penn

The power of small things

I'm an advocate of little things adding up to big things when enough people care. In the realm of public education, this plays out through the work of an excellent charity, Donors Choose. I've supported their works for a few years now. In a nutshell, teachers write up requests for various supplies or materials, the site posts them, and we get to choose what is funded. It's one of my favorite forms of voting with my dollars. I've supported many programs, most of which are environmental or scientific in focus. But it is a book request that has brought me to tears.

A few months ago, I donated to a request to purchase a set of classic books for a school library. I have read many of the books, and it is so tragic that a school can't even afford to replace books that are an integral part of literary history. I didn't donate a lot, but I think I must have been the last donor who completed the project because I received a great packet of thank yous in the mail today (donors who donate over $100 OR finish a project get packets). The letters from these students were heartfelt and thoughtful. My favorite came from a gal named Shannon:

Dear Leah,

My name is Shannon. One of my favorite things to do is read. I know that must be heard to believe because you don't hear that from many teenagers. One of my favorite books to read is classics. One of the classic books I saw in the school library was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

My mom and I saw the movie with Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon. I fell in love with the story line and when I found out that it was a book, I had to get it. I went to the library in my school and got it.

I wanted to write this note to say thank you for donating these wonderful classic books like Little Women. I hope my school library will be able to get more. Thank you!

Shannon

This was one of MY favorite books as a child. In fact, I have a really old copy of this book that sat next to my alarm clock for years (when you get an urge to read Little Women, you've just got to have it right there).

I love this site because it allows anyone to help out a classroom anywhere. You can pick to just support high poverty, high needs classrooms, and you can pick a school right in your backyard. You can pick projects you love or fund desperately sad needs (the last project I funded was asking for whiteboard markers).

I believe so much in this project that I'd like to ask the help of my readers. First of all, please pass along the word. Even if you can't donate, I hope you can re-blog my project page to get these deserving projects funded. Second, if you're able to donate, I'd truly appreciate it. Here's my giving page!.

As a thank you, if you donate to a project before 2011, let me know. I will send you a photograph I have taken! You can let me know color/theme/etc or choose a specific photo from my flickr page. I have photos from all around the world and lots of cool nature ones. Just let me know what you're interested in and where to mail it, and I will be happy to get out a photo to you. You can contact me at lapenn (at) gmail (dot com).

Thanks for your support!

Community and Food

"How easily a dinner can be a feast of friends, those pleasures you enjoy breath by breath."

In the past few years, I've gotten more and more interested in food. Between Top Chef and farmers' markets, growing my own garden and traveling, I have spent a lot of time thinking about food. Recently, I read The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry, which is where the above quote came from. The book is a tale of a journalist who decided to earn a diploma from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. For those not into foody stuff, Le Cordon Bleu is a famous cooking school. The Paris location is the oldest one, and it's also the location where Julia Child learned French cooking.

The book is a delightful read. It's also chock-full of good recipes, so I'm a bit sad to return it to the library (though, realistically, I probably won't have time for cooking any fancy French food in the next few months -- school is keeping me busy already!). The quote I started this post with reminds me of something an outdoor instructor used to say: you get to know people best when you break bread or break sweat. Food is both solitary and communal; food is an experience we can have anytime but that seems to go particularly well with good people. The author, Kathleen Flinn, does a wonderful job interweaving the story of her social experience in Paris with her time at Le Cordon Bleu.

If you're in search of a new read, definitely check it out!

On Love

I Corinthians 13 has always been one of my favorite bible verses. (As a kid, I was frequently teased by ministers about this: "oh, planning on getting married soon?" I suppose I didn't realize it was a cliched wedding verse.) However, one part of the chapter has always bugged me. In verse 11, it says "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

I'm an adult now, but I don't think that I've grown up. I still have plenty of fun. Matt might kill me for writing this (good thing he doesn't read my blog), but today we went hiking and sang a song together using "meep"s instead of words. I like to be goofy and silly, and some of my greatest pleasures are coloring books, video games, board games, puzzles, and reading children's literature. Sometimes I'm embarrassed about my tastes. But most of the time, I take my dad's teachings to heart. I distinctly remember one sermon he gave where he talked about the importance of not being embarrassed to do things you like. Sing in front of the whole church, even if you're not a great soloist. Go play sports, even if you're not a pro athlete. Dance, read, be creative, grow things: follow your passions. You are you, and you can't apologize for that.

Imagine seeing a similar lesson in my current read. I'm working my way through The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (a partner to her excellent blog, also called The Happiness Project). In her May chapter, "Be Serious about Play," she writes about starting a reading group for adults to discuss children's literature. Brilliant! And in the first email she sent to her group, she included the following CS Lewis quote from his essay "On Three Ways of Writing for Children":

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

How lovely!

I Corinthians 13, while a beautiful verse, misses the mark on the topic of being an adult. In order to love truly, and to be faithful to ourselves, we must embrace our childlike side. In childhood, we can have absolute trust and faith in goodness, in truth, and in love. The greatest stories of true love that I can recall are written for children. It seems that as we grow into adulthood, we become jaded and clouded. To fully experience and embrace love, Paul should have written his flock to remember the wonder, joy, and beauty of being a child captivated by even the simplest parts of daily life.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

This book, written by Yoko Ogawa and translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder, is one of the best books I have read in years. I heard about it from Stephen Strogatz, who has been writing excellent math columns for the NYTimes. In a column about rock groups and how different methods of thinking can simplify math problems, he brought up an example from this book. (By the way, go give the column a read, and check out the rest of the series. He's writing about basic math for an adult audience, and the writing is both entertaining and informative.)

The book involves a professor and his housekeeper. The Professor only has an 80-minute memory due to a car accident, so every day with the housekeeper is just like the first for him. However, for the housekeeper, working with the Professor is a continuing journey into the beauty and elegance of numbers. The housekeeper brings her young son to work at the insistence of the Professor, and he also benefits from the teaching and the unique relationship.

One of my favorite quotes from the book concerns education:

For the Professor, there was no shame in admitting you didn't have the answer, it was a necessary step toward the truth. It was as important to teach us about the unknown or the unknowable as it was to teach us what had already been safely proven.

The Professor also teaches about prime numbers, amicable numbers (220 and 284!), and all sorts of lovliness.

It's quite beautiful, and I would recommend it to anyone. Truly lovely, and a good reminder of the true beauty of numbers.

101 things: month 10

Time for the January report!

19. Attend three concerts/dance shows

While in DC, I attended a few shows at the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian. I really like the museum, and it has a lovely concert area right near the entrance. Our favorite was a Panamian-African drum band. Talk about encouraging people to get up and dance! Best ever was this older gentleman who got up and jigged right in front of the drummers.

okay, apparently I already finished this one in December. So I guess I can't count it. I really need to update my master list after every single month. Whoops!

Reading out loud

I was reminded of one of my favorite cheap dates today when I was reading my blog feeds. Abigail at I Pick Up Pennies [editor's note: I do too!] blogged about reading out loud as a good way to get high value for low cost.

This is something Matt and I both enjoy. He's not a big reader, but he does like non-fiction and some stories. On our trip to Iowa this past November, I read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods out loud to him as he drove. It's a fabulous book about a non-hiker who decides to do the Appalachian Trail, and it was the perfect pick for us two outdoorsyish folk. It was really fun to be able to stop, discuss funny points, and then keep going with the book. In a way, it's a mini-bookclub.

We also read kids' books together. And by we, I mean that he snuggles next to me on the couch as I read him my favorite books. Sometimes, we even go to the library to check some out together. (Side note: I get all my books from the library. It's a good, frugal habit. I only buy books if I think they'll be particularly useful for curriculum development or frequent reference.) And right now, we're slowly working through a stargazing book he bought me for Christmas.

If you've never done this before, I suggest giving it a try. It's minimal investment, and it could turn out to be a fun activity for both!

New year thoughts

A lot of people are posting 2009 goals posts, and reading these posts keeps spurring thoughts in me. I already keep track of a lot of goals with my 101 things list, but I think it's also good to talk about some specific yearly goals.

I achieved some awesome things in 2008. I left a situation that wasn't working for me (grad school) and moved into a job that I'm really enjoying. If only the job wasn't temporary, but I digress. I completed my first ever 5k with a respectable personal time. I met a cool guy and started a relationship, which is a fairly uncommon occurrence in my life. I paid off my car, built up my savings, and thought really hard about maybe someday starting my Roth IRA (I know -- soon! hopefully! maybe!). It was a hard year for me in many ways -- moving away from a friend base is always difficult -- but I made a lot of personal gains.

In 2009, I have more things I'd like to achieve in my life. But as Mac at Get Fit Slowly points out, goals don't work well without a definite plan of action. Goals also work best when they are specific, focused, achievable goals that are not beyond reachable grasp. I'm a firm believer in setting reasonable goals that might push one a little but don't reach the breaking point.

Some big goals I have for 2009:

1. Get another job or two. These don't have to be permanent jobs, but that would be nice. Permanent positions are hard to come by in my field, but I should definitely be able to move into a seasonal position or two. I'm hoping to find at least one of these seasonal positions in Minnesota, but I'm not going to turn down other positions due to geography.

2. Continue improving my fitness through regular gym visits (minimum of 12 per month, which is three a week and conveniently also the number I need for my health insurance to reimburse me for the majority of my gym membership), participation in sports, and outdoor activity. I made great gains in fitness in 2008, and I don't want those erased. Sometimes this goal is difficult for me; I have to realistically admit that I'm still not in great shape and that I have a really difficult time getting into shape. My boyfriend joined my gym so that we can work out together, and I'm occasionally jealous of his pullup and running abilities. I have to continually remind myself that he and I are in different places of the fitness continuum, and I try hard to push my progress based on beating my own milestones.

3. Return to bulking up my savings account, which will be measured by increasing the size of my savings account. Due to low pay at my current job, I'm living right around (or occasionally above) my means. I'm certainly not going into debt, but I feel it is important to re-emphasize savings in my life. This will be acted out by continuing my dedication to home cooking and using what I currently own before buying anything new.

4. Read at least one book a month. This is a sad thing for me, as I greatly enjoy reading and can often devour a book in days if given the chance. I've let other priorities take over in my life, but I'd like to carve out a little more time for reading. To help me achieve this goal, I'm signing up for an adult winter reading program at my local library.

My goals aren't too fancy, but they're in line with what I realistically want. Furthermore, I've found that just the simple act of setting any goals push me to achieve even more in my life. By pushing myself to extend my boundaries in a few specific ways, I notice that I also look for other fun ways to push myself that never initially occurred to me.

What are your plans for the new year? Any fun things planned in 2009?

Book Review: Losing It

For a book that I read so quickly (checked it out on Wednesday and finished it this morning), I didn't find Losing it, and gaining my life back one pound at a time to be all that awesome. It was good, but I'm glad that I'll be returning it to the library rather than having it sit on my shelf. The book is about the weight-loss journey of Valerie Bertinelli, a TV actress from some shows that I've never seen. She was also married to Eddie Van Halen for a number of years. I definitely think the book would be more interesting for people who had watched Bertinelli or actually know a Van Halen song.

I checked out the book after seeing it lauded somewhere -- internet? Newsweek? I'm not sure. In any case, I saw it recommended and decided to check it out. After all, I do struggle with my own weight, and I heard the book was a good examination of weight and how it influences a life. In many senses, this was true of the book -- it follows Bertinelli through her life, starting in her teens, and examines how she connected weight and circumstances in her life. I did identify with Bertinelli when she talked about her eating. She was a social, emotional, and unconscious eater. What particular resonated with me was one portion where she said that she ate when she was upset and when she was happy. If things were bad, she ate to drown her sorrows. If things were good, she ate because she was happy and with friends. I have the exact same problem, and I struggle regularly with addressing my emotions instead of just eating. Bertinelli also struggled with maintaining weightloss; she'd drop weight to be in a movie or show but gain the weight right back after filming was done.

For Bertinelli, her turning point was becoming a Jenny Craig spokeswoman. She also committed to becoming more conscious about her eating, and she began to journal instead of turning to food. Her major weight loss revelations are small ones: watch your portion sizes, don't eat to deal with emotions, and get some exercise in. For exercise, she participated in ten thousand steps of walking per day. If she did anything fancier, she certainly didn't tell us in the book.

In the end, I'm glad I read the book. It was simple written and easy to follow, so it's a great beach book. I think the book would be really cool for anyone who is a Van Halen fan or watched Bertinelli's shows. But definitely read it with the mindset of watching the whole journey and not just the miraculous weight-loss she goes through with Jenny Craig (that part only takes the last two chapters). The book is a true reflection of how difficult weight can be for some people, even when those people are famous and have plenty of money at their disposal. For those that struggle, losing weight is never a cakewalk.

Your books or mine?

Of course, the most important qualities to have in a relationship are mutual love, trust, and consideration. Beyond that, many modern young singles look for a little bit more in a relationship. I've often fallen prey to this myself. Does he read books? Will he go camping? Can we go to sports games together? Is board game play par for the course? What about the ballet; will he survive, or am I destined to only go by myself or with female pals? Will he expect me to watch stupid movies, visit bars, and watch him play endless video games? Due to the internet and expanding social circles, it's not too hard to find someone with compatible values and life goals, so we can afford to be a little more picky.

Wow, time flies

I had no idea it had been so long since I last posted! I'm sure glad we have RSS readers these days so that most of you can keep up with me no matter how sporadically I post.

This past weekend was recruitment weekend for my department. We invited a bunch of potential students to check out the department, see how they like it, and have interviews with our faculty. The weekend made me a bit sad; it really hits home that I will not be here next year to see this new crop of students. And I will definitely miss all the friends I've made here.

I've been doing lots of reading recently. It's a pleasant side effect of no longer being in a relationship (glad to have something to counteract the not so fun parts). In the fiction realm, I finished Middlesex by Eugenides and My Sister's Keeper by Picoult. Don't let the Oprah's Book Club seal on Middlesex throw you off; it's actually an excellent read. Come to think of it, I've enjoyed every Oprah's Book Club book I've read. I think she typically has pretty good taste.

On the non-fiction side, I've just started Overtreated: Why too much medicine is making us sicker and poorer by Brownlee. I'm only a chapter in, but it's been really fabulous so far. In the book, Brownlee lays out some of the problems with America's health care system as it is. The worst problem, it seems, is that physicians are paid on a per-procedure basis, so they have more incentive to complete procedures than to actually make sure the patient gets better and stays that way. While it sounds really cynical, Brownlee is actually quite level-headed in her book. Supposedly, she also discusses potential solutions to provide health care for all Americans without reducing the ultimate quality of individual health care. Predictably, from her thesis, one of the main ideas is to become more scientific and consistent about which treatments are necessary and which are overtreatments and procedures that do not need to be done.

I'll write a more thorough report when I'm done with the book. At the moment, it seems quite promising, and it's definitely making me consider the medical care I receive and whether or not all of that is really beneficial, necessary care or if it is care for the sake of care (example: the yearly CT and hearing test I receive just in case the hole in my eardrum starts acting funny. They're worried about the hole growing a layer of skin and filling with dead skin cells, which is potentially quite harmful. But I think that if the hole ever closed in, I'd definitely feel it, seeing as how I've had tremendous pain any time doctors tried to fix the hole). Don't worry; I'm not abandoning doctors. But I think the book does remind us that we all need to be intentional about our own personal health care.

In other news, I am studying for midterms and preparing for a spring break trip to DC. I'm also trying to decide what digital camera I would like to buy (mine is 4 years old, and the zoom just broke, and I've been saving up money forever for a new camera). I'm still really stuck on the "point and shoot or digital SLR?" question. Enh.

In any case, I should get back to studying. I'll hopefully be back with more frequency after this crazy week o'midterms.