I Thought It Was Mosquito.
[Regarding the graphic I chose to illustrate today's entry – I was surprised I found it! Apparently there was some concern a while ago that mosque should not be used to refer to a Muslim house of worship because the word itself is derived from the Spanish word for mosquito. But this is not true; please don't go behind my back saying I said it, because I will find out … – David]
For a little more detail on the whole
mosque/mosquito brouhaha:
So to round out Sarah's fifteen minutes
of Reading At Home this morning, after reading an assigned book about
what astronauts do and need when they walk in space – titled “Space
Walk”, aptly – she continued reading in If The World Were A
Village (ISBN 1550747797) that
places the various circumstances of our world's population in
microcosm (hey, I used that word in a sentence!) in a village of 100
people. We were on the page about religions; she didn't get this word
right until the very end, but what stuck in my head was when she read
“... a muezzin leads prayers from the minaret of a mosque.” I
helped her with the first two m
words, but before I could say anything about the third she said
“mosquito”. AND today's title. No disregard meant to Muslim houses of worship
(though in my defense, I had never even heard of Islam until the
sixth grade, 1983-84 for me), but it came out from Sarah so deadpan
it was funny! And we all laughed good and loud.
Hey,
she also called “pollution” on the air and water page “pollen”,
and I know people with allergies who would be inclined to agree with
her! Jeffrey and I finished the book he'd checked out from the
library Monday, Simcha Whitehill's Pokėmon:
Amazing Scenes in 3-D
(ISBN 9780515417129) and I learned yesterday – as usual with thing
I “learn”, it was Martha Jean who pointed it out to me – that
Jeffrey in first grade only has to read at home 10 minutes, not the
15 minutes that Sarah in second grade does. I said (and say) so what;
don't we want our children to see reading as something fun to do and
something they want to do, not just a “school thing”? Sometimes
our home environment DOES have to undo a lot of what our kids learn
in school … namely that learning is excruciating. It's just not
easy. And last night when Jeffrey was in his first Cub Scout den
meeting in the basement of Bethany, he should have started to figure
out when trying to pass a balloon with his elbows that truth.
Let's
see … crashed – ah, like Starfox I prefer the word “joined” –
a pre-birthday party for Pastor Gerald at Bethany this morning and
had an awesome slice of carrot cake before work this morning … read
the graphic novel adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner
(ISBN 9781594485473) … been putting up with this on-and-off-and-on
rain today … and looking for filler for the rest of this paragraph.
So much happened with posting yesterday's edition, which was supposed
to be Monday's edition but Windows on my work computer bluescreened
so many times I figured I was being told something and went with a
post that to ME was ironic, but also something to think about.
Tomorrow is school picture day and tonight I'll be picking up the
kids from Allan and Lesa's house after work where they'll be getting
at least a trim – so I hear, but that was this morning; I've found
plans change by the minute here with this family!
Still,
I won't swat anybody without cause.
David
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