As a great-grandparent, I am a wash-out. Patience is spending some time with her “other grandmother” in New Mexico, so I‘ve had abundant time to think about our relationship. And have found myself woefully negligent in the “reading to” category. Part of that can be blamed on the school library, where, so far, she’s been allowed to check out only one book every other week. Typical of most kids, she goes for the “comic book” books instead of what I think of as books for reading. And there doesn’t seem to be much adult oversight. My mom volunteered in the elementary school library in our neighborhood for more years than most kids have a room at home. Either Bill Metz is short on volunteers or doesn’t encourage the parents to drop in, which is more than the drive-through that many seem to consider their part in the education of their offspring.

But our small community is blessed with one of the finer libraries I’ve ever frequented.  And that’s a significant number! What books they do not have, they will get through the inter-library exchange program (and would probably entertain buying a copy if the demand were sufficient.) I’m sure they have a copy of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and very likely “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” one of my all-time read-aloud favorites. For poetry, it’s a bomb! “The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.” Patience undoubtedly doesn’t know about “sealing wax” nor, I suspect, do a majority of those in the entire last couple of generations. 

I cannot remember the particulars of the assignment, but one of the students in my Gifted and Talented “after school” group chose a poem by Lewis Carroll to “re-write” into a contemporary English short story. Believe it or not, many of the words that seem to be nonsense were derived from 16th or 17th Century English. It required a whole lot of research (pre-Google) but he had fun doing it even though I doubt it had much application in his work as an aide to one of our ambassadors. I wish, now, that I’d kept his “translation” of “The Jabberwocky” because I can’t remember any of it. For those who haven’t struggled through this nonsense poem, it begins, “’Twas brillig and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble on the wabe; all mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe.” Really. So, now tell me again why you can’t write a story for your grandkids? Or that it’s too hard to read Dr. Seuss stories aloud.

While I do love Google (and a few other on-line sources) for research, going to the library in town after dinner was a joy! There might be half-a-dozen of us sitting at one of the long tables, some doing research for the same project, being “ssshhh-ed” by the librarian every now and again. And there was no question, when we turned in a paper, that it was original work, not plagiarized or copied from a friend’s work. I think that was what was known as PRIDE. Also a smattering of absolute terror that we’d be found out as someone who’d cheat on an assignment. Or a test. I wonder, with all of the resources available to students today, if teachers even assign things like term papers.  My MA thesis was such a horror that it put me completely off of any interest in pursuing another degree. Which is probably a good thing for the world at large: I’ve already convinced all of the grandkids and great-grandkids that I’m the smartest thing since Albert E. Maybe even smart enough for an invitation to the Mad Hatter’s tea party.