The Burrow

He asked about "old books" today, and it got me thinking about books and the Cuters. I remember every detail of the Florida vacation that turned him on to reading; I was not that interested in descriptions of sword fights printed in 6pt type. But he was, and TBG was gone and what was a boy to do? So he read. And he read. And he read. When his high school friends marveled at his ability to finish in 1 hour what took them an entire night, his response was classic Big Cuter : " It's just like lacrosse, guys. If you practise, you get better at it." It was obvious to him, if not to them. And he loved the stories. Loved reading them and telling them and reading them again. And old books only get to be old books if the stories are good ones. The Little Cuter fed her obsessions with books. Gymnastics books. Dog books. Horse books. She was the go-to person in the family for any questions appertaining thereto. The first chapter book I remember her reading is The Pink Mo...

My album-oriented-adult-quality-music-from-then-and-now radio station was hyping a new service today : Videos you loved when you were growing up. Log on and watch even the really old ones. The really old ones? Like from when they were invented when the Cuters were in middle-school? Like yesterday? Like, I mean, c'mon. Middle Brother and I used to wake up at 5am when we were very young. We'd curl up in the afghans Grandma had crocheted for us (the red and yellow ones with the flower pattern) and watch the end of Modern Farmer while waiting for Crusader Rabbit and Mighty Mouse to start. If we got up too early, all we could see was the test pattern on two of the stations and the waving American Flag on the third. We didn't have just video. We had Audio-Video. A/V meant slide shows with a reel-to-reel tape deck almost-but-not-totally-synced to the automatic slide advancer. There were slide shows on Navajo sheep farmers and the building of the Panama Canal and o...