This post is for Winnowings. She is making a quilt with Presidential fabric for posterity. She has fabric with portraits of all the presidents through Dubya, but needs a fabric image of Obama.
I like the idea of kids pouring over squares of presidential portraits. We didn't have a quilt, but we had a set of encyclopedias my mom got for buying groceries at Safeway. The P-R volume was our favorite, and it popped open to the presidential portraits due to heavy use for school reports. Back then there had only been thirty-five presidents, and Grover Cleveland only got one portrait. The magical power of this encyclopedia centerfold was the eerie arrangement of presidents who were assassinated. Those presidents all appeared in the same column of the matrix, skipping only one row. In Ouija thinking, we believed the future was foretold for presidents with bad layout positions.
In the past forty years there have many sleepless nights when I tried to reconstruct the page layout of that encyclopedia. How many rows? How many columns? Were the portraits the same size on both pages? How was it the assassinated presidents appeared in a straight line? I just finished listening to Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, a riveting story, but still can't correctly visualize the encyclopedia page.
John F. Kennedy was MY president, as only your third grade Commander In Chief can be. I don't remember Eisenhower, and my preschool students probably won't remember Obama. They don't have enough understanding of current events beyond the playground yet.
Kennedy was MY president, and he wanted ME to help beat the Russians to the moon by achieving the President's Physical Fitness Challenge. JFK and his successor, LBJ, would be checking my progress on chin-ups, sit-ups, the 50-yard dash, and a torture known as the 600-yard run/walk if memory serves me.
I practiced like crazy on a chin-up bar my dad hung in a doorway so I could meet our president's expectations. I was such a short, skinny, wimpy kid, that my effort stunned the PE teacher, even if no one noticed at the White House.
Presidents play an important role in our education. They are equal parts powerful mythology and current events to kids. Each President has the chance to inspire a generation of schoolkids to go beyond what is expected. It's been a long time since our president was also a parent of young children. I'd like President Obama to offer schoolkids a lunchbox challenge for zero-waste lunches that include fresh produce! Someone at the White House will be checking your lunchbox...
© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder
I like the idea of kids pouring over squares of presidential portraits. We didn't have a quilt, but we had a set of encyclopedias my mom got for buying groceries at Safeway. The P-R volume was our favorite, and it popped open to the presidential portraits due to heavy use for school reports. Back then there had only been thirty-five presidents, and Grover Cleveland only got one portrait. The magical power of this encyclopedia centerfold was the eerie arrangement of presidents who were assassinated. Those presidents all appeared in the same column of the matrix, skipping only one row. In Ouija thinking, we believed the future was foretold for presidents with bad layout positions.
In the past forty years there have many sleepless nights when I tried to reconstruct the page layout of that encyclopedia. How many rows? How many columns? Were the portraits the same size on both pages? How was it the assassinated presidents appeared in a straight line? I just finished listening to Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, a riveting story, but still can't correctly visualize the encyclopedia page.
John F. Kennedy was MY president, as only your third grade Commander In Chief can be. I don't remember Eisenhower, and my preschool students probably won't remember Obama. They don't have enough understanding of current events beyond the playground yet.
Kennedy was MY president, and he wanted ME to help beat the Russians to the moon by achieving the President's Physical Fitness Challenge. JFK and his successor, LBJ, would be checking my progress on chin-ups, sit-ups, the 50-yard dash, and a torture known as the 600-yard run/walk if memory serves me.
I practiced like crazy on a chin-up bar my dad hung in a doorway so I could meet our president's expectations. I was such a short, skinny, wimpy kid, that my effort stunned the PE teacher, even if no one noticed at the White House.
Presidents play an important role in our education. They are equal parts powerful mythology and current events to kids. Each President has the chance to inspire a generation of schoolkids to go beyond what is expected. It's been a long time since our president was also a parent of young children. I'd like President Obama to offer schoolkids a lunchbox challenge for zero-waste lunches that include fresh produce! Someone at the White House will be checking your lunchbox...
© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder
2 comments:
I hope someone at the White House checks your blog. What a great idea for a program -- zero-waste lunches.
How can you get this idea to the president?
You can have the kids feed whatd left over to there worms. For no waste. A lot of schools are doing it. Instead of garbage going to the landfill,They are making castings that help grow delicious vegetables.
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