The Child and the Lorikeet

At the Oregon Zoo in Portland (accessible by rapid transit from downtown and the suburbs) a child can experience close up creatures of different species. For the city child or for any modern child who doesn't live in the country, such encounters are usually with dogs, cats, minor rodent "pets" that live in little plastic worlds, and if the child is lucky enough an Uncle Milton's Ant Farm. it doesn't take a lot of occasional encounters to let the child know that she shares the air and earth and water with other, interesting creatures.
The Lorikeet exhibit at the Portland Zoo is an outdoor enclosed habitat with double doorways to ensure that the birds stay in. In the anteroom you can buy a cup of nectar for a dollar, and then you walk into the sunny preserve with flowery areas and a path bordered with wooden railings. If you are smart and have listened to the guide (or your parent has listened and passed this wisdom along to you), you stand still by a portion of fence, rest your forearm on the railing, and hold the little cup even and steady. Then you take a deep breath and hold still and wait. Soon a brilliantly colored bird lands on the rail (or on your wrist, if you're tall enough to rest your arm on the railing), holds tight with its feet, little foreclaws and backclaws, looks at you, then bobs its head into your cup. It drinks and drinks, and you hold very still and stare at the bird with wonder.
It doesn't take a lot to make a person aware, but someone needs to create the setting or provide the opportunity -- for the child, and for the child-in-us and for everyone.

Saturday Mashup

Librarians are wonderful, and so are their children, and also the blogs which give us these surprising discoveries! Today a lot of shiny bits and pieces appeared out of the chaos that is daily life, and with patience and attention I might get to highlight a few of them. Until next time, here is a belated Easter image from Biltmore Village --

Oh, so maybe you wanted to see the McDonald's a block away, the one that sits by the entrance to the Biltmore Estate and mirrors its style? Be good and hopeful, and maybe I'll take a couple of pictures there. While you're waiting, listen to a child talk and read a good book and remember that while change is constant, the really good things don't change.

I'm quitting trying to be "with it," technologically. The last straw came in today's funnies, when the dad in Zits announced he's started a blog, and the teen kid told him blogs are over -- now it's vlogs. What's the point? Blogger spellcheck doesn't even recognize the word "vlog." Better to put your attention on the children and the books. Maybe I'll listen to my own wisdom.

Daisy, Stripe and Button: A New Rutabaga Tale, or I Serve the Muse

All day they were playing the Story Game, a version of Dungeons and Dragons and Zork and their always love for stories, with one person setting the plot and giving choices. The oldest's was many branching, wide open, and recently informed by the newly discovered pleasure of Zork, the ultimate imaginative adventure set in white text on a black ground, representing the Story master's voice and the response. The second played a similar story, but with predetermined choices: "You see a big tree. What do you do? Do you want to climb the tree?" "Yeah...." "You go into the town full of shops. Where do you go?" "I go to the pub, to talk to people and have a beer." "No, there's a weapon shop. You go to the weapon shop." "You meet a big monster. What do you do?" "I talk to the monster and offer him some of my lunch from the brown sack." "No -- you KILL the monster." "Oh."

Later, the little sister takes her turn. She is newly five. I cannot do justice to her story, can only tell you about it. She begins: "Once there were three people, Jemmy, Junny and Bami." (Bami was a nurturing African nurse in last night's book, Jim's Lion by Russell Hoban.) "No, they had different names. They were... Daisy, Stripe, and Button."*

The story continues (here's where I can't do it justice). It has three sections, three quests, with the last, Daisy's, being the triumphant one. The story structure is perfect, the plot perfect. It incorporates elements of the day's storytelling -- a maze, paths in the forest, treasures, choices. it is economical, and it is perfect. And there is a coda -- at the very end, there's a surprise ending: the grandmother appears and spanks them all!

*As i heard these names and wondered, I realized immediately that sitting by Daisy and listening were her brother in *striped* pajamas and her grandmother, in a brown sweater with large white *buttons.*

The imaginative power is strong, absorbent, as Maria Montessori observed, effortless, and instantaneous. Most of us lose it in the ensuing muddle that is life; a few, the poets and magicians, retain it.