Everyone who flies (in commercial airplanes, at least) knows the ridiculousness of so-called “airport security”. While innocent passengers are harassed and prohibited from taking the most necessary and inoffensive items into the airport, while letting actual guns and ammo through.
TSA rules as to what you cannot get passed security have really been going beyond any notion of the ridiculous – not only are they banning Disney souvenirs, but they now are scared shitless about the dangers of snow globes. WTF?
The real story on this, however, is the fact that we, the citizenry, allow the government to impose the most stupid, arbitrary and capricious rules on us without complaining. This one may be a relatively trivial one, but it gets us used to the intrusion of the government into our private lives.
Author: marga (Page 19 of 158)
Everyone who knows my 8-year-old daughter Mika, knows that she is quite amazing. She’s incredibly smart, has an uncanny ability to connect seemingly disparate concepts (for example, she just equated the way recipes and cooking methods evolve over time, to the way folktales change as people relate them to each other – forgetting parts and adding new parts), she has exceptional social skills and is a great kid. I love hearing how her little mind works – what concepts she takes to, and which ones she rejects.
At this age, she strongly identifies with me and is, therefore, a profound atheist (I’d even say a virulent atheist, but that’s something we’re working on). She is very much into science and the notion of “evidence”, rejecting beliefs when there is not evidence to prove them (thus her rejection of god/gods). BUT, she’s still a kid and wants to hold on to some magical beliefs. In particular, she believes in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and unicorns.
With respect to Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, she has evidence of their existence. After all, she gets presents from Santa for Christmas and money under her pillow when she loses a tooth (enormous amounts of money, the tooth fairy never seems to have change when needed). Who can argue against that? She has postulated the notion that we might be the ones leaving the presents/money – but she has never asked outright, which makes me think that she wants to hold on to the fantasy. As for unicorns, she thinks nobody has ever seen them because they are very shy 🙂
Mike went away to a conference for a few days last week, so the girls spent at least part of the night sleeping on my bed. Saturday morning, Camila (who is 5) and I awoke to Mika’s excited voice “Look, Camila, there is something under your pillow”. It was an envelope – addressed to Camila from the Tooth Fairy. Inside there was a dollar, some stickers and a Hello Kitty writing pad! Camila had not lost a tooth, but she was super excited all the same!!! To be finally be visited by the Tooth Fairy! Mika was so cute, making gestures to let me know it had really been her and making sure I wouldn’t say anything 🙂
She did give herself up later on when she mentioned that she had no money because she had given it all to Camila. Camila figured out that the money she got must have come from Mika, not the tooth fairy (she’s smart too!), but I can’t imagine a sweeter action than to bring a little bit of magic to her sister.
Despite how much the two of them fight (mostly because Camila is an attention monster, and she becomes annoying/mean when Mika doesn’t pay enough attention to her), it’s amazing just how much they love each other – and what a great big sister Mika is.
We’re in the middle of summer vacation, and one of the ways I prepared for it was by getting lots of kits, crafts, games and activities so that the kids would not be bored to death and they wouldn’t spend all day long watching shows on netflix (not that they don’t anyway).
Today, for example, Camila and I spent the morning making soap and doing fun, gross experiments from the Scientific Explorer’s Disgusting Science kit
This kit (an older version of the one linked above) was surprisingly fun. What you do is either draw tiny pictures on stickers or color the stickers included with the kit, stick them on rectangle metal beads. Then you put a transparent thick sticker on it, and you’re done with the beads.
Actually using them to make jewelry is a bit more difficult. The kit comes with a bunch of nice 4mm plastic beads and very, very, very cheap elastic cord. The problem is that it comes apart very easily, making it difficult to thread – but not impossible. The other problem is that my girls apparently don’t want to do the actual beading – making the picture tiles is more fun 🙂
Anyway, this is a fun kit all in all.
Mika, my 8-year old, is very much into ancient mythology (among many other things). But this is an interest I’m particularly happy to encourage not only because it helps give her a balanced view of religion, but because Greek mythology in particular is so fundamental to the understanding of Western art, literature and culture in general. Indeed, the more I learn about Greek mythology, the more I realize where so much of Christian beliefs come from.
Mika and I started reading Greek myths a few months ago out of the book Mini Greek Myths for Young Children
I love the book. I love how it’s organized – both chronologically and by order of godly importance (it starts with Mother Earth and Uranus, continues with the Titans and then goes on to the Olympians, before focusing on the minor gods and other supernatural beings) -, how each chapter relates to the preceding one, and how thorough it is in recounting the mythology. I also appreciate that it uses pretty sophisticated language but it cleans up the stories for the children (Zeus’ lovers are portrayed as his wives, for example). The one problem I have with the book is that it does not cover the possible metaphorical significance of the myths. For example, according to my brother at least, when Cronus , the titan ruler of the universe, eats his children in order to avoid them overthrowing him, he represents “Time” eating the days away. I couldn’t find any support for such theory online, but most myths were invented so as to account for natural phenomena.
But, all in all, this seems a very minor fault of what is otherwise a great book.
I am now planning to get D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths
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