately set up in an attempt to show the opposite. And I also happen to know some kids for whom this is working - and adults for whom it did work. And what they say backs up the research in general terms. > >When it comes to profoundly gifted children, these kids do to tend to be more > >mature, more emotionally and socially developed than their chronological age would > >indicate, in the vast majority of cases. > > Emotionally and socially, sure. But the things that make me feel that kids in the > 12ish age bracket are such unsuitable peers for someone around 8 years of age > are strongly influenced by *physical* factors. The personalities, emotions, etc. of > kids approaching/going through puberty are *so* influenced by *physical* (esp. > hormonal) changes that parents of such kids often complain that they don't > recognize the person who has suddenly and inexplicably taken over their child's > body. Consider this - not all kids go through puberty at the same rate. Girls typically hit puberty at around 11 - but any age from 8-16 is considered to be in the normal range. There's an 8 year range of when kids have to deal with these issues anyway. And, as I've mentioned above, there's some indication that PG kids are hitting them on the early side of the norm. > Also, I don't know about just PG kids, but *all* the gifted kids I know tended to > have a different experience of puberty than their peers anyway. From my own > experience and the stories that the other gifted girls I know tell me now, we tend > to experience the change into adolescence as a period of deep depression and/or > indifference or annoyance at the antics of our peers...as opposed to said peers, > who spent most of their puberty years being quite MAD about boys. That's not uncommon among gifted kids - PG kids actually do tend to handle it a little better with less angst, etc, mostly because they do have a higher level of emotional and social maturity. > Now, don't get me wrong, I like boys and I've had my fair share of lunatic crushes. > If anything, I may have "noticed" boys as sexual beings before any of my friends -> - but there has been no point in my life where you could have caught me DEAD > giggling over a picture of some baby-faced celebrity or engaging in any of the > other activities that so characterize most pre-adolescent/adolescent girls' > discovery of their sexuality. When my friends were going through this stage I felt > completely alienated and depressed...I can't imagine how confused and left-out I > would have felt if I was 8 or so when my classmates entered into this stage. Sure - but that's you. It's not a common problem for most PG kids. They are, typically, used to other kids behaving differently from them, and provided the different behaviour is not directed at them, they tend to just shrug it off. > Now, wait a second. > > What (I think) you are trying to say is that putting a PG kid a more than 3 grades > ahead of their age group is more beneficial than leaving them with kids their own > age. In general, yes. > *I* am trying to say that neither sounds like a very good option to me. The criteria that should be used isn't whether either are good options - but which of the options is better. Almost always, there are no perfect options. Often, there aren't even any near perfect options. We have to make the choice that is the best option we have. Even if acceleration isn't a good option, given the known serious ill effects most PG kids suffer in regular classrooms, it can still be the better option. Radical acceleration isn't perfect - but it is a lot better than keeping a PG child in a chronologically aged based classroom in the vast majority of cases. It's the better choice. It may not be clear, but I actually don't support radical acceleration as the best way of handling the needs of PG kids. I prefer other approaches - but they take a lot more in terms of resources and money to set up, and so often aren't options. Acceleration costs virtually nothing. It tends to be an option where others don't exist. And it's a better option than doing nothing. > I > have no clue whether I would be considered PG or not -- probably not. I'm > smart..but..I don't know.. I would definitely be uncomfortable with that label -- > probably develop some of the feelings of being a fraud and needing to live up to > other people's expectations such as another listie mentioned earlier in this > discussion. We try to play down the label around the kids - but we don't totally ignore it, as sometimes it can be positive for kids to have a name for why they feel so different. > But I *have* met a number of kids who -- if they aren't PG, I don't know who is. > Being part of a magnet school (which, BTW is just about the only place gifted kids > can go in Maine)...I also probably come in more contact with these people than > average person...And, yes, they do tend to be more mature than other kids their > age -- even other "gifted" kids...(I was surprised when I came here at the number > of very smart kids who were just as immature as my old set of peers...I had > always equated "intelligent" with "mature") And I do see the difference between > them and kids that are "gifted", but not EG/PG. However, I still think my > arguments against putting them, as 8 yr. olds, in 7th or 8th grade are just as, if not > more, valid. The thing is, we have to base these decisions on the evidence. If we don't, we allow our prejudices and biases to affect others. The research is clear. I've had to change my position in the fact of that, at times. Because these kids are too important to miss out because individuals disagree. > *sigh* Gifted or not, I'm probably the only person on this list stupid enough to try > argue with the amount of research that backs up your claims..but, there it is. It's never stupid to argue - especially not on issues that concern people, and which by definition, can never be entirely black or white - always a grey area. Always. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From drednort at alphalink.com.au Tue May 28 00:13:02 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 10:13:02 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Gifted children In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3CF3582E.6625.62FBFC@localhost> > Shaun wrote: > > >In three and a half years at school, he has learned basically nothing. He's > >very close > >to shutting down and giving up on school. If he was happy, we wouldn't be > >involved > >at > >this point - but he isn't. He wants to learn - and school is doing nothing > >to address > >his desire to learn. > > If I may point out, Shaun, some schools simply do not have the resources. > In England schools are hopelessly underfunded. When the PTA donates its > fundraising profits to buy *textbooks*, something is very wrong. I understand this. But when this is the case, it doesn't change the fact that students in the school are having their needs neglected. It often isn't the school's fault - it's a fault 'higher up' in the system but it's still there. > I realize that it's possible that your student's school simply doesn't care, > but I felt I had to defend those schools that do care--and very much so--but > struggle to support their "normal" students, never mind the ones who do not > fit in the mainstream for whatever reason. I didn't say schools don't care - some don't, but most do. But whether they care or not, if a child is not receiving an appropriate education, something is wrong at some level. The program I work in works outside schools because we're aware that there often isn't a level of resourcing available to allow schools to address the issues. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From catlady at wicca.net Tue May 28 01:03:16 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 01:03:16 -0000 Subject: Gifted children In-Reply-To: <3CF3582F.21407.6300BA@localhost> Message-ID: It's not a surprise to me that this topic of discussion called forth much personal response from OT-chatters: I don't believe there is anyone who even LURKS on these lists lower than the 1 person in 500 level of intelligence, whatever intelligence is. Yes, even the people who claim to be stupid and ignorant! That the topic that brought us together is a series of BOOKS, that we discuss these books not only with GRAMMER and SPELLING (and, for many listees, in their second or third language!) but also with constant references to other books, literary theory, mythology, psychology, history, such items of physics as the Laws of Thermodynamics ... people who aren't bookish would get lost. --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Laura Huntley" wrote: > Exactly. Kids that are that much older than a given gifted child > are unlikely to be cruel to him/her. > > But they will *never* look at that child as an equal or a peer -- > even if they are friends with him or her. > > And that, IMO, is almost worse than the "cruelty" you were speaking > of. In actuality, this type of treatment, although neither hostile > nor intentionally harmful, will make a kid feel just as alienated > as they had with less "mature" kids of their same age. And don't > think a gifted kid in this position wouldn't notice that his > friends don't quite treat/see him the same way they do each other. > Children, whether gifted or not, generally are *allot* more aware > than most adults will give them credit for. > Dear upfront persistent Laura, you sound like you could be speaking of your own personal experience with some kids age 3 to 4 years older than you. If so, I am very sorry that they hurt you, but as long as we are keeping the discussion on the general level, it isn't enough to say that putting kids in with older kids is bad -- one must also say that it is worse than the profound Hell of age-based classes. --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Shaun Hately" wrote: > But please do understand that I have had to see a lot of pain with > these kids. I've had to endure the misery that can develop when > school isn't meeting their needs, when they find it impossible to > make friends, when they are abused by teachers for not fitting into > the teacher's neat little boxes... You left out, scolded by parents for bringing all this trouble on themselves by fidgetting in boring class and not having social skills with the other kids. Of course, THOSE parents don't bring their kids to you. > But faced with a 60% chance of any type of peer relationship and > friendship, versus a 5% chance of the same (because the fact is the > "friends don't quite treat/see him the same way they do each other" > is a problem that could occur in the aged based class as well), > it's pretty clear what the better choice is. Not the perfect choice > - but we rarely have perfect choices. We have to go with what is > best. Hmm. Maybe she is arguing that the correct solution is to put the kids in an entire 20 to 40 student class who are all the same age and same intelligence, in a school where each grade has an entire 20 to 40 person class of the same intelligence and there are no classes of dumb (excuse me, "normal") people in the whole school. As I said before, my life was eventually saved by such a school (and my parents' ability to pay the tuition!), but Los Angeles is a Big City. I understand your argument that a small town probably (unless it was a university town or such) wouldn't have (hmm. 1st thru 6th grade times 20) 120 young children in the 1 in 5000 category at the same time. Maybe she is recommending board school to solve that problem? Perhaps little six year olds aren't too young to go to boarding school IF they can go home every weekend ... I'm thinking about the travel time from any place in California to any place in California ... from big city to big city, you spend much longer in the airports than on the airplane, but for small towns or out in the country, there are LONG drives from the nearest airport... > > I went through 13 years of school, and I had one friend for less > than one year in all that time. Snap! I had one friend for only one year in regular school. I don't know why she wasn't very popular with the normal kids either, but she was very religious (in an appropriately childish way) and always said: "Don't be so sad, Jesus loves you." From saitaina at wizzards.net Tue May 28 03:33:50 2002 From: saitaina at wizzards.net (Saitaina) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 20:33:50 -0700 Subject: My horror to had to pet loss-(don't read if you're happy) References: Message-ID: <011a01c205f8$7c47be20$e44e28d1@oemcomputer> Yesterday I received a phone call at two am of my other screaming. When I could finally get what was going on I found out that my baby, Scabbers had died. Scabbers (my mum, the non HP fan named him) was my seven week kitten that I had gotten last weekend. He was the sweetest most wonderful animal I had known...except that he didn't get along with my other animals. And even though I had only known him a short time...he was my baby, my little prince. The hardest part of his death, wasn't that he was so young, it was that Clifford, one of my mum's dogs, mauled him. And I could have saved him if I didn't fear my realtor so much. They had been fighting earlier in the day while I was on the phone with mum and I had offered to take him for the night but she said no, that I could get kicked out of my place (they don't allow pets). If I had only gone down there and taken him anyway while she was at work...I may not have been able to save his life forever, but I could have at least had one more moment with him. We buried him today and even now, now that he's gone and in the ground...I still can't help but think if I had only taken the time to go down there, to be with him...I could have had that one last moment. I now must go hug my fish tank. Saitaina ***** "Good laws derive from evil habits." -Macrobius "The mystery of goverment is not how Washington works, but how to make it stop."-"Parlement of Whores" [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From catlady at wicca.net Tue May 28 04:03:24 2002 From: catlady at wicca.net (catlady_de_los_angeles) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 04:03:24 -0000 Subject: My horror to had to pet loss-(don't read if you're happy) In-Reply-To: <011a01c205f8$7c47be20$e44e28d1@oemcomputer> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Saitaina" wrote: > We buried him today and even now, now that he's gone and in the > ground...I still can't help but think if I had only taken the time > to go down there, to be with him...I could have had that one last > moment. > I now must go hug my fish tank. *hugs Saitaina* A little over a year ago, I too lost an adorable seven week old kitten, at a cost around $1000 -- but mine died of having been sickly since birth, not of (horror), uh, 'Nature red in tooth and claw'. *hugs Saitaina again* And Meglet, Sheryll, all the dog people out there: hugs to you-uns, too, I know you dog people love your dogs as much as us cat people love our cats. From macloudt at hotmail.com Tue May 28 11:49:09 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 11:49:09 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] My horror to had to pet loss-(don't read if you're happy) Message-ID: Poor Saity wrote: >Scabbers (my mum, the non HP fan named him) was my seven week kitten that I >had gotten last weekend...The hardest part of his death, wasn't that he was >so young, it was that Clifford, one of my mum's dogs, mauled him :::::big hug::::: Oh, Saity, how awful. Don't go blaming yourself for what happened, though; hindsight can drive you nuts. You did what you and your mum thought was best. Scabbers is in the big Catnip Patch in the sky now, happy as can be. It's always terrible to lose a pet (I have 2 dogs buried in my back garden), but *please* remember not to blame yourself. Schnoogles, Mary Ann _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From dfrankiswork at netscape.net Tue May 28 12:04:12 2002 From: dfrankiswork at netscape.net (davewitley) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 12:04:12 -0000 Subject: Author's intentions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Luke: > > I suppose the reason this bothers me is that it disturbs me to > > think that, if I were in Lewis' shoes, people would snatch up every > > remaining scrap of everything I had ever said (that was recorded) > > or written, analyze it, and draw overreactive conclusions from it. > Catlady deftly responded: > > Isn't that exactly what we do to JKR? And *she* is still alive! to which Luke said: > Yes, it is--and to tell the truth it bothers me sometimes in this > instance, too. ;-) Me too. Elkins said it pretty well in her main list contribution to the FF vs TBAY thread a few days ago. However, I feel that JKR does little to discourage this sort of activity - I'd say she revels in dropping ambiguous hints almost designed to cause the listener to be sucked into a vortex of ever- more-microscopic speculation. David From cindysphynx at comcast.net Tue May 28 13:19:55 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 13:19:55 -0000 Subject: Underachievers Anonymous (WAS Gifted children) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I think it is high time someone started an organization for those who are told they could "achieve" more but, for whatever reason, choose not to. 'Cause there are times when we *really* could use some support. ;-) Elkins wrote: > I was always under the impression that "underachiever" meant > "somebody who has prioritized their values very differently than I > have, and in a way that makes me feel upset and threatened." > > Certainly I have been labelled an "underachiever" all of my life, > and that's always seemed to me to be what the word actually means. I can relate to this. Not because I was ever thought to be a genius . . . . . . but because there is a certain choice you can make as an adult that will get you labeled as an underachiever every time. That choice is the choice to stop working and stay home with your kids. Good grief! Work colleagues immediately counsel you on the depths of the mistake you are making. Parents want to know why you are throwing away all that schooling. Female friends ask how you can bear to be dependent on a *man*. And everyone, including people who have only known you for five minutes, asks, "But aren't you *bored*? So when I see us fretting that a gifted child might wind up being an underachiever, I find myself wondering if this is such a terrible thing. Indeed, I wonder if perhaps we should pay more attention to whether the child will wind up being *happy*, regardless of their so- called achievements. Shaun wrote (defining underachiever): > "A person who is not achieving at a particular level, who is known >to have both the ability and the desire to achieve at that level." >But there are also some who really do want to achieve - I've spent >most of today talking to an 8 year old whose dream (at this point >of his life) is to be an engineer. A quick disclaimer up front: I'm not challenging Shaun's expertise, and I haven't read the details of this thread as closely as I probably should have. But I do have to raise my hand timidly and question the view that an 8-year old would have any idea of whether they want to be an engineer. Achieving anything in life involves a tremendous number of sacrifices. Young children don't get the concept of sacrifice at all, in my experience. So I would be very hesitant to label a mathematically advanced 8-year-old as a math underachiever, because the child probably has not formed the desire to achieve based on any realistic assessment of what it takes to achieve the goal. Instead, the child may simply be identifying a goal because everyone around him or her thinks it is very important that the child do this and not *waste* all that God-given talent. In fact, if I were to use Shaun's definition of "underachiever" as a starting point, I would say an underachiever is someone who has the ability, has the desire, and understands and is willing to make the sacrifices needed. After all, I could be a lawyer at some Big Firm right now. I have the ability (been there, done that) and the desire (it is certainly fun, lucrative, the perks are great, and the food is especially tasty). But I'm no longer willing to make the sacrifices required to achieve at that level. Under my definition, I wouldn't be an underachiever. And I don't think that I am. Cindy (who wonders if Pete Sampras feels like an underachiever at the French Open because he has the ability and desire to win that tournament but can't seem to get past the first round) From saitaina at wizzards.net Tue May 28 13:31:17 2002 From: saitaina at wizzards.net (Saitaina) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 06:31:17 -0700 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] My horror to had to pet loss-(don't read if you're happy) References: Message-ID: <00b601c2064b$f4670020$1f4e28d1@oemcomputer> I'm trying not to it's just hard knowing that I had thought about taking him home and didn't. Now to cheer us up let me tell you how Scabby got his name, funny story really. My mother hated Harry Potter. Never having read the books she looked down her nose on them quite a bit. In November, when the movie came out I got her to come by her loosing a bet. Figuring she would like the movie better then reading the books as she has trouble with them. Well she fell in love with the characters (my mother is a Hermione fan big time now!) and when we were talking about adding another cat to our brood I was promised I could name it. Fast forward three months to when she got Scabbers. Unbeknown to me she got a new baby from a friend and had him most of the night before calling me. She suddenly decided he was a Scabbers and even though I explained to her just WHO Scabbers was, she wouldn't change his name. He wouldn't even awnser to anything but Scabbers, Scabby or Little Brat. So thus, Peter Scabbers Pettigrew was named by my mother, the non Harry fan and former HP hater. Saitaina ***** "Good laws derive from evil habits." -Macrobius "The mystery of goverment is not how Washington works, but how to make it stop."-"Parlement of Whores" [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From foxmoth at qnet.com Tue May 28 16:38:02 2002 From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 16:38:02 -0000 Subject: Gifted Children Message-ID: I wrote: > > > > I think it is probably very difficult to take an objective view of > > intelligence testing if your experience is that it has been >>abused in this manner. Shaun said: > Yes - but Gould was a scientist. And more specifically, he was >a specialist in (among other things) the history of science. As >such, he had a responsibility to be objective. > > There have been other objective and balanced works on these >ssues that exposed all the same practices that Gould did. But >they did it without ignoring evidence, and > without misrepresenting studies. Gould did both of those >things in 'Mismeasure of Man'. Objectivity and balance are of limited use against propaganda, unfortunately. My understanding is The Mismeasure of Man (1999) was written to counter the influence of books like Hernstein and Murray's The Bell Curve (1996) , which I have read, and didn't find to be a work of scientific detachment, to say the least. I see that The Bell Curve is outselling TMoM at Amazon to this day, sales rank 12,408 over 19,379. Fighting fire with fire is debatable, but the point is, there's a fire to be fought. Blaming Gould for the controversy around intelligence testing instead of the people trying to use it for social engineering seems a bit like shooting the messenger. It was interesting that you mentioned HIV. That's another area in American life where the research has become highly politicized, and the question "how is this distributed among the population" has become so loaded that it can barely be asked, much less answered objectively. It should be understood that the public schools in the US have always been social engineering projects as well as educational institutions. The gifted programs of my era were not funded to help one in five thousand to reach their academic potential in the field of their desire, they were funded to produce mathematicians and scientists for the space and weapons programs of the cold war. (Humanities programs got in on the coat tails. That is an area where I am not sure acceleration works so well. I was five years prepubescent when I was assigned to read "A Catcher in the Rye" and my reaction was, "What is this kid whining about?" Salinger's portrayal of teen angst is a whole lot more meaningful once you've experienced it from the inside. ) I have to back up what Mary Ann said about local school districts. Here in America the largest districts are often the poorest in terms of per pupil funding. It's hard to manage a program that benefits even one in fifty when the buildings are crumbling, there are no books and the teachers have only emergency credentials. The federal government mandates that gifted programs and special ed be implemented, but it doesn't fund them, so the districts have to do the best they can. In this light it is ironic that the de-industrialization which impoverished our cities may be related to the skewed military testing done in WWII. The test-skewers thought they needed to preserve a supply of blue collar and unskilled labor. It didn't occur to them that all the new college boys they qualified for training would move to the suburbs and eventually engineer those urban factory jobs out of existence. ::sigh:: Thanks for sharing your expertise so gracefully, Shaun. It sounds like you are doing a great job for the kids you are working with. Pippin From lupinesque at yahoo.com Tue May 28 17:51:25 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 17:51:25 -0000 Subject: Pet loss In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Mercia, thanks for sharing. All of us who have let an animal into our heart know that those anniversaries are important. My childhood cat died 24 years ago, and I still remember her on the day she was born and the day she died. This really spoke to me, as my dh and I adopted the cat we have (that is, who has us) when she was eleven, so we knew we were letting ourselves in for sorrow: > We've sorrow enough in the natural way > When it comes to burying Christian clay; > And when we are certain of sorrow in store > Why do we always arrange for more? I live in dread of the day she dies, but we have had five happy years together since that day, and the answer to Kipling's question is obvious to all three of us : animals can bring so much joy and love into our lives that it is worth all the pain of losing them. Hugs, Amy Z From lupinesque at yahoo.com Tue May 28 20:47:44 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 20:47:44 -0000 Subject: Underachievers, a.k.a. parents In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Cindy wrote: > there is a certain choice you can make as an adult > that will get you labeled as an underachiever every time. That > choice is the choice to stop working and stay home with your kids. > > Good grief! Work colleagues immediately counsel you on the depths > of the mistake you are making. Parents want to know why you are > throwing away all that schooling. Female friends ask how you can > bear to be dependent on a *man*. And everyone, including people who > have only known you for five minutes, asks, "But aren't you *bored*? Oh, yeah. Raising children is really uninteresting, requires no intelligence or creativity whatsoever, and is all about being dependent instead of, oh, say, depended-upon. Criticism from one's parents sounds the weirdest, though. They thought you were getting all that education in order to do *nothing but* work for pay for the rest of your life? And exactly who would they prefer to raise their grandchildren? Amy who confesses that after a day with a four-year-old, she *is* bored, and wonders if it's possible to farm them out every other day From drednort at alphalink.com.au Tue May 28 23:22:02 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 09:22:02 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Gifted Children In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3CF49DBA.9717.73E9A@localhost> > I wrote: > > > > > > I think it is probably very difficult to take an objective view of > > > intelligence testing if your experience is that it has been > >>abused in this manner. > > Shaun said: > > Yes - but Gould was a scientist. And more specifically, he was > >a specialist in (among other things) the history of science. As > >such, he had a responsibility to be objective. > > > > There have been other objective and balanced works on these > >ssues that exposed all the same practices that Gould did. But > >they did it without ignoring evidence, and > > without misrepresenting studies. Gould did both of those > >things in 'Mismeasure of Man'. > > Objectivity and balance are of limited use against propaganda, > unfortunately. My understanding is The Mismeasure of Man > (1999) was written to counter the influence of books like > Hernstein and Murray's The Bell Curve (1996) , which I have > read, and didn't find to be a work of scientific detachment, to say > the least. The Mismeasure of Man certainly wasn't written to counter the influence of 'The Bell Curve' - not unless Gould was a time traveller (-8 'The Mismeasure of Man' was published in 1981 - it has been republished since, twice, I believe. 'The Bell Curve' certainly isn't a credible scientific work either - but if anything it was written to counter Gould's bias rather than vice versa. Fighting bias with bias is never justified, in my opinion. > I see that The Bell Curve is outselling TMoM at Amazon > to this day, sales rank 12,408 over 19,379. Fighting fire with fire > is debatable, but the point is, there's a fire to be fought. Blaming > Gould for the controversy around intelligence testing instead of > the people trying to use it for social engineering seems a bit > like shooting the messenger. Gould was not merely a messenger. Gould chose to produce a biased work by refusing to consider or even acknowledge any research that did not support his position. Well over 400 studies of intelligence between 1920 and 1980. Approximately a dozen of these contain serious and significant prejudice. These are the only ones Gould used in his book. He took 3% of the study and claimed it was representative of the other 97% as well. It wasn't. It's actually very similar to what Hernstein and Murray did in the Bell Curve - they chose to use only those studies that supported their position and claimed that they were indicative of all work done in the area of intelligence analysis - which they were not. Now, if Gould's work, was the only piece of work that addressed the fact that intelligence testing has been misused at times, it would have more value. But there have been other critiques - numerous other critiques - which showed this without displaying and promoting the authors bias. Gould isn't just a messenger - he's deliberately spun the message for his political ends. And he did not do so in a honest fashion - he ignored any data that did not meet his prejudices. And, BTW, Mismeasure of Man has sold about 8 times as many copies as the Bell Curve - it's been around a lot longer. Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From huntleyl at mssm.org Tue May 28 23:52:42 2002 From: huntleyl at mssm.org (Laura Huntley) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 19:52:42 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] OT: New List References: Message-ID: <008f01c206a2$c1ce8140$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Hey..who did the art on the front page of your site?? Is there any more? I'm assuming the black-haired one is Harry...but who is the other guy? Or was that picture even drawn with HP in mind at all? laura ----- Original Message ----- From: goku_n_vegeta_02 To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, May 27, 2002 11:45 AM Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] OT: New List Hi! Last night I created a ML for the updates and discussion of the fics on my site. Shaynie :) You can find the group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The_Other_Side_ML/ and my site "The Other Side" at: http://www.geocities.com/goku_n_vegeta_02/ Please check them both out! Shaynie :) Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From huntleyl at mssm.org Wed May 29 00:40:11 2002 From: huntleyl at mssm.org (Laura Huntley) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 20:40:11 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children References: <3CF3582F.21407.6300BA@localhost> Message-ID: <009501c206a9$63ce4f60$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Shaun: >Heh - never be afraid to argue with someone if you think you're right. I doubt you >need that piece of advice but it important. Nah, I've never had a problem with not being able to express my opinions. ^_~ Actually, I've been trying to curb my expression a little bit of late, because I've been told that my being so argumentative tends to upset other people, and I certainly don't want to do that. >When they are radically accelerated, between 60 and 80% find at least one 'peer' in >a class. The odds are much higher in their favour. Now the peer relationship >sometimes (a little less than half the time) is somewhat different from a typical one. >It can be true that the child can notice that "his friends don't quite treat/see him the >same way they do each other." >But faced with a 60% chance of any type of peer relationship and friendship, versus >a 5% chance of the same (because the fact is the "friends don't quite treat/see him >the same way they do each other" is a problem that could occur in the aged based >class as well), it's pretty clear what the better choice is. Not the perfect choice - but >we rarely have perfect choices. We have to go with what is best. Alright. I understand/agree with you here. Given those choices, you've argued very convincingly for radical acceleration. But...I still think that the *best* option is to try to put these kids with other gifted kids of the same age group. Where I am, schools like mine are considered second-best to the things that the people working with gifted kids really *want* to have happen...like special programs or radical acceleration (all the schools I've been don't allow this)...But IMO, whatever it's worth...I think schools like mine deserve to be thought of as a good, if not the best, option for these kids, not just in the context "Well, we can't do ______, but at least there's that magnet school." Of course, a huge problem with this is, in dealing with younger children esp., that allot of kids aren't emotionally ready to leave their parents. And it's not like there's going to be enough gifted and/or PG kids in one area to set up a school in each town. >In general yes. With PG kids, not really. A PG child of 8 is actually likely to be more >aware of matters sexual, and more able to deal with them, than other kids at 12. Alright...when I said "aware", what I really meant was "obsessed". I don't remember a time when everyone around me was *aware* of sex (and even mildly affected by it)...but around 10, 11, or so, it suddenly became a HUGE influential part of everyone's life. >I wasn't convinced of this until recently but work on asynchronous development at the >GDC in Denver is pretty clear. There's even some indication that PG kids >(especially girls) may go through puberty 2-3 years earlier than the average, as a >matter of course, though, so far, AFAIK, nobody has worked out any solid reason >why this should be so (though there are theories... there are always theories). Now this is really interesting. I am aware that a small percentage of girls start puberty as early as 7 or 8 yrs of age, but I've never heard of any correlation between this and any sort of "gifted" status. Care to expound on any of these theories? This phenomena is really quite intriguing. >So - where are you going to GET these real friends from. You got me there. ^_^ Ideally, I would say amongst other PG kids...but, as I've mentioned before, it'd be quite hard to create a sort of magnet school for them under the age of say...14ish. Even if the children were emotionally ready to leave their parents for most of every month of the school year, it's not likely that these parents would *let* them leave. >Acceleration costs virtually nothing. It tends to be an option where others don't exist. >And it's a better option than doing nothing. I agree here as well. I just...*sigh*...I mentioned earlier that I wished I had made the choice to skip a few grades..but this was when I was in 5th and 6th grade and considering jumping to 9th/10th grade...jumping for 3rd to 7th seems like it would be an entirely different experience, however. Also...as for being an option. My mom wanted to me to skip a few grades when I was in 1st as well...I remember not being too keen on the idea (the 5th grade teacher was really mean)...but it turned out not to be an issue anyway, because the school district didn't allow acceleration on that scale -- or any scale, for that matter. This might have been because of -- as you mentioned -- acceleration is often done badly and therefore gets a bad name, or just because they really didn't want to deal with the hassle if it turned out I couldn't do the work or get along with the older students. So, sometimes, I guess there are zero options for gifted kids, let alone PG kids.. Which, for what I've gathered, is exactly what you're working against. Thanks, by the way. I tend to be a bit -- vehement -- about my beliefs, but I never mean to be disrespectful towards the beliefs of others, nor does the fact that I disagree necessarily mean that I don't appreciate other people's views. laura [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no Wed May 29 00:41:10 2002 From: pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no (pengolodh_sc) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 00:41:10 -0000 Subject: OT: New List In-Reply-To: <008f01c206a2$c1ce8140$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter, "Laura Huntley" wrote: > Hey..who did the art on the front page of your site?? Is > there any more? I'm assuming the black-haired one is > Harry...but who is the other guy? Or was that picture even > drawn with HP in mind at all? > > laura I would hazard the guess that the image shows Sirius and Remus. For some odd reason, Remus tends to be portrayed as being skilled in the use of herbs and suchlike in many fics. Also, if it had been Harry, he would probably have had glasses on him or nearby, and at least part of the scar visible. If it is Harry, the only male character I can recall being described to us not completely unlike the person in the picture, is Seamus. Best regards Christian Stub? From huntleyl at mssm.org Wed May 29 01:53:51 2002 From: huntleyl at mssm.org (Laura Huntley) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 21:53:51 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Gifted children References: Message-ID: <00a701c206b3$aed4f5e0$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> catlady_de_los_angeles: >Dear upfront persistent Laura, you sound like you could be speaking >of your own personal experience with some kids age 3 to 4 years older >than you. ^_~ Slightly. Although my biggest problem was (and still is) that the things that matter to me just aren't the things that matter to other kids, no matter what the age group. >You left out, scolded by parents for bringing all this trouble on >themselves by fidgeting in boring class and not having social skills >with the other kids. Of course, THOSE parents don't bring their kids >to you. Yes. And the same thing happens to kids like my brother with ADHD, who will never find anything that involves sitting at a desk for hours on end very interesting -- parents and teachers alike really need to stop putting the emphasis on the little "behavioral problems" like fidgeting and try to look behind the problem to see what's really going on. On a side note, I remember the first time I ever had a class that interested me -- halfway through my sophomore year of high school. My teacher was talking about some subject that I'd never covered very thoroughly -- and all the little facets of it just were fitting together so *perfectly*...It was amazing -- sort of like waking up from a particularly tedious dream. I just sort of sat up and went "Oh, wow, that is *wonderful*." My teacher gave me the strangest look ever -- I have a feeling he may have thought I was being sarcastic, but nothing could have been further from the truth. It was one of the best feelings ever. >Hmm. Maybe she is arguing that the correct solution is to put the >kids in an entire 20 to 40 student class who are all the same age and >same intelligence, in a school where each grade has an entire 20 to >40 person class of the same intelligence and there are no classes of >dumb (excuse me, "normal") people in the whole school. ^_^ Yeah. That's pretty much my idea. But there *is* the whole problem with the population not being able to support a regular (read: non-boarding) school of this type in each town...and some kids/parents being unable to deal with the separation of a boarding school. Although Harry and Co. seem to deal with it pretty well...^_~ heh. >Perhaps little six year olds aren't too young to go to boarding >school IF they can go home every weekend ... I'm thinking about the >travel time from any place in California to any place in California >... from big city to big city, you spend much longer in the airports >than on the airplane, but for small towns or out in the country, >there are LONG drives from the nearest airport... At MSSM, which is for high school sophomore-seniors (and the occasional deferring senior) we go home every 3 weeks -- if there are no holidays during this time, we get an extended weekend (3 or 4 days) at home...as for things like April vacation (which all students in Maine get) we get a bit longer than the standard one week...and we get 3 weeks off around Christmas... Going home (or at least leaving campus) is mandatory during extendeds and vacations and all students are ferried to wherever they're going by the school..my bus ride (one of the longest) is about 4 or 5 hours long -- it's not as bad as it sounds. No one goes to the airport, for obvious reasons...there's only one in Maine anyway. There aren't any students that *don't* live in Maine (tuition is paid for Maine residents, but it's pretty steep for someone from out-of-state who wants to go here) excepting foreign exchange students, who have host families in Maine anyway. Speaking of host families, every student at MSSM who wants one gets one. Usually a family right in town. Allot of kids go to their host families on the weekends or afternoons for home-cooked meals or to engage in some activity or just sleep in a "real" bed...For kids taking some kind of extra-curricular activity (ballet, driver's ed, a driving test) a host mom or dad generally ferries the kid back and forth -- otherwise an RA takes him or her. Also on weekends, quite a few of my friend's (real) families come and get them for a couple of days at home..obviously, this usually only applies to those living within an hour or 2 of the school. All students are required to live on-campus, however, even if their home is within walking distance of the school. I'm not really clear on why this is. Incidentally, while once in school, students are more likely to be classified as 1st year, 2nd year, 3rd...(as opposed to sophomore, junior, senior) Freshman are *not* accepted...the standard reason being that kids that young aren't supposed to be emotionally ready for the stress of living away from home and handling the huge workload at MSSM without parental supervision. Math, English, and Science classes are all separated based on difficulty. E.g. Before Calculus classes include BC AB (before calculus, covering parts A and B), BC AB/BC (before calculus, covering parts A, B, and C) and BC squared (you get the idea now right?) below Before Calculus there's some other class and then "Integ" (whatever that means..affectionately referred to as "Advanced Counting")...Above BC is Calculus AB, AB/BC, and BC...then there's a few more optional classes such as statistics and multi-variable. All first-years are required to take a version of Composition and Research..and then there are a variety of literature classes to take your second and third years. For Math and English, you take pre-tests during the application process (M.C. for Math and an Essay for English) which determine where you start (this system isn't perfect, obviously, and the first week there tends to be allot of jumping up or down levels by several students)... Science classes such as Physics, Biology, and Chemistry are also tiered in the same manner as the Math and English's..but there are no pre-tests...which is unfortunate...it's pretty hard to just guess where you belong. Umm..wow. Well..my point is that it works out pretty well for people here. The biggest emotional problem for kids here seems to stem from the fact that we're VERY far north and during the winter there's barely any daylight..plus the unfamiliarly large workload -- allot of kids get pretty depressed about mid-winter. >From my experience, a school like this for younger kids could work if there were more RA's and those RA's had a bigger hand in discipline, support, etc...more like parental figures. At MSSM, the RA's aren't really supposed to be like parents -- usually if they try it leads to great amounts of conflict. Things work best here if RA's leave us to our own devices as far as getting our work done, handling our freedom responsibly, etc. and only interfere when a student is breaking major rules, etc. My personal opinion is that if a student at MSSM can't enforce reasonable restrictions on him/herself, and the RA's have to get involved -- that student probably isn't mature enough to be here anyway. But, of course, younger kids would need allot more structure in the discipline area. >Snap! I had one friend for only one year in regular school. I don't >know why she wasn't very popular with the normal kids either, but she >was very religious (in an appropriately childish way) and always >said: "Don't be so sad, Jesus loves you." I had one friend from 2nd grade until I came to MSSM...although -- she wasn't so much a friends as sort of a social shield. Don't get me wrong..I love her and she's almost family, but...I wouldn't have continued being friends with her for any length of time except for the fact that she sort of -- claimed me and refused to let me go. She's sort of the kind of person that makes having friends a hobby -- and she's incredibly good at it..I'm not really sure why she wanted me -- or why she wanted to *keep* me (God knows I wasn't easy to stay friends with)...except that perhaps she could sort of relax around me, whereas with other people she had this elaborate facade going...or maybe she's just the possessive type, I don't know. I guess though, in some ways, if I had wanted to make other friends, she would have prevented that -- but I had no urge to socialize anyway, so it wasn't really a problem...There have been times when I've hated her, but -- I don't know...for a long time she was the only person who was even remotely my friend, and I'm grateful for that...I know I wasn't easy. I really couldn't imagine my life without her...would I have had other friends? Would I have been more or less depressed? It's really hard to say...but it's probably a good thing that I'm on my own now..time for little Laura to grow up and learn how to make her own friends. laura [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From cindysphynx at comcast.net Wed May 29 13:10:55 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 13:10:55 -0000 Subject: Underachievers, a.k.a. parents In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Amy wrote: > Criticism from one's parents sounds the weirdest, though. They > thought you were getting all that education in order to do >*nothing but* work for pay for the rest of your life? Why, yes! >And exactly who would they prefer to raise their grandchildren? Anyone will do. ;-) Seriously, you know what they were thinking? Having a kid who is doing something that sounds important or unusual confers certain Bragging Rights. You know, a "Look what *I* raised!" sort of thing. So when the child decides to do something hopelessly mundane, something *anyone* can do, well . . . that doesn't generate quite the envy in one's friends and relations, does it? They're not evil people, though. They have just caved under the pressure to measure worth by income and prestige, and they prefer to live vicariously through their children. It happens in the best families, you know. ;-) >Amy > who confesses that after a day with a four-year-old, she *is* >bored, and wonders if it's possible to farm them out every other day Cindy (who finds that spending time with a four year old is equivalent to spending time with many adults) From goku_n_vegeta_02 at yahoo.com Wed May 29 16:27:47 2002 From: goku_n_vegeta_02 at yahoo.com (Shayna Correll) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 09:27:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: OT: New List In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020529162747.74712.qmail@web21301.mail.yahoo.com> > > "Laura Huntley" wrote: > > Hey..who did the art on the front page of your site?? Is > > there any more? I'm assuming the black-haired one is > > Harry...but who is the other guy? Or was that picture even > > drawn with HP in mind at all? > pengolodh_sc wrote: --- > I would hazard the guess that the image shows Sirius and Remus. For > some odd reason, Remus tends to be portrayed as being skilled in the > use of herbs and suchlike in many fics. Also, if it had been Harry, > he would probably have had glasses on him or nearby, and at least > part of the scar visible. If it is Harry, the only male character I > can recall being described to us not completely unlike the person in > the picture, is Seamus. > > Best regards > Christian Stub? >>>>> The pic is of Sirius and Remus and the link to Mushi site is under the pic. Shaynie From starling823 at yahoo.com Wed May 29 17:40:59 2002 From: starling823 at yahoo.com (starling823) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 17:40:59 -0000 Subject: i have a job!!! Message-ID: i'm going to vent my excess excitement on everyone... I HAVE A JOB!!! my first real, full-time, benefits-included JOB! I just graduated from college a week ago, and i never expected to find something so fast -- and something so cool! I am going to be an library assistant at a local law college, and that means I get to muck around with all sorts of nifty books that I'd never get my hands on otherwise. And it's awesome because I've just decided this semester to get a library science degree, so now I can get some hands-on experience!!!! I am absolutely bouncing off the walls, I only got my phone call from them a few hours ago and I've been crazy excited since. I think I'm gonna burst from excitement. wheeee.. ::bounce bounce bounce:: I am so relieved, I can pay off my student loans now, and get a car (well, used, but still a car!) and I will still have time to obsessively reread HP on lunch breaks ::smirk::! Abbie, the insanely relieved, who is bouncing far too much but too happy to stop From skelkins at attbi.com Wed May 29 20:53:12 2002 From: skelkins at attbi.com (ssk7882) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 20:53:12 -0000 Subject: Underachievement rates among those gifted children In-Reply-To: <00a701c206b3$aed4f5e0$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Message-ID: What a civilized response! Thank you, Shaun. That was really far more than I deserved. I did come across as spoiling for a fight there, didn't I. I'm afraid that I do tend to react to "underachiever" as a fighting word, particularly when it appears in combination with any mention of IQ test results. In fact, you were so very nice about it that I'm almost feeling sorry to be so intent on pursuing this subject further. But I am. Laura wrote: > *sighs* who am I to argue against "years of experience here, > personal knowledge of over 50 cases, detailed knowledge of another > 200 cases, and an intimate knowledge of 60 years of research"... Laura, my dear, I am really feeling your pain. I'm suffering from more than a bit of that myself. But I'm going to have to do this anyway. Shaun wrote: > Well, you're free to use any definition you wish - but this is > nothing like the definition we use. > "A person who is not achieving at a particular level, who is known > to have both the ability and the desire to achieve at that level." > We don't consider those who choose a different path to be > underachievers. The term is reserved only for those who would like > to be achieving at a higher level. Certainly that definition seems sensible to me. Sadly, though, it's not the definition that the studies to which I think you've been referring throughout this discussion have actually used. Now, admittedly I have no particular expertise in this field -- and certainly none to match your own -- but I have done a bit of reading on the subject as it is, for purely autobiographical reasons, one of considerable personal interest to me, and I'd been rather assuming that the source of your claim that 50% of the students in the top IQ range "underachieve" was the 1991 VanTassel-Baska study. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd been assuming that that was your main source. That study, however, did *not* use as its criteria for evaluating achievement the subjects' own stated goals, ambitions or desires. Rather, it applied external criteria to evaluate "achievement," as did Rimm's "Underachievement Syndrome" nonsense from the mid-80s (the particular title of which is escaping me right now), as in fact has every single study that I have ever seen on this topic. It is this fact that has caused me to find it utterly unsurprising that these studies all come to the same conclusion: namely, that very many gifted young people are failing to "achieve." Well, of course they are! After all, if the standard criteria for evaluating things like "achievement" were relevant to them, then they wouldn't suffer so much in school in the first place, now, would they? So *are* there, in fact, any studies that have used the definition that you gave above as their standard, and then gone on to find similarly high rates of underachieving among the top twentieth percentile? If there are in fact such studies, then I would love to be directed to them, as this has long been a particular bugbear of mine. Back to your own definition, though: > "A person who is not achieving at a particular level, who is known > to have both the ability and the desire to achieve at that level." So someone is an "underachiever" if he has failed to reach the goals that he has set for himself? That seems a quite reasonable definition to me. It does make me wonder, though, how you go about determining whether the problem lies in the ability to achieve, or in the original selection of goal? In other words, how can one rule out the possibility that the child may not have simply set his sights a bit too high in the first place? And how do you determine whether a change in goal later in life is to be considered "legitimate" or to be framed in terms of a symptom of the dread Underachievement Syndrome? You wrote: > > . . . .and a significant number of these kids are underachievers > > because their school environment is inappropriate to them. I then asked: > Why do you make this assumption? And you replied: > Because I am aware of the tens of thousands of pages of research > into these issues over the last 50 years that show this is the > case, because I am personally aware of over 100 cases, and because > I was one of them myself. Well. As I said, I can't argue with your experience in the field, nor can I compete with the sheer volume of your reading. I can state, though, that every study on this topic that I have read has left me feeling very dubious indeed about the relevance of the standards of "success," "excellence," and "achievement" that the researchers have chosen to privilege, which in turn tends to make me feel less than confident about the assumption that those students labelled as "underachievers" are really losing an interest in learning at all, or that they are necessarily truly failing to achieve the goals that they *themselves* have set. I'm not questioning your experience, I hope you understand, nor even your basic premise. I absolutely agree with you that the education of the gifted and talented leaves a lot to be desired, and I admire your efforts to improve that situation. (And from your unfailingly polite and patient tone in this discussion, I also feel convinced that you must be a great teacher.) I do, however, believe that this problem often gets misframed, and that this in turn often leads to precisely those self-esteem and self- confidence problems that are usually attributed to "underachieving." There's personal experience here, as I'm sure you've deduced. You see, I am one of those terrible disappointments, those living proofs of the failure of the educational system to deal appropriately with children with special needs, those underachieving top twentieth percentilers over whom researchers (and parents, and friends, and teachers, and random strangers on the Internet) always seem to be wringing their hands -- and quite frankly, I'm getting a little bit sick of it. It *is* damaging to ones self-esteem to be one of those underachieving over-170ers, but not -- at least, in my case -- precisely for the reasons that are usually assumed. What is really damaging to self-esteem is when, as a by-product of having applied highly inappropriate criteria to your activities in an attempt to measure your degree of "achievement," people then go on to dismiss even your most deeply-cherished desires, ambitions, achievements and works as in some way superficial or meaningless: trivial, unimportant, "wasted efforts," indicative of a profound inability to "follow through," or of a failure to live up to ones potential, or of prodigy burn-out, or "having lost interest in learning." Such statements are just plain insulting, honestly, and they aren't made any less insulting by the addendum that of course, it isn't really *your* fault, sweetheart, it was just that rotten educational system that was to blame for it. It ruined your ability to follow through on your projects, don't you see, and rendered you incapable of producing the sorts of things that *we* value (unlike those weird things that you happen to value, which are of course silly and frivolous, and not really the kinds of things that count; they're not actually "real" achievements at all, you know, and the value that you yourself perceive in them is just a figment of your poor deluded mind). Part of the problem here, I think, is an inability (or a refusal) to understand that those of us who get those upwards-of-170 scores on our IQ tests often honestly *do* think differently than most other people. I don't personally believe that we think any "better," in any meaningful sense of that term, but it has indeed been my experience that our thinking is often extremely *unusual.* It's the reason that we scored so bizarrely highly on those tests in the first place. Yes, of *course* people with very high IQ scores are going to show a high tendency to "underachieve" when the criteria being applied to evaluate achievement are those which were designed for the societal norm! Isn't that only to be expected? You are dealing here with people who think in a highly abnormal manner. They're not going to be approaching things in precisely the same way, nor even necessarily with the same goals in mind. That around half of them fail to meet those external criteria of achievement is only to be expected, isn't it? And yeah, of course they're going to have self-esteem issues. It is very difficult not to develop self-esteem issues when ones own approach to activities like learning and creating is so deeply at odds with the approach that the majority favors, and when this fact then so often leads to outright dismissal of the value of ones endeavors. Very few people have the confidence to put up with that nonsense for any length of time without developing a few self-esteem problems as a result of it. So when my reaction to the statement that fifty percent (or perhaps even more) of students in the very top percentile of the IQ range go on to become "underachievers" was "Well, of *course* they do!" -- well, I really wasn't speaking with my tongue in my cheek. What I meant to imply there was that it is really only to be expected that so many of us will hold very different ideas about what constitutes an "appropriate" outlet for our efforts, and that this is likely to be much of what then leads to our classification as "underachievers." Take your future engineer, for example. > His mathematical abilities are those of a typical 16 year old. What > is he required to do in his class at school? They are learning > their multiplication tables, and doing two digit addition. He knew > those things before he was 3. Yes. This sort of thing is very frustrating, I agree. It is mind- numbingly boring, for one thing (particularly if the teacher doesn't take well to your sitting at your desk and reading a book, rather than pretending to pay attention), and for another, it fosters resentment between the kids themselves. I distinctly remember developing feelings of murderous *rage* towards the other children in my class in first grade as a result of being forced to listen to all of the reading groups stammering their way out loud through the same chapter of a primer in class -- over and over and over again, every day, day in and day out... I mean, it really didn't do much to foster love of humanity in me, particularly as I suffer from some problems with sensory fields -- I find it very difficult to filter out irrelevant sensory data. I've learned to cope with it now, thanks to some skilled LD people, but at the age of four I was completely incapable of blocking out such background noise. To this day, I can recite from memory the entirety of that primer. (I reserve particular horror and loathing for the chapter about Sally's losing her teddy bear. Many of the children in the class found the word "bear" a particularly difficult one to spell out. ) All that said, though, I suppose that this is the sort of statement that I find so worrisome: > In three and a half years at school, he has learned basically > nothing. He's very close to shutting down and giving up on school. > If he was happy, we wouldn't be involved at this point - but he > isn't. He wants to learn - and school is doing nothing to address > his desire to learn. If something isn't done, he will lose that > desire. I guess what worries me here -- and I do realize that we may just be talking past each other -- is the equation of "school" with "learning." This boy wants to learn, and school is doing nothing to address his desire to learn. He is therefore very close to giving up on school. Well, really! Who can blame him? What he wants isn't *school* but *learning,* and even for those of perfectly average intelligence, the two are really not at all the same thing. It would be nice if they were, but they aren't. School is all about gaining certification of ones ability to achieve a minimum degree of competence in a specific set of skills. Learning is something very different. Of course, I realize that your concern for this boy is that he might lose his desire to learn. You say as much. But the terms "learning" and "school" get sort of conflated in your statement, with "giving up on school" and "losing the desire to learn" becoming viewed as almost synonymous, and this strikes me as significant because I think that it is very much the same conflation that leads to that definition of "achievement" that I find so very troubling when it is applied to the profoundly gifted. Learning is a process. It is a verb, not an object. You don't "do things" with learning; learning is itself what you do. To love learning is to love the *doing* of it, not the having done of it. It isn't really intrinsically goal-oriented behavior at all, although it certainly can be applied to goals or have goals applied to it. But the act of learning itself is for many people not a means at all, but an end. The standard definitions of "achievement," on the other hand, all seem to focus on end-product. They look to object, not verb, to completion, not process. And I think that this becomes particularly problematic when one is talking about children whose IQs fall at the extreme edges of the range, because such people are even more likely than most to value the process over the end-product, the doing over the having done. > If he decides later on that he doesn't want to be an engineer, or > he has no interest in mathematics, or whatever, that's fine. But it > should be his choice - not something that he is pushed towards > because of inappropriate schooling. Obviously we are not in any disagreement there, and I certainly also agree with you that this poor kid would likely be much happier if he were permitted to be somewhere where he could pursue his interest in his own manner and at his own level, rather than being stuck chanting out his times tables when he's actually ready for calculus. I mean, that's obviously a big problem. What concerns me here, I suppose, are two fears, ones which are admittedly based on personal and anecdotal experience, but which I think are no less valid for all that. First, it worries me that if this kid does eventually decide, for whatever reason, that his interests lie in some other arena -- perhaps even in one much further outside of his particular domain of specialty -- that this will be viewed as a symptom of failure. There is often, in my experience, a sense that extraordinary precocity in some particular field imbues one with a kind of *obligation* to adopt that field as ones major focus of interest for the rest of ones life. Indeed, it's usually the case when you are very young that your particular area of talent strikes you as by far the most intriguing or exciting -- sometimes for the simple reason that it's really very gratifying to be so good at it, and to get all of the praise and attention that goes along with that. As people get older, though, the fields outside of their particular domains can start to seem far more interesting -- sometimes because they are more challenging, sometimes because they are new and exciting, sometimes simply because people's interests do change as they get older. Abandoning the field of interest that most interested you as a child, however, is one of the primary behaviors that researchers have identified as symptomatic of "prodigy burn-out," or of the Underachiever Syndrome. I personally find this rather disturbing. My second concern lies more in the arena of precisely what manifestations of "interest in mathematics" will be considered sufficiently goal-oriented to "count" when it comes to the evaluation of this boy's achievement later in his life. Becoming an engineer obviously would qualify as "achieving," as would gaining a doctorate, publishing a monogram, pursuing a career in any professional field that requires a strong background in mathematics, and so forth. Should he decide to live in his parents basement, on the other hand, and to spend all of his time exploring unusual mathematical concepts, then he will most likely be classified as an "underachiever" and viewed as having lost both his desire to learn and his interest in mathematics. (Unless, of course, he ends up solving one of the huge outstanding mathematical questions, in which case everyone will revise their assumptions and laud him as an iconoclastic genius instead.) He will also likely develop some serious self-esteem problems as a result of people constantly insinuating that he has failed to live up to his much-touted potential -- even though in fact, he is doing *precisely* what he has always done: namely, pursuing his interest in thinking about mathematics. This is troubling to me because to my mind, it reveals an utter lack of comprehension of precisely what constitutes "interest," "ambition," "desire," "achievement," and even "learning" itself. > There's a big difference between choosing a particular path than > finding it's the only one left to you. There is. I do find myself questioning, though, the assumption that all of the purported cases of people's paths being cut off are really that at all. Certainly it sometimes happens. The desire to learn can be quelled, and it all too often is. But I cannot escape the suspicion that many of the studies showing this problem as so widespread -- afflicting fifty percent of the population, and so forth -- are reaching those conclusions in part because they are looking at all of the wrong things. My own experience with people whose IQs range in the 170 to 200 range has shown, well... > ...our kids have a very wide range of value and interests and are > encouraged to discover their own paths. And most would be *very* > resistant to any attempt to direct them in any event. Well, yes. *Precisely.* And I rather get the impression that many of the studies that have been done on these people may have really overlooked that tendency (as well as some of its more common manifestations) when they set out to determine the rates of "burn- out" or of "underachieving" among the populace. -- Elkins From strijkg at xs4all.nl Wed May 29 21:12:47 2002 From: strijkg at xs4all.nl (Riet Strijker) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 23:12:47 +0200 (West-Europa (zomertijd)) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] i have a job!!! References: Message-ID: <3CF5444F.000001.36581@xbwesrtn> Congratulations!! (from a fellow librarian, from the Netherlands) Riet -------Original Message------- From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Date: woensdag 29 mei 2002 19:41:04 To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] i have a job!!! i'm going to vent my excess excitement on everyone... I HAVE A JOB!!! my first real, full-time, benefits-included JOB! I just graduated from college a week ago, and i never expected to find something so fast -- and something so cool! I am going to be an library assistant at a local law college, and that means I get to muck around with all sorts of nifty books that I'd never get my hands on otherwise. And it's awesome because I've just decided this semester to get a library science degree, so now I can get some hands-on experience!!!! I am absolutely bouncing off the walls, I only got my phone call from them a few hours ago and I've been crazy excited since. I think I'm gonna burst from excitement. wheeee.. ::bounce bounce bounce:: I am so relieved, I can pay off my student loans now, and get a car (well, used, but still a car!) and I will still have time to obsessively reread HP on lunch breaks ::smirk::! Abbie, the insanely relieved, who is bouncing far too much but too happy to stop Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From skelkins at attbi.com Wed May 29 21:23:37 2002 From: skelkins at attbi.com (ssk7882) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 21:23:37 -0000 Subject: Underachievers Anonymous (WAS Gifted children) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Cindy wrote: > I think it is high time someone started an organization for those > who are told they could "achieve" more but, for whatever reason, > choose not to. 'Cause there are times when we *really* could use > some support. ;-) Indeed! (And thanks for the support.) What always gets to me -- and yeah, this is a pet peeve of mine, can you tell? -- is that these studies all show that child prodigies who don't grow up to be eminences in some field or another suffer from self-esteem problems. And then they deduce that their school experiences must have led to both the poor self-esteem *and* the underachievement. It just doesn't make sense to me. Do people with tested IQs in the 100-120 range have self-esteem issues that correlate with their failure to become Great Eminences? I doubt it, somehow. But of course no one would ever bother to test for that, would they, because the only people who are ever expected to grow up to save the world are those who had the misfortune to do well on an IQ test. All that said, though, I can't quite bring myself to feel *too* bitterly towards old Mr. Stanford. You see, before the IQ test, they had me diagnosed as a high-functioning autist. So Mr. Stanford snatched me right out of the clutches of Mr. Asperger, and I guess that I do owe him a bit of thanks for that. Mr. Stanford was powerless to help me against the later diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia, though. But that's a different story. > . . . there is a certain choice you can make as an adult > that will get you labeled as an underachiever every time. That > choice is the choice to stop working and stay home with your kids. Oh, heaven's yes! Because of course raising children requires absolutely no actual work, or the sacrifice of short-term pleasure for long-term goals, right? Hey, it can't be that hard, right? 'Cause *women* do it. > So when I see us fretting that a gifted child might wind up being > an underachiever, I find myself wondering if this is such a > terrible thing. Indeed, I wonder if perhaps we should pay more > attention to whether the child will wind up being *happy*, > regardless of their so-called achievements. I agree. They get related, though, because of the sorts of things that people seem to think it acceptable to *say* to you, once they know that you're supposedly Destined For Greatness. It's a lot like the stay-at-home Mom syndrome, actually. You just can't *believe* that these people are being so utterly, so unspeakably *rude,* apparently without any comprehension at all that the things they are saying are insulting. "Why are you wasting your talent on that?" "Wow, you put a lot of work into that. Now just think of what you could accomplish if only you were willing to apply yourself in that same way, but to something *real.*" Something *real?* I mean, *excuse* me? I hadn't been aware that my interests weren't "real." Silly me, here all this time I had been operating under the assumption that they were really, well, interesting, and it turns out that they were just figments of my imagination all along. It's just unbelievable, it is, the things that people feel they are entitled to say to you. Not to mention the oh-so-helpful suggestions that everyone and his brother has to offer about precisely how you ought to be prioritizing your time and energy. It really is awfully tempting to retaliate in kind. You know: "Why don't you take some of that money you've been earning and use it to found a homeless shelter?" "Oh, how nice! But I must say that I can't understand why you wanted to put all of that effort into something that you're just going to have published. I mean, with all of that talent, wouldn't you rather be able to share what you're doing with people who can be active *participants* in the process?" "Why are you wasting your time getting that silly degree when you have so much to offer to the starving children in Rwanda? You know, I understand that the Peace Corp is looking for volunteers..." "Wow! With that sort of initiative, I'll bet you could do a *great* grand backpacking tour of Europe. Why don't you quit your job already, and go travelling? After all, surely you can't expect to live like this *forever,* can you?" Oh, yes. It is tempting at times. -- Elkins From drednort at alphalink.com.au Wed May 29 22:44:04 2002 From: drednort at alphalink.com.au (Shaun Hately) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 08:44:04 +1000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Gifted children In-Reply-To: <009501c206a9$63ce4f60$d8c2ded1@huntleyl> Message-ID: <3CF5E654.20377.22EA17@localhost> On 28 May 2002 at 20:40, Laura Huntley wrote: > > Shaun: > >Heh - never be afraid to argue with someone if you think you're right. I doubt you > >need that piece of advice but it important. > > Nah, I've never had a problem with not being able to express my opinions. ^_~ > Actually, I've been trying to curb my expression a little bit of late, because I've > been told that my being so argumentative tends to upset other people, and I > certainly don't want to do that. I guess it depends on the person - some people do get upset over being argued with. It doesn't worry me. > >When they are radically accelerated, between 60 and 80% find at least one 'peer' in > >a class. The odds are much higher in their favour. Now the peer relationship > >sometimes (a little less than half the time) is somewhat different from a typical one. > >It can be true that the child can notice that "his friends don't quite treat/see him the > >same way they do each other." > >But faced with a 60% chance of any type of peer relationship and friendship, versus > >a 5% chance of the same (because the fact is the "friends don't quite treat/see him > >the same way they do each other" is a problem that could occur in the aged based > >class as well), it's pretty clear what the better choice is. Not the perfect choice - but > >we rarely have perfect choices. We have to go with what is best. > > Alright. I understand/agree with you here. Given those choices, you've argued > very convincingly for radical acceleration. But...I still think that the *best* option is > to try to put these kids with other gifted kids of the same age group. Where I am, > schools like mine are considered second-best to the things that the people > working with gifted kids really *want* to have happen...like special programs or > radical acceleration (all the schools I've been don't allow this)...But IMO, whatever > it's worth...I think schools like mine deserve to be thought of as a good, if not the > best, option for these kids, not just in the context "Well, we can't do ______, but at > least there's that magnet school." I actually agree for the most part - I think the best option is to group these kids together, if that can be arranged. The problem is, it can be very hard to do, unfortunately. And your school does sound wonderful (and having spoken to a few of my friends in America, it's regarded as extremely good). > Of course, a huge problem with this is, in dealing with younger children esp., that > allot of kids aren't emotionally ready to leave their parents. And it's not like there's > going to be enough gifted and/or PG kids in one area to set up a school in each > town. Yes, and this is one of the major problems. A surprisingly large number of places could support such schools *if* the will and the resources both exist - but they often don't, and there will always be some that cannot. > >In general yes. With PG kids, not really. A PG child of 8 is actually likely to be more > >aware of matters sexual, and more able to deal with them, than other kids at 12. > > Alright...when I said "aware", what I really meant was "obsessed". I don't > remember a time when everyone around me was *aware* of sex (and even mildly > affected by it)...but around 10, 11, or so, it suddenly became a HUGE influential > part of everyone's life. Interesting... I have heard of cases where this has definitely happened - and others where it absolutely didn't, and have never worked out why there's a difference. > >I wasn't convinced of this until recently but work on asynchronous development at the > >GDC in Denver is pretty clear. There's even some indication that PG kids > >(especially girls) may go through puberty 2-3 years earlier than the average, as a > >matter of course, though, so far, AFAIK, nobody has worked out any solid reason > >why this should be so (though there are theories... there are always theories). > > Now this is really interesting. I am aware that a small percentage of girls start > puberty as early as 7 or 8 yrs of age, but I've never heard of any correlation > between this and any sort of "gifted" status. Care to expound on any of these > theories? This phenomena is really quite intriguing. I'm only aware of the vague details. The theories seem to focus on the hypothalamus of the brain - this is the region that triggers the pituitary gland and sets off puberty (bear in mind I am not a biologist). It's considered possible that for some reason the hypothalamus behaves differently from normal in a significant number of PG kids - it's also involved in the regulation of sleeping patterns, and they can be quite wierd as well. As it's hard to get permission to slice and dice gifted kids for experimental purposes (-8 there really isn't enough data to do more than basic theorising at the moment. > Also...as for being an option. My mom wanted to me to skip a few grades when I > was in 1st as well...I remember not being too keen on the idea (the 5th grade > teacher was really mean)...but it turned out not to be an issue anyway, because > the school district didn't allow acceleration on that scale -- or any scale, for that > matter. This might have been because of -- as you mentioned -- acceleration is > often done badly and therefore gets a bad name, or just because they really didn't > want to deal with the hassle if it turned out I couldn't do the work or get along with > the older students. There are all sorts of reasons schools can block acceleration - a few are real, most are based on misunderstandings (for example, the primary piece of literature used in America to block acceleration is David Elkind's "The Hurried Child". Elkind actually supports acceleration for gifted kids - The Hurried Child was basically written to refer to 95% of kids - specifically ignoring the kids at each end of the ability range. That isn't very clear in the text however. That doesn't mean he thinks all gifted kids should be accelerated - but the book wasn't intended to suggest they shouldn't. And, human nature being what it is, you don't generally hear about the 9 cases where it worked - but the 10th where it didn't. > So, sometimes, I guess there are zero options for gifted kids, let alone PG kids.. > > Which, for what I've gathered, is exactly what you're working against. Thanks, by > the way. I tend to be a bit -- vehement -- about my beliefs, but I never mean to be > disrespectful towards the beliefs of others, nor does the fact that I disagree > necessarily mean that I don't appreciate other people's views. That's cool (-8 Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html (ISTJ) |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia From cindysphynx at comcast.net Wed May 29 23:45:15 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 23:45:15 -0000 Subject: Underachievers Anonymous (WAS Gifted children) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Elkins wrote (listing questions from dunderheads): > "Why are you wasting your talent on that?" > > "Wow, you put a lot of work into that. Now just think of what you > could accomplish if only you were willing to apply yourself in >that same way, but to something *real.*" Wait! Can I add my favorite: "But . . . but aren't you *bored* being at home all day!?! and its ugly stepsister: "But . . . but what do you *do* all day?!?! Once, I cracked and explained to a former work colleague why I'm not bored at home and then asked her if *she* was bored being at an office all day. She hasn't brought up the issue since. ;-) Cindy From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Thu May 30 03:44:32 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 20:44:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] I have a job!!! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020530034432.21886.qmail@web13706.mail.yahoo.com> starling823 wrote: I'm going to vent my excess excitement on everyone... I HAVE A JOB!!! I am going to be an library assistant at a local law college, and that means I get to muck around with all sorts of nifty books that I'd never get my hands on otherwise. And it's awesome because I've just decided this semester to get a library science degree, so now I can get some hands-on experience!!!! Well this is really great news to share with all of us! Your bouncy just like Tigger! well, bounce away and enjoy all those books you can get your hands on! We are all happy here for you and it is a load off your mind! You have a job! May it work out really well for you and lucky you with all those books! Take care! Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch of Revere,Massachusetts and Her Very Merry Band of Muggles 100% "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From lupinesque at yahoo.com Thu May 30 04:39:18 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 04:39:18 -0000 Subject: the meaning of offlist Message-ID: One of these days I'm going to learn how to send an offlist message. Sorry, individual-e-mail and digest receivers. Carry on. Amy From saitaina at wizzards.net Thu May 30 04:38:06 2002 From: saitaina at wizzards.net (Saitaina) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 21:38:06 -0700 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] offlist re: four-year-olds References: Message-ID: <002801c20793$cba57380$5e4e28d1@oemcomputer> Amy wrote- Your not crazy love. I myself find that kids get on my nerves after a while but...they're not my kids. I know my kids will drive me up the wall but I'll love them anyway and enjoy them. I don't have to love someone else's nut jobs. Just make sure you and your dh take care of the children equally (as much as you can) so that they don't wear one of you down more then the other. Saitaina ***** "Good laws derive from evil habits." -Macrobius "The mystery of goverment is not how Washington works, but how to make it stop."-"Parlement of Whores" ----- Original Message ----- From: lupinesque To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 9:36 PM Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] offlist re: four-year-olds > Cindy (who finds that spending time with a four year old is > equivalent to spending time with many adults) Yes, but, you see, I *avoid* those adults. You can't avoid your kid without being guilty of child neglect. I do worry about this sometimes. I love kids of all ages and am very good with them, but when I worked in day care, and then later as an au pair for two wonderful, creative kids ages 4 and 6, I was SO ready for adult conversation at the end of each day. People say children have no attention span, but they don't know what they're talking about. The four-year-old could happily play Truck Collision for hours on end, and of course he wanted me to play with him (shucks, I was hoping to sit nearby reading and saying "uh huh, nice" whenever he said "BOOM!"). *I* was the one with the inadequate attention span, or maybe it's just that I'm introverted and do get very drained from being with people all day long. My dh, who is likely to be the primary caregiver if we have a baby, 'cause he's sick of his job and I love mine, has no clue what he's in for. I hope he tolerates monotony better than I do, or is more creative about thinking up good games (I'm pretty good at it, but kids go through stages where they just want to play the same one ad monotonum). He's even more introverted than I am, which is saying something. Maybe this is what people are thinking when they say to stay-at-home parents, "aren't you bored?" Kids are fascinating, but I like to do a wide variety of fascinating things each week--just one fascination isn't enough . I learned a long time ago that I had zero capacity for tolerating a boring job, which is why I'm in a job that's actually about 8 jobs all mixed together. When one part of it gets to be too much, I can switch to doing a different one for a while. And when I've spent all morning visiting people, I can spend the afternoon alone, thinking and reading and writing. So tell me, am I crazy to want to have kids anyway? Amy Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT ________HPFGU______Hexquarters______Announcement_______________ Before posting to any HPFGU list, you MUST read the group's Admin Files! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%20Files/ Remember to use accurate subject headings and to snip unnecessary material from posts to which you're replying! Is your message... An announcement of merchandise, news etc.? Send it to HPFGU-Announcements. Movie-related? Send it to HPFGU-Movie. Referencing *only* the books? Send it to HPforGrownups. None of the above? OT? Send it to HPFGU-OTChatter. Unsure? Other questions? Ask your personal List Elf or the Mods -- MagicalMods at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribing? Email HPFGU-OTChatter-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From foxmoth at qnet.com Thu May 30 13:45:27 2002 From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 13:45:27 -0000 Subject: offlist re: four-year-olds In-Reply-To: <002801c20793$cba57380$5e4e28d1@oemcomputer> Message-ID: Amy wrote: .>>>> You can't avoid your kid without being guilty of child neglect. > > I do worry about this sometimes. I love kids of all ages and am very good with them, but when I worked in day care, and then later as an au pair for two wonderful, creative kids ages 4 and 6, I was SO ready for adult conversation at the end of each day. People say children have no attention span, but they don't know what they're talking about. The four-year-old could happily play Truck Collision for hours on end, and of course he wanted me to play with him (shucks, I was hoping to sit nearby reading and saying "uh huh, nice" whenever he said "BOOM!"). <<<< One of the nice things about being an actual parent, as opposed to a care giver, is that *you* get to set the agenda. Chances are, the things that fascinate you will fascinate your child as well. I took my four year old to art museums and other "grown up" places I wanted to visit. Also, I firmly believe it's important for little ones to learn to entertain themselves. While you can't spend the whole day with your nose in a book, you can firmly say, "It's mommy's reading time. Would you like to x or y?" X or Y being two activities the child can do by herself. There are still days you're going to be drained and ready to speak to an adult, but that's just as true if you work in an office. Pippin From lupinesque at yahoo.com Thu May 30 14:00:40 2002 From: lupinesque at yahoo.com (lupinesque) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 14:00:40 -0000 Subject: no longer offlist re: four-year-olds In-Reply-To: <002801c20793$cba57380$5e4e28d1@oemcomputer> Message-ID: Saitaina advised: > Just make sure you and your dh take care of the children equally (as >much as you can) so that they don't wear one of you down more then >the other. I had a slightly different plan, which was to make sure that they wear dh down more than me. Bwahaha etc., Amy From macloudt at hotmail.com Thu May 30 14:38:24 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 14:38:24 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Underachievers Anonymous Message-ID: Ooh, one of my favourite topics! Stay-at-home Moms unite! ;) Fellow watch-TV-all-day-and-bonbon-eater Cindy said: >Wait! Can I add my favorite: > >"But . . . but aren't you *bored* being at home all day!?! > >and its ugly stepsister: > >"But . . . but what do you *do* all day?!?! To this I want to add those people who drop friends who are new parents because all that baby talk is *so* boring. When I was once told this, I reminded this girl that hearing about her brain-dead job and her sexual exploits tended to put me in a trance as well. That shut her up quickly. I also never heard from her again...can't think why... As for those who ask what we do all day, I can only assume that (a) they still live with mum-mum; (b) they have a maid (either paid or mum-mum); or (c) their places of residences should be condemned. There's also the minor detail of being fully responsible for the pre-schooling of active little minds and bodies, but that's not important now, is it? Such a waste of my uni degree. Yes, indeedy. Another pet peeve (sorry, I'm on a roll now) are people who assume that volunteer jobs are a complete waste of time. There's no telling these people that these jobs can be as satisfying as paid jobs; even more so in many cases. I remember a study done in Canada about ten years ago which stated that the average volunteer job, if it were to become a paid position, would net the worker $11.50Cdn. Such is the level of skill and expertise many volunteer jobs require, produce, or both. I've never earned that much in a *paid* position, but I've been volunteering since I was 17 and have done allsorts. Sadly several potential employers also don't view volunteer experience as being equal to paid experience, though that is slowly changing. Sure, I'd love to be paid for what I do, but it won't happen in the real world. So for now I'll keep on doing my work for free, thereby helping others and saving my own sanity by having a few child-free moments. Hang on, my volunteer jobs involve looking after *other* people's children. Do I detect a hint of insanity here? Mary Ann (Rainbow unit helper, classroom assistant, PTA member, pre-school committee member, and mum to 3 kids whose names I always mix up) _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From macloudt at hotmail.com Thu May 30 14:59:10 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 14:59:10 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] offlist re: four-year-olds Message-ID: Amy said: >I do worry about this sometimes. I love kids of all ages and am >very good with them, but when I worked in day care, and then later as >an au pair for two wonderful, creative kids ages 4 and 6, I was SO >ready for adult conversation at the end of each day. Ah, good point. This is where toddler groups come in handy. They were my salvation when my first 2 (12 1/2 months apart) were still very little and neither one of them could say *anything*. Through these groups I met other moms who are good friends to this day. Any type of parent/carer and child group is worth checking out. >People say children have no attention span, but they don't know what > >they're talking about. The four-year-old could happily play Truck > >Collision for hours on end, and of course he wanted me to play with >him >(shucks, I was hoping to sit nearby reading and saying "uh huh, >nice" >whenever he said "BOOM!"). LOL! Reading is difficult in such circumstances (something DH *still* hasn't figured out). But needlecrafts come in very useful in such circumstances. After a while of playing I'd stop playing with them directly but watched them play while knitting or cross-stitching, of course being very careful with the needles and keeping needles and scissors I wasn't using that very moment out of reach. I could still give the kids attention while doing something for myself. That way my time wasn't "wasted" and the kids were happy, too. Or you could do any other activity which doesn't need 100% concentration, such as drawing/doodling. >Maybe this is what people are thinking when they say to stay-at-home >parents, "aren't you bored?" Kids are fascinating, but I like to do a >wide variety of fascinating things each week--just one fascination >isn't enough . That's the whole point about getting out with the kids and finding things to do. Most toddler groups I attend(ed) cost less than 1 per session. Just visiting friends and letting the kids play together is great for mums and kids. But lots of childless people don't realize such things as toddler groups exist. Of course, I live in a mid-sized town with reasonable amenities; those moms stuck out in rural areas would have a harder time of it. But like everything else, full-time parenting is what you make it out to be. It takes some effort and a bit of money, but the retention of mom's sanity makes it all worthwhile. >I learned a long time ago that I had zero capacity >for tolerating a boring job, which is why I'm in a job that's actually >about 8 jobs all mixed together. When one part of it gets to be too >much, I can switch to doing a different one for a while. And when >I've spent all morning visiting people, I can spend the afternoon >alone, thinking and reading and writing. > >So tell me, am I crazy to want to have kids anyway? Nope. Parenting can be much the same as well...just remember to take advantage of naptime! Oh, and *never* pass up an offer from someone who wishes to babysit ;) Mary Ann (who actually has to leave for Rainbows now) _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com From naama_gat at hotmail.com Thu May 30 20:09:09 2002 From: naama_gat at hotmail.com (naamagatus) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 20:09:09 -0000 Subject: Underachievers Anonymous In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Mary Jennings" wrote: > > To this I want to add those people who drop friends who are new parents because all that baby talk is *so* boring. When I was once told this, I reminded this girl that hearing about her brain-dead job and her sexual exploits tended to put me in a trance as well. That shut her up quickly. I also never heard from her again...can't think why... > As a single girl with a brain-dead job (no sexual exploits worth detailing, though ) I had to jump in here. I've never dropped friends because they became paretns, but... When people become so obsessed there's just no talking with them about ANYTHING else, it can get pretty depressing. It can also become quite hurtful. I have several friends with kids, and I often (really!) talk with them about their kids. It's interesting, I can relate to it from my experience (as a child, that is) and I understand how important it is to them. However, I have one friend - intelligent, funny, warm - who is OBSESSED!!! It's not a matter of talking a lot about her children - I understand and accept that. It's that she can't *not* focus all the time on her kids. It's so frustrating. She's one of my oldest friends and I feel like I haven't really been able to talk to her for the past six years (since her eldest son was born). The following scenario keeps happening: We sit and talk at their place or mine. The kids are playing peacefully on the carpet. I'm in the middle of a sentence. And she's off - "Oh, did you see that smile?" or "Oh, did you see what she did?! Isn't she clever?" or .. etc. Which make it quite obvious to me that she hadn't been listening to a word I've said. Now, like I said, she's an exception. However, if people tend to obsess, it's their kids they'll most often obsess about. So, yes, sometimes parents can be tedious to be around with. Naama, who is planning on being a sensible and calm parent ( yeah, right!) From s_ings at yahoo.com Fri May 31 00:14:48 2002 From: s_ings at yahoo.com (Sheryll Townsend) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 20:14:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Happy Birthday, Simon! Message-ID: <20020531001448.49846.qmail@web14602.mail.yahoo.com> *dances into the room, dragging very large cake and a huge box of decorations. Sets cake on side table and proceeds to spruce up the room a bit in honour of the occasion* I know I'm a bit early with this birthday greeting but I wanted to get it up before Simon went away. Otherwise he'd miss all the lovely greetings coming his way! Birthday owls can be sent care of this list or directly to Simon at simon.hp at virgin.net May the day be magical and filled with everything you wished for. Happy Birthday, Simon! Sheryll ===== "We need to be united and strong. We'll have losses and scares, sure. And you'll be there for each other, helping each other through the bad times." blpurdom - Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent, Chapter 26 ______________________________________________________________________ Find, Connect, Date! http://personals.yahoo.ca From moongirlk at yahoo.com Fri May 31 15:40:17 2002 From: moongirlk at yahoo.com (moongirlk) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 15:40:17 -0000 Subject: Underachievers Anonymous In-Reply-To: Message-ID: --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "naamagatus" wrote: > --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Mary Jennings" wrote: > > > > To this I want to add those people who drop friends who are new > parents because all that baby talk is *so* boring. When I was once > told this, I reminded this girl that hearing about her brain-dead job > and her sexual exploits tended to put me in a trance as well. That > shut her up quickly. I also never heard from her again...can't think > why... > > > > As a single girl with a brain-dead job (no sexual exploits worth > detailing, though ) I had to jump in here. > I've never dropped friends because they became paretns, but... When > people become so obsessed there's just no talking with them about > ANYTHING else, it can get pretty depressing. It can also become quite > hurtful. In the same camp, Nama. The single girl gets dumped at least as often as vice versa, and not just when couples have kids. I've had more than one friend invite me to their wedding, even ask me to be a part of the wedding party, come to (and even help host) showers and rehearsal dinners, buy dresses, etc. and then never hear from them beyond a thank-you note once the wedding's over. If I call them, it's always "we should get together sometime, but I'm so busy lately..." and then no call-back, ever, until the next time I check in with them. Granted, that's just a few people, but then when the others start having kids, more disappear, because, you know, a single girl can't possibly understand, I guess. And the friends that don't go that way, still sometimes make me feel like a subspecies. It's completely unintentional, I realize, but how often can you hear somebody ask why you're not in a relationship before you start to feel like there's something wrong with you? Maybe it's Bridget Jones complex, but didn't you know it's the poor single girl who's the underachiever? Can't get her act together and find a man, you know. Tragic really, if she'd just do something about that hair/make a little effort/let me set her up/*take my advice*... You see where I'm going. Even Bridget had to have the love of the man before she got to be happy, so there you are. Sorry, didn't mean to rant, but I just thought I'd toss out the other side of Mary's coin. Sometimes the dropping goes both ways, and sometimes the single friends drift off to avoid the shame of being such failures. kimberly, who's not nearly as bitter as she sounds - honest! From bray.262 at osu.edu Fri May 31 12:09:55 2002 From: bray.262 at osu.edu (Rachel Bray) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 12:09:55 +0000 (EST5EDT) Subject: no sense of humor.... Message-ID: <1A15DA3D53@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> I went to drop off my football ticket application this morning. As I pulled up to the Schott (OSU's inside sports arena and ticket office) there were hundreds of cars and people walking around. I told the parking attendant that I only wanted to drop off my ticket application and he pointed to a small allotted space for those doing so. I parked and went into the Schott and was immediately told to take the escalators. I said "I'm just dropping off my football ticket money." and walked past the women, who gave me a look like they smelled something bad. As I walked down the corridor I could hear gospel music coming from the auditorium and from the monitors in the hall, I could see thousands of people "feeling the power" and singing. So, I got back to the front area to head back to my car and as I passed the women again I asked, very politely, I might add, "What's going on here today?" The one woman practically sneered at me and said "Annointment." I said "Annointment? Is that a Christian singing group?" And the other woman said "No!" (like that was a horrific thing to suggest) "It's Benny Henn Ministries!" Now....you already KNOW what I thought she said. So I kinda looked at her confused and said "Benny....Hill?" I was lucky to get out of there with my life. Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements LORD OF THE SNITCH Three men form the chaser-squad under the sky Seven are the teammates on their brooms of wood Two are Bludger balls charmed to fly One is the dork Ref all on his own On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. One Snitch flits over all, one grab will win it One game may take three months, or may take but a minute On the field of Quidditch where the Quaffles lie. http://home.att.net/~coriolan/hpfilks.htm From macloudt at hotmail.com Fri May 31 16:58:33 2002 From: macloudt at hotmail.com (Mary Jennings) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 16:58:33 +0000 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Underachievers Anonymous Message-ID: Kimberly wrote: >Maybe it's Bridget Jones complex, but didn't you know it's the poor >single girl who's the underachiever? Can't get her act together and >find a man, you know. Tragic really, if she'd just do something >about that hair/make a little effort/let me set her up/*take my >advice*... You see where I'm going. Even Bridget had to have the >love of the man before she got to be happy, so there you are. Excellent point, Kimberly. I've several friends who are single *by choice*, though most people don't believe that. Heck, I was 26 when I married, almost old enough to be a hopeless spinster in some people's eyes. One friend in particular, who is Palestinian, declared herself permanently single in her mid-twenties; at the same time most of her relatives had concluded she was a screaming lesbian as she wasn't married by the time she was 20 (as an aside, Virgini is heterosexual, but since she's a female aeronautical engineer she's not considered normal anyway). I don't think there are many cultures where single women are revered nowadays, if any. Even more annoying is the fact that single men are normal, but single women are not. Single men are individual and carefree; single women are desparate and hopeless. Wouldn't it be nice if we could *finally* shake off the shackles of Victorian (and earlier) stereotyping and just let individuals be individuals, eh? Ooh, look...a flying pig! Mary Ann (who *does* remember being single and happy!) _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From cindysphynx at comcast.net Fri May 31 18:45:09 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 18:45:09 -0000 Subject: Underachievers Anonymous In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Kimberly wrote: >The single girl gets dumped at least as > often as vice versa, and not just when couples have kids. Ahem. There's no denying it. There's a huge transition that happens once members of a group start marrying. Especially once the kids come. But speaking in mild defense of the marrieds-with-kids group, it's very difficult to maintain the old friendships. You now have this kid who sucks up the time that used to be spent maintaining contact with your single friends. They're not all that interested in one of the most important things in your life (the kid) and you're less interested in the things you all used to do, largely because you can't do them anymore anyway because of the kid. I have had kids for a good long while now, and I no longer have *any* single adult friends. I have a few divorced friends with kids, but that's it. It really is a lack of time on my part to some extent. But something else is at work -- my perception that single people won't be interested in the things that interest me. Also, it takes a really special single or childless friend who can even tolerate an evening at my house, what with all of the noise and chaos. All of that makes it very hard to maintain the old ties. Cindy From witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com Fri May 31 19:02:39 2002 From: witchwanda2002 at yahoo.com (Wanda the Witch) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 12:02:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] no sense of humor...., received card! In-Reply-To: <1A15DA3D53@lincoln.treasurer.ohio-state.edu> Message-ID: <20020531190239.85729.qmail@web13706.mail.yahoo.com> Rachel Bray wrote: I said "I'm just dropping off my football ticket money." and walked past the women, who gave me a look like they smelled something bad. "feeling the power" politely, "What's going on here today?" The one woman practically sneered at me and said "Annointment." I said "Annointment? Is that a Christian singing group?" And the other woman said "No!" (like that was a horrific thing to suggest) "It's Benny Henn Ministries!" Now....you already KNOW what I thought she said. So I kinda looked at her confused and said "Benny....Hill?" I was lucky to get out of there with my life. Rachel Bray The Ohio State University Fees, Deposits and Disbursements She's probably jealous because she was stuck there listening and you were on your merry way out of there! BTHW, William got his card and stickers! Made his day today! Thank you! All is good! Will post you later off list. Schnoogles, Wanda the Witch and Her Very Merry Band of Muggles 100% "When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."......Unknown. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] From mike at aberforthsgoat.net Fri May 31 20:54:20 2002 From: mike at aberforthsgoat.net (Aberforth's Goat) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 14:54:20 -0600 Subject: Send More Vibes! Message-ID: <001901c208e5$9b4e2d00$751687ac@shasta> Heigh - ho! HPfGU seems to have become my favorite venting ground - and just now, I really need one! Two days before our flight back home to the Switzerland, our son Evan came down with the chicken pox. And guess what: the airline (Delta) takes *no* chicken pox cases, no excuses, period. Sue and the kids have to stay put until he's non-contagious. Which means, I fly tomorrow - and leave Sue and the kids parked with distinctly unenthusiastic relatives in Mississippi. And, of course, since Delta doesn't have any of our particularly plebean class of seats until the 18th of June, my wife and kids get to keep said unenthusistic relatives company until then. Consequences: Natascha misses 2+ weeks of school, Sue misses 2+ weeks of work (no compensation!), and I already miss my family like hell. The handy thing about a pony tail is having something convenient to tear out in situations like this ... Bleaaaaah! Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray) _______________________ "Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery...." From sarahlinks14 at yahoo.com Fri May 31 21:15:29 2002 From: sarahlinks14 at yahoo.com (sarahlinks14) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 21:15:29 -0000 Subject: Book Harry vs. Movie Harry Message-ID: I was having a discussion with a couple of friends about Harry Potter, and one of them said that since the movie came out, whenever she reads the books she pictures the movie characters in her head. And she was a little disappointed that she had 'lost' her orginal image of Harry in her mind. When I read the books I still have my own version of the characters that I picture, I don't think of Daniel Radcliffe or Rupert Grint when I read Harry and Ron. I was wondering what other readers of HP have experienced. Have you kept your own versions of the characters or do you picture the movie characters? Now when I read fanfic, I have a totally different set of images, mostly because the characters are a little bit older. But I'm interested to hear what other readers have to say. Thanks! Sarah From cindysphynx at comcast.net Fri May 31 21:41:11 2002 From: cindysphynx at comcast.net (cindysphynx) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 21:41:11 -0000 Subject: Hurt-Comfort In Real Life Message-ID: Following up on our discussion on the main list . . . I was interested to see so many of the women folk admit that the attraction of Lupin/Sirius/Snape is this Hurt-Comfort idea. That got me wondering whether the people who find themselves reacting strongly to Hurt-Comfort in fiction wind up with Hurt- Comfort men in real life. Well, do you? Hmmmm? Also, for those who are attracted to women, do you react to something else in fictional women characters, something different from Hurt-Comfort? Is there a variant of Hurt-Comfort for female fictional characters? Cindy (who wound up with a Sensitive Man, but not the Hurt-Comfort variety) From kerelsen at quik.com Fri May 31 22:57:11 2002 From: kerelsen at quik.com (Bernadette M. Crumb) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 18:57:11 -0400 Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Book Harry vs. Movie Harry References: Message-ID: <010401c208f6$82d26a00$0f21b0d8@kerelsen> ----- Original Message ----- From: "sarahlinks14" >I was wondering what other readers of HP > have experienced. Have you kept your own versions of the characters > or do you picture the movie characters? Now when I read fanfic, I > have a totally different set of images, mostly because the characters > are a little bit older. But I'm interested to hear what other > readers have to say. Count me in as one of those who still have the original images in her head. If I think about it, I can see Dan Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as the characters, but when I'm just straight reading, it's my interior versions of them that comes to mind. My Hermione looks a lot like my own daughter (who looks to need braces, is an incredible bookworm and a bit of a know-it-all, is incredibly loyal to the few friends that she has, and has that bushy, untameable hair)! I will admit that Alan Rickman does look a LOT like the Snape in my head except the one in my head has a narrower face and frame and a slightly more aquiline nose. Otherwise, pretty much spot on! And Richard Harris, oddly enough, WAS my personal impression of Dumbledore long before I heard he was going to be in the film... :) Got to see him in CAMELOT on stage back in the 1980s and he made a HUGE impression on me... Bernadette "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." -- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). From golden_faile at yahoo.com Fri May 31 23:17:14 2002 From: golden_faile at yahoo.com (golden faile) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 16:17:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter]Entertainment Weekly & HP In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020531231714.56200.qmail@web14602.mail.yahoo.com> This weeks EW has Daniel Radcliffe on the cover with the sword of Gryffindor and exclusive pics from COS. Thought ya'll might be just a teeny bit interested in this. Laila __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com