Project: Magnus

It's a bit dark but you can tell what's going on. ¬†I took it late-​​ish at night, will try to get a bet­ter one soon.

He makes a damn decent keeper

I finally man­aged to get the pic­tures off my phone. ¬†I swear I haven't been to New York since ⁹⁄₁₁ but Beck says we have, and I've finally learned not to argue (Well, actu­ally I haven't but I didn't feel like it this time)

Any­way, regard­less of when I was last there see­ing it again after sev­eral years was great. ¬†And with that I'm going to get out of the way and let the pho­tos I took speak for themselves.

Appar­ently there is a dis­cus­sion going around in some cir­cles about whether or not kids books should be labeled for con­tent. ¬†It's a tricky argu­ment for me because on the one hand I think they (and in fact all books) should have them. ¬†I don't want to read a book that is heav­ily laced with vio­lence and pornog­ra­phy and if I see that on the back cover of a book, I might not pick it up where I mgith have before but then thrown it out (or donated it, back off) before I got to far in because it wasn't my thing.

On the other hand, I don't know of any­one else qual­i­fied enough to tell me what I will or won't like. ¬†None of the Ama­zon, or Net­flix 'guesses' hav­ing got­ten it right and while I real­ize those are com­puter gen­er­ated, I'm not sure a human will be much better.

A big stick­ing point for me is the fact that some peo­ple are argu­ing that it isn't cen­sor­ship to put a YA-​​14 label or "WARNING: NUDITY" label on a book or movie, or TV show.

It is cen­sor­ship pure and sim­ple, no mat­ter how you try to argue it.

Why?

Because some­one else gets to decide whats appro­pri­ate for you and your kids. Who says that hav­ing cir­cum­stance X and Y in a book means it's PG-​​14 or what­ever. I know some very mature 12 year olds that can han­dle cer­tain things like vio­lence and drug abuse in a book or movie bet­ter than some 20 year olds I know. ¬†Hell, I know some 5 year olds that can deal with some things bet­ter than I can at 38!

And guess what, even if I read a book and decided that other books like it aren't the kind I want to read I'm cen­sor­ing myself. ¬†For exam­ple Danielle Steele. ¬†Can't stand them. ¬†Don't ever want to read another one even though the last one I read was close to ¬†20 years ago

To me it all smacks of the games they make kids play today where no kid loses, or they lower the require­ments for pass­ing a test or get­ting into some­thing so that 'Johnny won't get left behind' Guess what, those kids will be ill equipped for deal­ing with real life where there are win­ners and losers, and peo­ple DO get left behind.

God for­bid par­ents should take an active role in know­ing what their kids do, watch and read. ¬†You don't have to read every book, or watch every show, but know­ing what Dora is like, or check­ing out a Harry Pot­ter book or movie once in a while isn't going to kill you.

Ugh. ¬†I can't believe I'm about to do this.

So Beck men­tions to me the other week that she found some of the stuff I had writ­ten here many, many years ago (okay, 10). ¬†Most of it was poetry. ¬†Now, I have no prob­lem post­ing up poetry. ¬†I love poetry. ¬†Some of my favorite books are poetry. ¬†Shel Sil­ver­stein, Mau­rice Sendak and Dr. Suess are great examples.

No, the prob­lem I have with the poetry I'm about to direct you to is that it is so… well, sappy. ¬†And by sappy I mean drip­ping, thick. ¬†I mean pour over your pan­cakes thick. ¬†I'm sur­prised I didn't scare Beck away with it.

I will admit. ¬†I'm a sap. ¬†I'm a roman­tic. ¬†Chivalry lives on so long as I do. ¬†I hold doors, and say 'Please' and 'Thank you'. ¬†And I can't tell you how many times I've been told not to call some­one 'sir' or ma'am. ¬†I even call my niece (cur­rently 8) ma'am.

Point being, I've always been very flow­ery and sappy when it comes to cer­tain things. ¬†But some of this is way off my own deep end.

You can read them on the Poetry page.

The other thing she found was a dig­i­tal copy of a story I wrote in high school. ¬†It was sub­mit­ted to the writ­ing con­tests and won the school con­test but lost in the regional. ¬†It's a true story about the day I found out my father had died. ¬†I was 14 I think when it hap­pened, on Decem­ber 12^th. ¬†So you have an idea when Christ­mas isn't my favorite sea­son. ¬†(Hal­loween is if you care to know). ¬†The story is called Final Good­bye, read it here.

All of these can always be accessed via the Scrib­blings page.

Any­way, enough for now. ¬†I will post more on the devel­op­ment of the gar­den shortly. ¬†Here's a hint: I har­vested some sum­mer squash the other day! ¬†I didn't take pic­tures mostly because they met their fates later that same day :)