don't eat the green ones, they're not ripe yet

I read Chicken Licken to my boys the other night, from a book I had when I was a child, the Classic Volland edition of Great Children’s Stories. (I had the Mother Goose too and the illustrations are slightly creepy. All the adults look like pedophiles or children-beaters, and all the children look anemic and bratty. The animals are the only ones even slightly resembling normal. But perhaps the illustrations match the stories.) Everyone seems to get eaten at the end of these stories (except Goldilocks, who I personally think deserves to be eaten - “This Goldilocks is juuuusssst right.” ). At the end of Chicken Licken, all the animals – Loosey Goosey, Turkey Lurky, Henny Penny et al. - get lured to the fox’s den and eaten for his dinner. At the end of The Fox’s Sack story, the fox gets eaten by the watchdog. In The Straw Ox (the most boring story ever written), the fox and bear and bunny escape death-by-flaying by promising to the farmer that they will bring him beehives, and vegetables, and flocks of sheep. Of course the poor sheep get eaten. I haven’t ventured into The Three Little Pigs yet (my boys prefer The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig right now anyway) but I am SURE the pigs get eaten. Some of the nursery rhymes are even scary (if you were a blackbird – or a two-year-old who has trouble differentiating between reality and fantasy - would you want to be baked alive into a pie?).

Everyone knows how grisly the Grimm and Andersen fairy tales are (Bruno Bettelheim’s defended said violence), and the way in which Disney has prettified many of the most popular tales – The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, etc.

Abstract from dissertation, Primary Children's Stories as a Function of Exposure to Violence and Cruelty in the Folk Fairy Tale - Barbara Shryock Koelle, University of Pennsylvania, 1981:
Like violence in the television watched by children, the effect on children of violence in the folk fairy tale is controversial. Beginning in the early 19th century critics and educators claimed that the more violent stories provoke fear and anxiety in children, just as today such reactions are connected with television violence. Folk fairy tales were also criticized for providing harmful models of behavior for a youthful audience, as is today's television. Defenders of violence and aggression in the tales have included psychoanalysts and anthropologists, who find in them cathartic and developmental benefits, and writers and artists who stress the values for children of an unexpurgated literary heritage.

There’s probably something to be said for having children learn in this fairly innocuous way that life is not fair or pretty or clean. But I just feel that there’s enough awful stuff going on in today’s world, and now that my four-year-old can read, I already have to hide the newspaper headlines some days. Is it bizarre that I am even uncomfortable reading Curious George to the boys – I mean, that man in the yellow hat kidnapped poor George and took him thousands of miles away, pretty much just to exploit him. At least Babar left the jungle of his own free will, despite the disturbing sight of an elephant in a three-piece suit and spats. And I suppose you can take it too far – my Republican brother refuses to read The Rainbow Fish, claiming that it espouses Communist values.

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OK, I thought I had something to say about the INXS reality show – but I really don’t. I can’t stand Swiss Miss or Wil-with-one-L, but otherwise…it’s just that one of the contestants – Ty, the black dude with the mohawk - was a year ahead of me in college, and he was pretty amazing even then. I think he is one of the strongest contestants – Jordys is the other – but my only problem is that I think Ty’s performance betrays his theatre background. He’s got the voice and the moves, but I still see him as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. I saw the show a gazillion times because my boyfriend at the time designed the sets, so maybe it’s just me. But Ty is almost too polished, his performance just a little too studied or practiced. My vote goes to Jordys. She’s got the voice, the looks, the moves, and the audience eating out of the palm of her hand, not to mention the band.

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Snippets:

Remember what I said about the long-gone custom of the morning room? Well, I find I also long for the days of full-time nannies and the nursery in another wing of the house.

Red gummy bears are the best. The clear ones are the worst.
And while we’re talking about trivial things: does ANYONE like peanut butter salt water taffy? I have never met anyone who does. So why do they continue to make them? Are they that desperate for fillers? Couldn’t they “fill” with one of the good flavors, like peppermint or licorice?

I am looking for an LOC classification poster like the ones we have hanging in the library. I want the blue one. That style may have been discontinued. But I want one to frame and hang in my office at home. I continue to get dorkier and dorkier.

I am approaching my 28th week of pregnancy, and my hips have begun to hurt. I can’t lie on my back without feeling like I am frozen there. And the shortness of breath – it might be the heat, or it might be the pot roast growing enormous and juicy and taking up all my lung space, or it might be a combination of the two. Remind me to never, ever be pregnant in the summer again.

I just heard Simon say, "Oh, Muck just ran over Miss Scarlet and killed her."
I accuse Muck the Bulldozer with his frontloader-thingey in the construction yard!

Gina comes home today and I am very glad. Welcome home, Gina! (And Ted, of course.)

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Here's a brief taste of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian (300 pages and still amazing); the woman can WRITE:
It was early December, we were on the road again, and the lassitude of our summer trips to the Mediteranean seemed far behind us. The high Adriatic wind was combing my hair again and I liked the feel of it, its awkward roughness; it was as if a beast with heavy paws clambered over everything in the harbor, making flags snap sharply in front of the modern hotel and straining the topmost branches of the plane trees along the promenade.