Category Archives: Demographics

My International Guests

Gwyns Flag Counter as of 10 24 2011

Gwyn's Flag Counter as of 10 24 2011

“If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”  — Anne Lamott
 

This is one of my favorite writer quotes, and my chief excuse for not promoting myself, but on a blog, it materializes at light speed. Recently, I noticed I was up to 73 flags on my blog’s flag counter–probably more by the time you read this. The other day my visitor report might have formed a quorum of the United Nations and resolved for world peace. You’re from Canada to Argentina, Finland to New Zealand, Ireland to Japan. Russia to Madagascar, Cambodia to Romania, Peru to Indonesia, Northern Mariana Islands to Brazil, Mexico to Luxembourg, Latvia to Bolivia, Greece to Vietnam,  Saudi Arabia to Trinidad and Tobago, Nigeria to Taiwan, Switzerland to Pakistan, Israel to Bangladesh, Czech Republic to Nepal, Ukraine to Venezuela, Papua New Guinea to Lebanon, Serbia to South Africa, Singapore to Portugal. And 35 more.

With English being the chief second language in many nations, I assume most of these visitors understand me, while I’d be lost in their languages. It’s mind-boggling.

With so many readers whose days are my nights, or whose autumns are my springs (or both), I have to wonder! How did you land here? Were you looking for a topic I wrote about? Did you meet me through someone I’m connected with? Was it purely accidental, like a misdialed phone number? (I can’t imagine you’d actually heard of me, though this week was another milestone. Recommended Tags began suggesting “Gwyn Nichols.” Do I tag my posts with my own name? How odd!)

And when you got here, did you feel welcome? Lost?

I’m sparkling with curiosity. Please feel free to comment and let me (and my other guests in the room) know where you’re from, why you’re here, and whether I’m making a lick of sense. (Suddenly, I’m self-conscious about my idioms.) What would be helpful to you?

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 Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All rights reserved. WritersResort.com

Image: screenshot from Flag Counter. You can get one for your blog here. I don’t know how I blogged without this service, it makes life so much more fun!

Are the Classics Wasted on the Young?

My ambitious sixth grader is reading Moby Dick, the unabridged. He wasn’t sure he understood it, though, so I offered to read with him. After all, it’s been on my guilt list for a couple decades. Guilt list: books you assume I must have read while majoring in English. Guilt tome: the actual nine-page single-spaced list my first university assumed I would have read between birth and senior English exam. (For the younger crowd, that exam has been discontinued. Getting a B was called acing it. And my thesis defense is now your thesis presentation as well, but I digress.)

So recently, after viewing reclaimed treasures from the sunken pirate ship, the Whydah (Whid-duh), we were in a wonderfully nautical frame of mind as we settled in for the challenge, mom, boy, and a whale of a book. At least it had to beat Gray’s Anatomy–the famous anatomy textbook, not the show–and every detail of the hooks in our spinal columns, which fascinated this boy when he was four.

We began with the most famous opening in English literature. “Loomings”? Each chapter has a title? Who knew?

And how come no one mentioned that Melville is funny??

His vocabulary has me teaching Latin roots as we go along, and his dry observations would be lost on a kid, but with a bit of translation, we’re both laughing.

So many books are lost on the young. Generations of ninth graders read To Kill a Mockingbird. I loved it (as the future English major, I was an exception in my class), but rereading it, it’s even richer. I have to say I’m glad I read plenty of classics “too young,” because they helped make me who I am. But I don’t think I’ll check them off my list and assume

It’s delicious to read a classic with a child and bridge the gaps between childhood experiences and the world of the book, but I’ll bet my son will reread this in about thirty years, and tell me he read it way too young.

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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All rights reserved. WritersResort.com