The Two “R’s”—Who Needs Cursive?

When I began school people referred to education as the “Three R’s.” Reading, wRiting, and aRrithmetic were the fundamentals that all children needed to learn, and learn well. Now the state of Georgia has taken writing out of the curriculum. Teachers are encouraged to focus on technology instead of teaching children cursive.

Why not just skip arithmetic, or math, too? Students could focus that time on calculators. Why worry about reading or spelling? We have audio books and spell check.

There is no need to teach the big three R’s at all. Focus on texting and students won’t waste hours learning grammar, punctuation, or sentence structure. Why waste precious time teaching them skills they will not need? History, science, and all those other useless classes can be renamed “Google for Dummies.” Teachers can ask questions and students can look them up on the Internet to answer multiple choice answers on their online tests. (Remember, they can’t take written tests because they don’t know how to write.) Instead of sports, why not replace that nonsense with online games?

Hey wait, I have a better idea. Why send kids to school at all? Let them stay at home and learn all they need to know from technology. That face to face time can be replaced with social networking.

What happens twenty years down the road? A new generation will think their parents are really stupid because today’s technology will be antiquated, and talk about useless information. (Does anyone remember Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Cobol?)

Don’t get me wrong, I think technology has a place in the school system, but it should not replace fundamentals. Technology should enhance a student’s opportunity to learn—not hinder it. Today’s youth have an opportunity unlike any previous generation to learn. They start school practically before they’re out of diapers and have limitless knowledge at their fingertips. Why rob them of educational basics that allow them to grow intellectually using the most complex and intricate database of all—their own brains.

Copyright © Jan 2011, L. S. Fisher
http://boomerobics.blogspot.com/

Oh, Christmas Tree

I haven’t had a real tree in years. It’s really a lot of trouble and let’s face it, you can get that wonderful smell from a Sentsy and not have to vacuum pine needles for six months.

Growing up in Missouri, a few days before Christmas we went into the woods and chopped down a cedar tree to decorate. I can remember fragile glass ornaments—some shaped like bells—glass bead garland, and plenty of silver icicles hanging from every branch. One year we strung popcorn to make a different kind of garland. It looked okay, but I would have rather eaten the popcorn with plenty of butter and salt.

I can remember ribbon candy, peanuts in the shell, chocolates, orange slice candy, and apples and oranges. I also remember that when we had mixed nuts, they didn’t come in a can, they came in a sack from the grocery store. Each of us was responsible for cracking and picking any nut we planned on eating. I always like the filberts, or hazel nuts, although it seemed redundant to buy them when we each fall, we had our fill from the bush behind the house.

Another thing that stands out in my memory is how worried I would get when it didn’t snow on Christmas Eve. I was just sure Santa wouldn’t be able to make it to our house. I understood sledding, and just didn’t get that flying through the air part. Our sleds had to have snow and I figured Santa’s sled wouldn’t make the trip without a smooth layer of snow to glide through.

Eventually, we had an artificial tree at home. It was one of those silver trees that were popular in the late fifties and then were worth a fortune at flea markets many years later. I’m sure it was the nostalgic value and not the actual value of the trees.

It’s hard to believe how Christmas trees, at least for the most part, still look the same, but have also changed. I now have a fiber optic tree. I don’t spend hours decorating it, I just pull it out of the box and fluff it up, plug it in and let it twirl with its multi-colored lights and sparkling ornaments.

At least when Christmas is over, I don’t have to remove the ornaments (and million icicles) before I haul it back into the woods. Nope, I just unplug it, cram it back into the box and take it downstairs until next year. With the Sentsy candle, I can smell Christmas year round, if that’s what I want.

Copyright © Dec 2010 L. S. Fisher
http://boomerobics.blogspot.com/

Christmas Doesn't Have to be Crazy

A few of the advantages of being a grandparent—you don’t have to worry about how much noise a toy makes or whether there is room for it in the Toy Room. Geeze, I remember when my kids had a toy box, but now kids need an entire room for the toys they get from Santa, their parents, their grandparents, various aunts, uncles, and family friends.

As the grandkids multiply so does the expense. More important to me is the time it takes to decide what to buy, where to find it, and the fine line between getting it soon enough that it is still in stock and not before the last marketing campaign causes a change of heart.

Several years ago, based on my kids’ pleas to not buy so much for Christmas and my own practical nature that tells me they already have too many toys, I decided to put my money in educational CDs for my grandchildren.

I buy the grandkids a few small gifts, but I don’t find it necessary to get too indulgent. I give the older kids pre-paid VISA cards so they can use them for something they really want and give the younger kids a few toys.

The major part of my shopping is done once I make the phone call transferring money from my account to purchase CDs for the grandkids' accounts. I avoid the pushing, shoving crazed shoppers, and my grandkids will each have several thousand dollars for education when they graduate high school. That money could have been spent on long-forgotten or broken toys.

We celebrate Christmas this Saturday. It will be a fun time to get together and, of course, eat. Christmas day will be a day to kick up my feet and relax. A few changes in our tradition has really made Christmas with my family more enjoyable and a lot less stressful.

Copyright (c) December 2010 L. S. Fisher
http://boomerobics.blogspot.com/

My Name is Linda—And I’m a Baby Boomer

I went to a small school when I was a kid, but my class always had five girls named Linda—and one year we had six. That was nearly half the girls in the class. One year a teacher decided that since we all had different middle names, the problem was solved. So for one school year, the teacher called me “Sue.” I wasn’t crazy about sharing a name with four other students, but never liked my middle name at all.

“Why did you name me Linda?” I asked my mom.

“Because it’s such a pretty name,” she said. “I didn’t want you to have an odd name like mine.” Her mother named her Lula. I thought her middle name, Ellen, was beautiful and I would have been proud to be the only Ellen in our class—heck, maybe in the whole school.

I notice that most women named Linda, like me, are baby boomers. This morning, curiosity got the best of me and I discovered that social security has the most popular name listed for the past 100 years. Well, not to my surprise Linda was the No. 1 name from 1948-1952 when it dropped to No. 2 for a couple of years. Still, it was in the top five names from 1944 through 1963: a solid contender for most popular girl’s name for boomers.

The same thing happened with Jennifer in the '70s, Jessica in the '80s, and Emily in the '90s. Someone hears one of those names and they can pretty well guess what generation you belong to. One of the timeless names is Mary—the most popular girl’s name of all.

“Linda” seemed to go out of style after 1963. Someday, it will make a comeback as our great, or great-great granddaughters inherit the name. Then, the naming cycle begins again. Except for Mary, and that never goes out of style.

copyright (c) December 2010 L. S. Fisher
http://boomerobics.blogspot.com/

Boomer Lit - Cougars on the Prowl

I have always been a reader. When I was young, I liked to read stories about kids my age. I wanted stories to have a plot, great characters, and situations I understood. As a teenager and young adult, I loved to read mysteries, ghost stories, and romance—as long as the book had a story.

Now, my reading is varied and I read many different genres and nonfiction about a variety of topics. As a boomer, I like stories about grownup people with mature storylines. Stories that appeal to 40, 50, 60-year- old women readers is sometimes referred to as Boomer Lit.

When I started soliciting stories for A Shaker of Margaritas: Hot Flash Mommas, one of the requirements was that the protagonist had to be in her forties. The younger boomers are in their late forties and even older boomers can relate to stories featuring a more mature woman. Face it, the seventy-six million boomers are probably not that interested in a teenage girl or twenty-something character whose idea of a crisis is a zit on her face before a big date.

I didn’t actually label Hot Flash Mommas as Boomer Lit because the age of the protagonist falls outside of boomers. Women in their early forties are not boomers and I didn’t want them to think the stories were too “old” for them. Heaven forbid, that anyone younger than forty now thinks of us boomers as “seniors.”

In the next Shaker anthology, Cougars on the Prowl, the woman will be a boomer. While this book, too, could correctly be labeled “Boomer Lit” we have to consider that if the woman is a “cougar” the man may be a Gen Xer. I’m looking forward to what creative writers will do with this topic. One thing I know, for a story to be accepted, it must have substance, because that’s what we boomers like to read. Guidelines will be posted at www.mozarkpress.com by January.

copyright (c) November 2010 L. S. Fisher
http://boomerobics.blogspot.com/

Watching a DVD

I consider myself to be fairly technologically savvy, but I just found out that I needed help from my seven-year-old granddaughter to get SpongeBob Squarepants up and going. Yep, I was able to get the DVD in the machine. The first challenge was to get the TV off satellite and onto the DVD player. OK. Success in one try. Yay!


Then the silly thing just kept playing the intro. What’s with this?

“Push ‘Okay’,” my granddaughter told me.

“I don’t have that button on here,” I said.

She took it from me and started punching buttons. Nothing happened. “I think you need a different one,” she said.

I started digging through the drawer in search of a different remote. “Oh, here’s one,” she said. It was on top of the player.

Pretty soon she navigated the menus and selected the episode to watch.

Silly me, I thought you just popped it and it played. Might have known it would be interactive. I’ll get by okay as long as my grandkids are here to help me.

Body and Mind - Joyce Meyer and Zumba!

Yesterday, after work, we watched a Joyce Meyer video on mental health. She has a humorous way of getting the point across that you need to take charge of your thoughts and get rid of those negative voices inside your head.

Joyce pointed out something that we all know, but never think about. She said you can catch diseases, but you can’t catch health. When we stand in front of God, it isn’t going to make any difference what someone else did, it is going to boil down to what we have done personally. We need to not make the excuse that everyone else is thinking, or doing, something.

Immediately following the video, I headed out for a Zumba class. It was my suggestion as something to do for Business Women’s Week besides eat. It’s not that I’m opposed to eating, but it seems I can eat only so much in a week without that little nagging thought that surely a few extra pounds are creeping around my waist. And it’s already nearly impossible to polish my toenails with the spare tire I already have.

The class turned out to be a lot of fun! We all learned how to shake our booties and had quite a workout at the same time. Terri (our fearless leader) taught us that every time the word “fire” was in a song, you shook your hinny.

We all appreciated Terri’s slowing the class down a little (or perhaps a lot!) so we could (sort of) keep up. Zumba is great fun and I know everyone that participated had a fabulous time.

Now, I’ll never hear a song that has “fire” in it without wanting to shake, shake, shake!

Copyright (c) October 2010 L. S. Fisher
http://boomerrobics.blogspot.com/