It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
 | Review: House of Many Ways a Perfect Summer Book for Your Dreamily Imaginative ‘Tween Child |
At the beginning of this summer, I found myself browsing through the middle readers section of the bookstore, a place I hadn’t visited since I grew out of middle reading myself. A middle reader is someone who’s outgrown the young readers’ catalog of the easy-to-read Ramona Quimby or Magic Tree House series but isn’t quite ready to jump into reading for young adults like The Dead Fathers’ Club or Wintersmith. There’s a lot of room in between, and it’s not always easy to tell where your own child fits. My own son is entering the 3rd grade but can read books with vocabulary at the middle school level. Socially speaking, however, he’s just not interested in middle school fare because he has no interest in the intricate social dance of friendship, love, hate, alliance and betrayal that characterize the teen years. All that kissy and pseudo-kissy stuff irritates him to no end. Despite his vocabulary, he doesn’t have the patience for long descriptions of scenery and furniture, either. No kisses or social games. No scenery fetishists, either. Where does he fit?
I was looking for a book that my son could get lost in because I needed him to get lost. We had a big, long trip coming up, and I wanted a book that he could get swept up in and read so long and so attentively that he wouldn’t figure out he was supposed to get bored. He had just finished spending a weekend with My Side of the Mountain, splayed out on the couch on his belly with his ankles up in the air for hours at a time, avoiding meals for the sake of just a few more pages. I hoped to see that happen again…
… with Diana Wynne Jones’ House of Many Ways. This book is a story related to Jones’ earlier Howl’s Moving Castle, which you may have seen as a Miyazaki-adapted anime. House of Many Ways is centered around the character of Charmain Baker, a teenage girl who doesn’t care much for other people and whose dream of becoming a librarian in the King’s service is realized at the same moment she is swept into the familial duty of caring for the house of her Great Uncle William while he is on medical leave. Charmain’s annoyance turns to exasperation when she finds her Great Uncle to be a wizard, his house to be enchanted, and her solitude to be interrupted by an unwelcome wizard’s apprentice, a needy dog, an angry set of gnome-like kobolds and a predatory creature called a lubbock.
Will these annoyances turn to gifts in their own unexpected ways? Is Charmain’s library service to the King somehow connected? Will growing and learning happen in the midst of adventure? Of course — and in a manner that is frankly too neat and tidy from an adult reader’s perspective. But this isn’t a novel written for adults. It’s a novel for children, and from a child’s perspective the twists and turns of the story should seem novel and revelatory. Bends in space and time that are overly familiar to anyone who lived through the sci-fi fad of the 1990s will be new to readers of House of Many Ways. Diana Wynne Jones manages to pepper the story with enough insouciant and irreverent yet inclusive humor to successfully leaven her treat of a book. Such leaven is necessary given the occasional shadowy flickers of disturbing themes including illness and interpersonal violence.
Humor. Danger. Adventure. Magic. That’s a pretty good mixture for the dreamy and imaginative kid, and underneath it all is a concern that kids reading the story may not recognize explicitly but which renders the book sympathetic to them implicitly. Take away the magical, mysterious, adventurous plot and House of Many Ways is really all about the perils, pains and rewards of handling responsibilities, expectations and challenges that come from many quarters and from within. This is the significant learning task of children in the middle and early high school years, and these are the children who I suspect will enjoy House of Many Ways the most. My own younger son finds such concerns to as be dreadfully boring as politics. But I’ll keep the book around. In two or three years, I expect he’ll pull it off the shelf on a quiet summer day, kick his heels up off the couch, and forget that the hours are passing him by.
Contact Us
The Waste of Employment and Military Support in the United States.
The United States is the “Promiser of Sorrow”
The next time you hear a political candidate speaking to the American people and promising things he/she can’t deliver, keep in mind this is false advertisement to win a vote. The president no matter how powerful cannot make the rules; he/she can’t promise things they cannot deliver. However they will speak this from their mouth to get the vote and spend the next four years attempting to make it happen, then when the president can’t deliver he/she will blame it on congress and other political leaders for their promises they failed to keep.
The USAF has to reduce its footprint due to Congressional mandate following the last BRAC decision. The easiest way to do so is to close bases or combine existing bases together or collocate different services bases into Joint bases. Here in Germany (and South Korea), there are several bases in close proximity to Ramstein, some USAF and some USA. In Germany, closing Sembach and Bitburg will reduce the costs for maintaining the infrastructure at those locations, which can add up to millions of dollars annually saved. This is definitely a pro. Additionally, with the reduction in personnel, it forces the USAF to re-look at itself and get rid of those ‘no-value added’ processes. Getting rid of those processes saves man-hours and money spent maintaining them and having to provide insurance and paid vacations to those individuals.
But, it also means you rely more heavily on those individuals to do more with less. Those in command have to accept more responsibility for their actions and manage more effectively their assets. This is not always the case. And is not what is taking place at some installations, those in command positions are getting paid to spend the extra time it takes to see that issues are being solved, people are doing their work and progress is being made. However if those in command positions look at their position as only a job or recognition, then the progress within the military community and in the government will continue to be disruptive, confusing and simply not work.
As far as the war is concerned, we are not presently at war with anyone. We ARE in Iraq and Afghanistan as teachers and trainers, providing security for those areas that want a democratic and civilized society, who want to live peacefully and without being terrorized. If we were to pull out tomorrow, the lawlessness you see in Africa would take over. Those with the means to obtain weapons would prey on these peaceful citizens and you’d have the same type of government as when Saddam was in charge. A dictatorship where the citizens feared for their life. Until the newly established Iraqi government can ensure this won’t happen, In Afghanistan, it’s a matter of economics. The only thing they export is agricultural; and, the only thing they know how to grow for a profit is poppy. This is changing. Markets for wheat are growing there and farmers are changing their crops. But, until those drug traffickers who are influencing Afghan farmers to grow illegal crops are eradicated, we will never pull out of Afghanistan. It use to be believed, and maybe still is, that World War III would be the end of the world due to nuclear holocaust. But, when the Soviet Union fell, people breathed easier and seemed to forget about the potential destruction of our planet. I believe the next war will be on drugs, declared on South America, Afghanistan, and China. The United States would not be so far in debt if they would keep the American money within America like the other countries do, I don’t see other countries having military bases in foreign countries, these other countries keep their money within their country and allow the United States to spend hard earned American tax dollars in their countries which boosts their economy and not our own, any blind man can see that.
I once looked up to the American Government as the people who cared about the Americans and now it’s just about power, money and control. Allowing the American people to suffer while other countries profit from our money going into their economy needs to stop, how can the politicians of today go to bed and actually sleep at night knowing there are children being raped, children starving, people abusing animals (GODS CREATION) killing people with drugs and alcohol and knowing the government really doesn’t care because it’s these material things like the drugs and alcohol that keeps money in the politicians pockets, America needs to wake up.
This is why I’m a firm believer we need to stop investing in bases overseas, pull the troops back to the States, and re-look at our own country’s hardships. Why are we so dependent on China for products? It’s not because of technology, but because of cheap labor. So, why does the U.S. allow that? Instead of promoting child labor or cheap labor practices, why not promote business opportunities inside the U.S. to replace our dependency on products from China? Why not stop all immigration from Middle East countries as well as allowing them own U.S. property? It’s because of the almighty dollar…but the almighty dollar isn’t so mighty as of late. The schools will have to learn how to get along without charging outrageous tuition fees for out of country students. Maybe they can earn some of this money back from Uncle Sam by fostering better business processes for our own government and stimulating our economy with business ventures right from their own institutions If the government could oversee programs with colleges and businesses as being partners, then those students who graduate can be hired by the businesses that stay partners with their college, this would reduce unemployment and it would get student loan money owed to the government paid back quicker. As far as public schools, they continue to ask for more money but fail to produce students who can actually read at grade level, there are several ways to fix this. Increase the age limit of students being allowed to quit school; this only places them on the streets to become juvenile offenders and then later adult offenders and costing the taxpayers money to keep them housed in prison. There are several programs within the United States that need attention and money, not providing the American people with the basic necessities of life only creates animosity and disgust towards the government, and looking back in History it is the denial of basic human needs that brings on uprisings from the people towards their governments.
This whole issue with Al-Qaeda is a getting out of control, he will not be captured especially when he uses the United States and other countries intelligence, technology and means of communication against them, this is the result of allowing students from other countries to attend college here. If the United States would take time out and actually try to understand the religion these people are fighting for, then the United States and other countries involved could communicate and obtain scholars from universities to help mediate meetings with these extremists and try to formulate a treaty of some kind.
Comment by Lisa — 7/24/2008 @ 1:27 pm