My mom was so great to lend some of her best classic movies to us to watch during Christmas, even though she wouldn't get to be here to watch them. One of them was Disney's Pollyanna.  It was a big hit with everyone, who asked me several questions about it.  That's when I realized how little I knew about this favorite story of mine.  I dove into Google and found out it was a novel by Eleanor H. Porter in 1913, an instant success, followed by a sequel, a blockbuster silent film in 1920, and many other films and mock sequels thereafter.

 I downloaded the Google book, and for the next several days, my computer became my bedtime book.  I devoured every nuance, dialog and plot twist, in a much more complete and consistent story than the one with which I grew up.

Like the Disney movie, Pollyanna is a smiling, happy-go-lucky girl with two fat blonde braids and ill-fitting clothes.  After her father dies, she goes to live with her wealthy aunt whom she's never met, because her late mother was cut off from the family for marrying a poor pastor.  Despite her aunt's cold elitism and bad treatment of her niece, Pollyanna finds something to be happy about everywhere she goes and in everything she does, with her "Glad game."  She unwittingly, pure heartedly brightens up the entire run-down town in which she now lives.

Unlike the movie, the original Pollyanna is a very consistent character.  She doesn't have the tempter streak shown by Hayley Mills, but innocently and sincerely wants to make others happy.  It is her innocence and oblivion, in fact, that are so attractive to others.  She is a three-dimensional character, and does go through emotional difficulties, but she responds to those by crying and being by herself, or looking to others for consolation, not by throwing a tantrum.  Also unlike the film, Aunt Polly does not own the town.  It is not named after the family, and Miss Polly is just a very wealthy person who keeps to herself.

The book also weaves several mini stories into a beautiful collection of conclusions tied together.  The ending is somewhat unexpected, except for the intentional little clues placed strategically throughout the story.  And even the guessability of the ending is enjoyable in the anticipation.  It's a wonderfully crafted "old style" book, where all the strings are tied off at the end, and everything is in balance.  And I believe the lesson taught in it is as powerful as even the radical movie "Pay it Forward", though in much more wholesome surroundings.  Finding the true and present good in everything you go through, and being honestly thankful for it is, indeed, a godly way to live, and can, in fact, change the world.

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After finishing the first glad book, I, like so many people in the early 1900's, was hungry for more of the "glad girl".  I found the sequel on Google books as well, and continued.  "Pollyanna Grows Up" continues the basic message of the first book, but necessarily had to tackle some hurdles of Pollyanna getting older and not being as innocent and wide eyed as she was when she was 11.  Porter did this well, skipping over several years of her adolescence and jumping back into her early adulthood, with many more twists and turns and love stories that come to a dramatic and heartwarming end.  I was very satisfied, and would recommend these books to anyone who enjoys good, old-fashioned but interesting story telling.

This was the second in my investigative reads of my favorite stories.  The first was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming, last summer.  Next, I think I'll dive into either Mary Poppins or Bed knobs and Broomsticks, and see what those are really about!

This Christmas I ran across a several-year-old word list I had compiled from international magazines, college, and random happenchance.  I realized -- and agonized -- that I never learned those words for which I had been so thirsty when first I saw them.  My vocabulary is still horridly small, so near New Year's I resolved (in spite of my misgivings of the tradition of January 1st resolutions) to put these to celebration and use.  With newly-received 2011 wall calendar in hand, I was inspired to jot down each word onto a day in the calendar, in order to look it up, and use it at least once in a real conversation that day.  The words strung through July on the calendar, and I was super excited!

With family still present, this project began very exciting.  We sat down to dinner directly after I'd finished my transcribing, and as soon as the opportunity arose, I proceeded to mention how pleased I was that Eddy was comporting tonight!  It was received with quiet confusion.  In my usual way, I gushed forth with a rapid and exuberant explanation of my plan.  They were fine with it (not nearly as excited as I, but I was used to that).  And after a few days of histrionic, taciturn, and alacrity (all behavioral words, to my immense satisfaction), I was taken aback by Forrest's aptitude for word usage!  The man who hesitates to read to someone on account of clumsiness was thinking it the most obvious thing in the world that minutiae were small, unimportant details and correcting me on the pronunciation of echelons.

Perhaps these are all elementary level to you as well, but for an, apparently novice learner of words like me, it was a bit disconcerting and...just a tad humbling?  But it was all fascinating information, just the same.

One evening we visited our friends, Jonny and Taylor, for dinner while Eddy and Gramma were at a cousin sleepover.  For the next fleeting FIVE hours, we soaked in the contagious insouciance of our friends.  With our overpowering intensity of our personalities, Dan and I need that every so often.

I'll leave it to you to look it up.  Enjoy the words around you, and preserve the language you love!
insouciance 

I don't know anyone who doesn't have a creative streak.  It is one thing I can somehow find in common with everyone I talk to, though sometimes they don't think so at first =)

Yesterday I had a coffee date with a friend at the McDonald's playplace to catch up.  We have completely different jobs, different family and in-law situations, we are both married, but we have completely different ideas about kids and adventure, and several other things.  But she is a great, compassionate girl that I admire a lot and really appreciate having as a friend (even with all our differences).

She asked me how I was doing, and, in typical Nomie style I talked nonstop for the next 5 minutes.  I told her about the family and work, then went into all the exciting (but not always longlived) crazy plans and ideas I had of things to create -- from painting to woodworking to music to words, etc. Then I asked her what she was doing for fun.  She answered, "Reading."

I love to read, too, but I knew there was more that made her grin than other people's masterpieces.  A few minutes later I found it.  She was talking about their spare room, and she mentioned it was the last one to decorate, then she'd be done with the house.  She was relishing in the idea of choosing the style and decorations, and moving other items from elsewhere into that room.  She was actually sad to be done with the house, "All I'll have to do after this is redecorate.  That's not nearly as fun to think about."

So, the master creator came out at last.  And that's only in the visual sense.  We didn't even get to all the heart transforming conversations, lessons, small group plans, music schedules, and events she plans for the highschoolers!  Now that's something I've never done!

God created us all to be an image of him.  Did you think he'd leave out the creativity aspect in that? Hardly! Celebrate the creator in you, and share God's beauty =D

There were a lot of contrasting opinions surrounding this book.  But I was determined to keep an open mind, while maintaining a balanced view as I read it, in order to give a quality review.

I recently read one of my Aunt Peggy's books.  She is a confident and very creative author, and I am an English nerd and literary critic.  This made for an interesting relationship.  The story is about a girl named Lilia who lives on a farm in Hawaii with her family.  For the most part it is a wonderfully flowing story of the transition from kid to teenager, as well as learning to live life for God.  But my critic tendencies came swirling through my head as I started getting into the story.  I thought the character development was thorough, and the perspective from which the story was told switching between characters was fun.  It was funny to notice how some of the characters and events were inspired by my aunt's life and relationships.

However I got a little caught up on how "Utopian" the setting was.  It didn't seem possible that a family could be that Christian, and get a long that often, that the girl should be good at so much, get so much attention, live in such a beautiful place and have so few financial problems.  But then I got to thinking again.  Aunt Peggy was good at all those things as a child, and lived on a farm; she's had experience being a Christian who also doesn't have too many financial worries, has created a loving Christian home, and has been to and knows people in Hawaii.  This thought led to other friendships I've had with Christian families of all walks of life who also do work everything out as a family and adore each other.  So, I'm not certain, but perhaps I should retract that critique and simply conclude that the story is about someone other than me.  Just because those were not my experiences, doesn't mean they're not possible, and doesn't mean the average reader will not be able to identify with the characters.  In truth, toward the end of the book, the characters and situations do become more and more complex, and conquer great hardships.  Read as a whole, this book can stir the heart and you can empathize with everything in it.

The other thing the critic inside of me jumped on was the dialog.  This is a very difficult area to master.  There's a balance between clarity of who's speaking and natural flow.  As I was reading, I saw many hiccups in the flow as well as a few ambiguous speakers.  However, when I spoke to others I knew had read it, none of them mentioned that as a problem.  So once again, I got to thinking it over, and I remembered that this book is targeted to 11-13 year-olds.  The books I read at that age had dialog much like this book's.  A girl that age doesn't worry about those technicalities, and this book does not cater to the 24-year-old English nerd and critic, which is good.  That would be something with which a young teenage girl would not be able to identify.

All in all, a fun story, with unexpected twists and turns, and a very very solid Christian focus.  It shows the reader an example of how your family could live life focused on God -- in an exciting and colorful way.