Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

As a Social Studies nerd, I’m very happy to hear that every library in the Chicago Public Schools is going to get a free set of “Picturing America” from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The set includes forty double-sided 24″ x 36″ posters featuring some of the most significant works of art from American artists. There is also a teachers resource book that includes cross-curricular lesson ideas.

As someone who used to prep and teach classroom lessons, I know that getting anything close to one of these prints set as a lesson resource would be practically next to impossible. It’s heartening to think that teachers this year will be able to just check them out from their school’s librarian.

Tags: Art, Chicago by Ms. SP
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Shane is one of my re-readable books. I first found the novel as a child and immediately loved it. I just read it again a few days ago, and it still captures every bit of my imagination.

Like all Westerns, Shane is a story about ideas. The narrator was just an eight-year-old boy when Shane entered the lives of him and his family. He’s a mysterious gunslinger without a past and without a set future. We’ll follow this loner as he tries to meld into a growing frontier community in conflict. Their sedentary style of farming and ranching sits at odds with the wide-open ranges of the local herd boss.

Classically, it’s the meeting of the old and the new. It’s set at the dawn of the closing of the American West. But, the novel shows the heroism of both sides. I think the reader will dream about the romanticism and epic-ness of the dangerous gunfighter, but the reader will also understand the strength and rightness of his adopted pioneering family.

The novel is short. The story is told in quick, sparse elements. Unlike other classics like The Ox-Bow Incident, the big ideas in Shane are mainly left unspoken. The boy understands his love and admiration for Shane and his father, but he doesn’t see the grand scale of what is happening around him.

But we, the readers, do. We bring that meaning into this mythical world of the Western.

It’s a place where good fights evil—where the men are majestic and the women are just as tough. It’s a good place to play. And a good place to dream.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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1. It stinks to not have regular money coming in.

2. The principle that the less you use, the less you need is true. Without a regular job, I didn’t have to spend a lot of the money I used to have to spend. I now realize that I had to work just to have the money to spend on things that allowed me to continue working.

3. Work is a life cage. I knew this before, but I had no idea how true it really is until I stopped doing it. Work, for most people, is so spirit draining that we apply all sorts of frivolous distractions to convince ourselves that our lives are not rubbish. Without work, when I had all the freedom I wanted, I didn’t need those distractions—movies, concerts, even vacations. Again, tons of money saved. The downside of this equation is that I had no money coming in either.

4. Not working is a great diet plan. I’ve lost four pounds without even trying. All the restaurant lunches are gone. I eat when I’m hungry and only as much as I need. I no longer have to eat enough at breakfast to make sure I’ll make it to lunch—and enough at lunch to make it home without passing out.

Still, I can’t live without an income yet so I have to do something. Luckily, I’m feeling good about my new adventure.

Tags: Life, Starting a Business by Ms. SP
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