I’ve started a new page to share websites and stories I’ve found to be interesting.
Everything will be listed chronologically, so check back often for new things I want to share with you.
You can find a link to the new page up above, or click here: Things I’ve Read & Wanted to Share with You
Could You Have Passed the 8th Grade in 1895?
http://people.moreheadstate.edu/fs/w.willis/eighthgrade.html
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I am a skimmer, and rarely does an author get my attention.
But this article, that was just forwarded to me at work, is the best thing I’ve read in a long while.
The Shadow Scholar – The man who writes your students’ papers tells his story
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/
From the Chronicle of Higher Education
The author works full time writing essays and theses for students. He is demonstrating perfectly why the education system is so completely broken. And every teacher and professor who has left comments on his article further proves his point with their excuses.
Degrees are meaningless when people who hold the degrees still can’t spell or form a sentence. The post-secondary education system is simply a business model. You enroll, pay big bucks, do a lot of meaningless work that doesn’t make you any wiser or smarter, then you get a piece of paper and some extra letters after your name.
There is so much focus in the article’s feedback section about catching the cheating students. If teachers actually taught, this “shadow scholar” would be out of work.
I just finished reading Mabel Bell: Alexander’s silent partner.
Fascinating.
Mabel Bell was Alexander Graham Bell’s wife. I really knew nothing about Alexander Graham Bell, other than he had ties to Brantford, Ontario and Baddeck, Nova Scotia (as well as the U.S) and he had something to do with inviting the telephone.
Well a few weeks back Dad and I visited the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck. It was stunning how many inventions and scientific developments Alexander Graham Bell had a hand in. As I told Dad, there was one man who certainly had no television or internet in his life to waste away his time. He was ALWAYS busy learning and inventing!
I was particularly interested in his wife after the visit to the museum. I learned she was deaf and had a strong role in Bell’s life. I was so interested that I looked her up in our University library (where I work) to see if they had the book about her that I spotted in the museum’s giftshop.
Sure enough they did, and after working in a library for 2.5 years, I checked out my first book.
Mabel Bell became deaf from scarlet fever when she was just 5 years old. Alexander (or “Alec” as he is referred to in the book) was Mabel’s teacher who helped teacher her how to speak clearly and read lips. Bell, ten years her senior, fell in love with Mabel, and waited until she was old enough to court, and were married when she was 19.
Most of the book content was in Mabel’s words from her journal, letters to family, to “Alec”, and even some to her from Alec. What a treasure to have her original thoughts and words.
Mabel was a strong, determined woman. She pushed Alec into areas she wanted him to focus on, and away from others (he would have been perfectly content being a teacher of the deaf for his entire life). She fought so hard to claim recognition for Alec’s work. He loved the science, and the inventing, but grew weary of patent fights and battles.
Mabel came from the wealthy Hubbard family and had money of her own that she used to fund some of Alec’s pursuits (including the aeronautical research that led to the flight of The Silver Dart.
She knew many languages worked tirelessly at creating the social structure her husband’s work required, and so their two daughters would be properly raised.
It was astonishing to me how many times they crossed the ocean for speaking events, and to expose their daughters to foreign languages, and cultures.
She seemed to me to be very insistent by nature. She was not afraid to make her opinion known. Her biggest, on-going conflict with her husband was that he would not come to bed with her at a decent hour, and he was never an early riser. He wrote letters, begging her to understand that he wanted to be left alone in his study or laboratory to work for hours, or days, until he was done a project, and then he was all hers.
She would write Alec letters when he was away on speaking engagements, pleading with him to be well groomed and finely dressed. She was desperate that her grandchildren would be educated in a
Mabel organized his history and pleaded with her son-in-law to properly write Bell’s biography so history could be set straight so Bell could receive the proper credit for his work after they were gone.
Mabel started the first Montesorri school in Canada, and later another in the U.S., in order for her grandchildren and their friends to receive a proper education.
The story was fascinating to me because it also tied in to a book I listened to part of with Dad – Outliers: The Story of Success. Did fortune, and fame come to Alexander Graham Bell because he was lucky? a genius? Or because he was already surrounded with successful, famous people? Throughout their lives they had contact with royalty, Prime Ministers, Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Lieutenant-Governors, inventors, and other wealthy notables. This angle would make for a fascinating book or thesis.
The presence of the Bells in Baddeck, Nova Scotia must have changed the village’s destiny for ever. Mabel invested in the local library, and started a reading and women’s club in the village to bring together the women of different religions (who would otherwise never co-mingle) and class. The club still continues today. Their presence must have touched every person in the village. Many of them were employed by the Bells to construct their house, or in Bell’s laboratory. Others would have attended lavish meals and events at their “Beinn Bhreagh” estate (Gaelic for beautiful mountain).
Their large mansion and estate still overlooks Baddeck Bay and is used by their great-grandchildren. From the written description of a guest room in the mansion from a guest, their decor is/was very lavish! Mabel and Alec are buried together on the hill.
The life story of Mabel Bell will stick with me for a long time.
Book: Mabel Bell: Alexander’s silent partner
Author: Lilias M. Toward
ISBN: 0458980900
Here are two of my favourite things I’ve read this week:
Enjoying the Small Things: Nella Cordelia: A Birth Story – Kelle Hampton is a brilliant photographer and a touching author. I’ve never seen such vivid colours in the photos she takes of children. In this touching post from January, Kelle shares the birth day of her second daughter. All of her excitement and her anxiety of having a second a child was rocketed into a new dimension when she gazed at her new born daughter for the first time and realizes she has down syndrome. Read it
Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic: case report – In this article, you can read the story of a Russian surgeon, Leonid Rogozov, who developed appendicitis while he was in Antarctica in 1961. As the only surgeon, and with no way to evacuate, Leonid had no choice but to operate on himself. This fascinating article contains photos and diary entries written by the surgeon. Read it
I got some GREAT books for Christmas and my Birthday this month. I’m eager to read every one of them! I couldn’t have picked out better books myself. Now I just have to make some time to read ‘em! 
Oak Island Gold by William Crooker
Treasure hunters have been tunneling into Oak Island off the coast of Nova Scotia since 1795, yet no one has found the fabulous treasure that legend says is buried there. It all began when a young explorer found a clearing on the island that appeared to have been worked. Throw in local rumors of pirates and buried treasure, and the digging started. The original excavators did leave many clues which convinced treasure seekers that something was buried on Oak Island, but every time the digging reached a certain depth, the hole filled with sea water. Crooker, an engineer and surveyor, presents both a thorough historical review of the various digs and a look at all the theories about the treasure. Based on his research, he maintains that it was looted by the British from Havana in 1762 and put on the island for safekeeping. Prospectors are still digging, but until the “treasure” is found, the mystery remains.
The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman
Unhappiness in marriage often has a simple root cause: we speak different love languages, believes Dr. Gary Chapman. While working as a marriage counselor for more than 30 years, he identified five love languages: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. In a friendly, often humorous style, he unpacks each one. Some husbands or wives may crave focused attention; another needs regular praise. Gifts are highly important to one spouse, while another sees fixing a leaky faucet, ironing a shirt, or cooking a meal as filling their “love tank.” Some partners might find physical touch makes them feel valued: holding hands, giving back rubs, and sexual contact. Chapman illustrates each love language with real-life examples from his counseling practice.
I’ve seen this book a few times, but never had a chance to read it. Julie gave it to me and now I’ll have to find out if Jeff and I are speaking the same love language.
Twenty-First Century Irvings by Harvey Sawler
Famed Canadian industrialist K. C. Irving has always been considered the most important figure of the Irving family business empirean empire of such dominance in its region that only Americas Morgans or Rockefellers merit a valid comparison. K. C. was indeed the pivot man in a relentless relay of work now spanning more than fourteen decades. Twenty-first Century Irvings leads us through the three generations left in K. C.s wake, a dozen or more individuals following the Irving tradition ofhard work, family loyalty, and an awe-inspiring attention to detail. These contemporary Irvings are trying to do all this while attempting to cast a kinder, gentler Irving image, which those close to the family claim has always been a part of the Irvings rural New Brunswick makeup. Twenty-first Century Irvings explores the modern family business, the powerful players behind its continuing success, and the myths that are spread about the wealthy empire. Author Harvey Sawler exposes the truths behind those myths, and predicts the transformation of the family, like the Rockefellers and the Morgans, from industrialists to philanthropists. A business story, a family story, and a Maritime story, this is a book for anyone interested in or affected by the Irving empire.
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
The eagerly anticipated novel from the bestselling author of A Student of Weather and Garbo Laughs. Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined. Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre. One summer, on a canoe trip four of them make into the Arctic wilderness (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, which threatens to displace Native people from their land. Elizabeth Hay has been compared to Annie Proulx, Alice Hoffman, and Isabel Allende, yet she is uniquely herself. With unforgettable characters, vividly evoked settings, in this new novel, Hay brings to bear her skewering intelligence into the frailties of the human heart and her ability to tell a spellbinding story. Written in gorgeous prose, laced with dark humour, Late Nights on Air is Hay’s most seductive and accomplished novel yet, and is already garnering interest abroad. On the shortest night of the year, a golden evening without end, Dido climbed the wooden steps to Pilot’s Monument on top of the great Rock that formed the heart of old Yellowknife. In the Netherlands the light was long and gradual too, but more meadowy, more watery, or else hazier, depending on where you were. . . . Here, it was subarctic desert, virtually unpopulated, and the light was uniformly clear. On the road below, a small man in a black beret was bending over his tripod just as her father used to bend over his tape recorder. Her father’s voice had become the wallpaper inside her skull, he’d made a home for himself there as improvised and unexpected as these little houses on the side of the Rock — houses with histories of instability, of changing from gambling den to barber shop to sheet metal shop to private home, and of being moved from one part of town to another since they had no foundations.
The Acadians: In Search of a Homeland by James Laxer
An evocative and beautifully written history of some of Canada’s earliest settlers, and their search for a definitive home. In 1604, a small group of migrants fled political turmoil and famine in France to start a new colony on Canada’s east coast. Their roughly demarcated territory included what are now Canada’s Maritime provinces, land that was fought over by the British and French empires until the Acadians were finally expelled in 1755. Their diaspora persists to this day. The Acadians is the definitive history of a little-known part of the North American past, and the quintessential story of a people in search of their identity. In the absence of a state, what defines an Acadian is elusive and while today’s Acadian community centred in New Brunswick is more confident than ever, it is entering a contentious debate about its future. James Laxer’s compelling book brilliantly explores one of Canada’s oldest and most distinct cultural groups, and shows how their complex, often tragic history reflects the larger problems facing Canada and the world today.
We Keep a Light by Evelyn M. Richardson
I just finished a book about the lighthouses of Nova Scotia. It was a real fascinating read – all the stories about the lifestyles of lighthouse keepers and their families. The book mentioned this book by Mrs. Richardson many times. With her husband, and 3 children, they kept the light burning on Bon Portage Island. She wrote this book (that won a Governor General’s Award) and went on to write many more books.