WingFormersHorseCanoe AladVendettaMyrtleHoot.

Apologizing again for the lack of updates, I will attempt to summarize what has been an epically amazing weekend filled with a lot of BN bonding. Here goes!

On Friday, after everyone got off work, we went to go see Transformers: Rise of the Fallen, which was really cool. Before we got to the movie, we stopped and ate at Carolina Wings (at my suggestion). Of course, I ordered the wings and they were very scrumptious. We got to the movie around 8-ish. I liked the first one better, but the story was still good, and the *ahem* acting was good too. I was also endlessly entertained that Glenn Morshower, the actor that plays Aaron Pierce on 24, was in the movie as well. He wasn't just a lacky in the movie, he was taking command! WOO! Oh, and I forgot to mention that on the way to the movie, the other car (containing Brandon, John Luttrell, John Deans, and Noelle) stopped at Krispy Kreme and ordered a dozen glazed doughnuts - more than half were gone by the time we got to the theater, which was less than 5 minutes away from Krispy Kreme. The hot doughnuts sign was on, so that's why they had to stop - perfectly understandable. Anywho, we came home and just chilled until the next day.

On Saturday, we got up and went to visit Benton Wise's farm! First, Benton took us and let us ride his horse Cherokee bareback - it was so thrilling! We mostly were just led around by Benton, but it was really exciting (although difficult to balance). After that, we shot rifles and shotguns at skeet targets - my first time ever shooting a gun! I shot a 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun, or something like that. I felt extremely manly completing this task, although I didn't actually hit anything. Oh well, maybe next time. Benton's family served us a delicious southern lunch, complete with sweet tea- I approved. After that, we headed out with some of the Cheraw folks (Alex Cortese, Nancy, Ross, and Maria) on a canoeing trip with Dr. Demarco. We ended up canoeing about 10 miles of the Little Pee Dee River. Ross and I were in a two-person canoe together, and although there were several attempts at tipping people over, everyone managed to stay relatively dry - until we got out and swam of course. At the end of the canoeing, we were received by a hot dog barbeque courtesy of the Methodist Church. After eating, we played Big Booty with Dr. Demarco and the pastor of the Church - priceless. Ok, so the pastor just watched; it was still fun though =] When we got back to the house, Ben came over and we watched Aladdin. About halfway through, though, we were getting hungry, so we all piled into the Rav (with Khadijah in the trunk) and drove off to Mcdonalds - bare in mind that I was still wearing my Wii Pajama Pants, which were bright, bright blue. Mcdonalds's shake machine was broken, so that meant no ice cream. Instead, Wendy's was the destination, and we hung out and ate there for a while. When we got back to the house, John Luttrell suggested that we all watch 'V for Vendetta'; I really enjoyed its alliteration, vocabulary, and wittiness. It's definitely a thinking person's movie. Check it out if you haven't already!
On Sunday, we spent the day at Myrtle Beach - we all came prepared with swiffer mop handles and small umbrellas (which we fashioned into beach umbrellas with duct tape), a cooler, and chairs that weren't really meant to be beach chairs but that did the job nonetheless. We all were quite a sight to behold at North Myrtle. We swam, took crazy 'jump shot' pictures, tried to spell 'Duke' with our bodies (which I failed at doing because I can't make a K very well, ahhahah), read, and had deep talks about our plans for the future. We also interrogated Alice, which is always fun :) After the beach, we stopped and ate at Hooters. Yes, the wings are, in fact, very good! The atmosphere was nice as well. We finally got back to the house (although about 10 minutes behind Noelle and her 9000000-mile-per-hour driving) and just chilled for the rest of the night, uploading all the photos from the day. And tomorrow.. BACK TO WORK!

A little more than halfway there.

So this is week 6 of my 9-week summer of service; it certainly is going by quickly. I have some really awesome pictures to share with you guys, but first, I thought I'd reflect a little on my summer so far - it seems like an appropriate time to do so.
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I set a goal at the beginning of the summer of understanding the reasons why an education gap and illiteracy exist in Marion County. I thought, at first, that this was something to be blamed exclusively on lack of initiative at home (by the parents). However, my experiences on the bookmobile have proven otherwise - many parents are thoroughly excited about checking out books, reading to their children, and taking advantage of the services the bookmobile offers. Perhaps because the bookmobile is a limited resource (in the sense of how many times it can make its routes), only a limited (although significant) number of patrons in Marion County are affected. Surely, the bookmobile alone cannot fix an education problem.
Working with kids in the puppet show has also revealed this blatant gap in reading level. The children I've encountered are sometimes several years behind in the level of reading that they can handle, with others only slightly behind. There are several possible factors I can identify here. The first that comes to mind is motivation - both on the part of the parent, and consequently, the child. Although it is difficult for me to analyze each child individually and decide whether his or her parents are reading to him or her every night and actively showing and interest in his or her life, I am sure that this contributes to the problem. This motivation is not just something that I am attempting to morally condemn parents for not having - I understand that single mothers, low-income families, and a multitude of other home life situations make setting aside time for anything that's not absolutely "life essential" difficult. But this "life essential" argument may be where the discrepancies arise - reading to your child or participating in his or her education should be a "life essential" task. Having involved parents who do this with their children, especially in the crucial 0-4 years, will certainly foster a better-educated community.
Frankly, one of my first perceptions of educational problems in Marion when I arrived at the library was a lack of better facilities. The Marion library, which I have mentioned before, is crowded (both administratively and on the "business side"), with a lack of children's programming areas and a collection that is cramped for space because of the physical limitations of the building. However, five weeks into this internship, I see that while better facilities would certainly help the situation to some extent, the library is rich with resources for all age groups - at least to an extent that no child should ever be hungry for knowledge when visiting.
For example, it offers the Mother Goose on the Loose program, a weekly workshop for babies and their mothers that emphasizes reading and singing. What's so interesting about MGOTL, as phrased by Cathy, is that "even if you don't have time [or literacy skills] to read to your child, every mother can share the pictures from a book or sing a nursery rhyme with him or her." This quote really shows the power of investing time in a child's life - doing whatever you can, when you can, to improve his or her life.
Undoubtedly, the issue of education is an extremely complex problem: one that we can't just "solve" quickly and easily. The last contributing factor that I have perceived both during my internship here and life experience is a striking educational counterculture amongst many economically unprivileged youth. I've perceived it as something emphasizing that it's "cool" to not care about education. What this has sprung out of it another complicated issue in itself, but I felt that this culture was worth mentioning of my analysis of the situation so far.
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So what has Summer Reading done to combat the issues of education Marion County is facing? We're putting the "fun" and "cool" back into learning and reading. Whether we're exercising creativity by making LEGO structures, or acting out stories about mischievous pigeons, Summer Reading seeks to get kids excited about both the library and reading in general. We reward them for the hours they rack up on their reading logs and try to emphasize that reading is something you can do whether you're sitting down with a good novel or just reading a comic book. I'm really happy with the moods and activities that the whole program has been pervading.
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And now, for some cool pictures! The expressions on the kids' faces really make this all worth it.


The kids making "friend finger puppets" with felt and craft supplies.

If you want a running tab on all the pictures and happenings going on during Summer Reading, make sure to check out the Marion County Library Summer Reading Page , as one of my internship responsibilities is updating this page pretty frequently. It has links to all the photo slideshows (being updated almost daily) and other happenings.

I hope you enjoyed this extremely long and reflective post =]

- David

PS: Why do I sign these? I guess it's like I'm writing a letter. Oh well.

Shish Kabobs

Again, I apologize for the lack of updates.
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Monday was primarily a day of paperwork and administrative tasks; I did a few clean-up things with Betterworld, helped out where I could upstairs with our classes, put things up on the website, and was just kind of generally helpful.
Tuesday was a lot of fun; I went to Mullins to do our Summer Reading activities with the kids there. Jean and I started out with reading a kids story to a preschooler for our Storytime section of the day. We also sang a little ditty based on a George Gershwin's "I've Got Rhythm, I've Got Music":

I've got summer,
I've got reading,
I've got my books, who could ask for anything more?

Jean belted this like a diva, and I casually harmonized along - we only had one kid in attendance, but it was a joyful experience seeing her get into it.

The rest of the day was all poetry - we gave the kids a sentence to complete ("I wish..." or "I used to be _____ but now I'm _____") and they wrote poems based on those. A lot of them were very creative:

I wish I had a house of spikes
I wish girls didn't exist
I wish I was a teenager
I wish me and Macey lived on Candyland

For some reason, the lived on Candyland brings me much joy. I'm not sure why it's so funny. Haha. Anywho, there were tons and tons of poems and we were working hard to get the kids' creative juices flowing. For lunch, Jean and Cathy and I went to Websters again - and it was deliciously sinful. I was sooooo full but it was ok; totally worth it. The rest of the day I just helped people with poetry more.

Today, we held our 1st annual Library Idol auditions. It was a lot of fun and we had kids singing songs like Cotton Eye Joe, Always Be My Baby, and selections from Vacation Bible School. We rented a really old amplifier system from the Middle School, which didn't work ideally but it was still plenty loud for what we were trying to do. Some of the kids were a little stage shy, but a few of them warmed up to it eventually.

Later, me and Mark (Cathy's son) worked on the play "Superheroes Save Summer Reading." I don't want to spoil it (hopefully we'll get a video up when it is performed), but I play Superman, and there are other superheroes ("reject ones") such as the Banana Twins, Cave Guy, and Cost Analysis Boy. For the record, I was the inspiration for Cost Analysis Boy. Long story involving my cynicism but anyways he's going to be funny. Cathy was really nice and let me leave early today to start our dinner that I was helping cook since we were having the Wises over tonight.

We were cooking chicken and shrimp kabobs with lime marinade. I got home and to my surprise, Khadijah and Noelle had done almost everything! It was a relief to not have a ton of things to do; all we had to do was skewer them and barbeque them. So everyone else pitched in and made them, and then I cooked them all by myself! I was really proud of myself; I had never done any type of meal like it before, and it turned out really well for the most part. It was a Paula Deen recipe, so I knew it had to be good. We also had corn on the cob, which was INCREDIBLE and easy to make (thanks Khadijah!). The dinner was great, the conversation with the Wises was relaxed and fun, and we had LOTS of desserts and cake. (I just realized I talk more about food in my blog than anything else - I apologize for the lack of introversion/reflection in this post; there's plenty I'd like to write at some point. You'll get it eventually.) The night was great and tomorrow should be fun as well. Blogging soon (hopefully!) again...

Cinder Fella, DDR, The Beach, Laser Tag, Seafood.

Wow, no posts in almost a week. Embarrassing. Rather than recounting day by day and detail by detail what happened since the last post, let me just say the last week has been filled with mostly LEGOs and working on the website. Nothing too interesting to post.. until Friday.

Friday was the day for me to start work on the Puppet Show with the children, so the day before, I assembled the PVC Pipe Puppet Theatre (total engineering skills necessary) and picked the play we would do: Stable Fella. It's basically a western twist on Cinderella, with the main character as a guy instead of a girl. It includes such celebrities as the Fairy Hogfather as well. Just the name Fairy Hogfather pretty much sold me on the play. So, anyways, I made copies of the script, highlighted parts, and made a tentative calendar of practices/events. We really don't have but 3 practices to get this show together, so I'm counting on the kids to be motivated.
Once Friday morning rolled around, I waited for the participants to arrive. We had about 7 - the perfect number for the play. That day was going to be a "read-through," where we did just that - read through the play. I distributed parts and watched the children read their parts aloud, scene-by-scene. This was where I began to notice the wide discrepancies in reading level. Of course, they were all different ages (from 8 to 12), but one of the 8-year olds couldn't even get through one sentence without serious help from his friends. He had apparently been held back in 3rd grade, too. Cases like this one make me think of the snowball effect that these cases can often grow into. First, the student gets held back and might lose motivation because his friends are in a different grade and moving on without him or her. Then, the students grades suffer even further, and he or she is just moving along at the bare minimum. How do we solve this problem? Or does the existing teaching system between school life and home life (this is a big one) need to be improved? Interesting things to ponder on.
Nonetheless, the read-through went well, and I feel like the parts I assigned were quite good matches, and the children seemed excited about the read-throughs.



On Saturday, Nancy and her friend Torsten came to Marion for a day at Myrtle, along with me, David Womble, Lauren, and Alice. We piled into the Rav (I love Rav roadtrips), with Torsten graciously taking the trunk, and drove down to the beach. We first stopped and had Gyros on the boardwalk, near the Gay Dolphin (yes, that's the name of the store), and then Nancy and I played DDR. Man, just like good old times - except our lack of practice caused us to fail multiple times. But it was still a lot of fun. We went down to the beach and just relaxed, played in the ocean, buried our feet... that kind of thing. After that, we went to go play Laser Tag - which was really fun, except for little kids who follow you around and keep shooting you. They are the ones who always end up doing better than me. Somehow, I managed to be the top person on our team though! So that was cool. We came back and had dinner at Dry Dock Seafood - for $15 we had a great seafood buffet. It reminded me a lot of Georgetown Seafood, before it closed. At home, Lauren and I played DDR, then we watched a few episodes of the funny British show, "Faulty Towers." A satisfyingly fun day for sure.

Rediscovering My Inner Child

Today I spent almost all day in the Mullins library. Jean and I got there early, setting up various LEGO parts that we took out of 3 huge bins of LEGOs that Cathy had lent us. We had so much fun organizing everything that we ended up spending a long time just building things ourselves! I made a cool jungle fortress and a fire truck. I honestly forgot how much I loved to play with LEGOs, and why - they spur so much imagination. I still vaguely remembered what stories and games I would come up with when I used to be obsessed with LEGOs, and when I picked these up, everything came back to me. We had a class come in at 2 PM and Jean and I assisted in getting the creative juices flowing with the kids. Everyone was very excited to display their new creations, and we took a lot of pictures for the website which I uploaded later in the day.
Back at home, we ate spaghetti for dinner, planned basically every weekend til the end of the summer (it's coming up so quickly!!), and I went to the gym with Lauren and Khadijah (where I decided that working out and watching Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Deal or No Deal, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire were a very good combination). Tomorrow, I think it's more Legos at the Marion library! I'll keep you guys posted.

Finding a Better World

Today at the library was almost entirely spent working on the Better World Books project I had started about a week ago. Now that I had shelves and shelves worth of books that had been pre-approved by BetterWorld for donation, I had to take them out of POLARIS, the SC library system, put them into a record list that would be used as a packing slip, and pack the books into boxes for shipping. For the books that were donated to us by patrons and never were library property, I had to type up the titles and authors of each book in a word document. This was a tedious process, but by the end of the day, I had a set of 6 boxes filled with books and packing slips, printed out UPS shipping labels, and scheduled pickup for tomorrow. I have another 5 almost ready for pickup that I should be able to finish on Wednesday. I also spent a lot of the day fixing the rest of the Bookkeeping computer - it didn't want to work with the SC Department of Revenue System (the programmers in Columbia did a really crappy job), so I had to play with it a little. Finally, I fixed up the Marion County Library Website - I kind of messed it up on Friday and had to undo some damage I did. Check it out! Click Here

Anyways, I guess you really didn't need to know all that technical stuff, but that's essentially all I did at work today. It overall wasn't super-exciting, but it was productive and I had fun listening to music while I was doing it. I thought you might be interested in what exactly Better World does; it's a really interesting company (also, it is a for-profit organization, although it does donate most of its profits to non-profits). Here's some background info from Wikipedia:

• They raise funding for over 80 non-profit literacy programs.
• They have collected over 10 million books, raised over 2.3 million for non-profit literacy programs, US$1.2 million for libraries and US$850,000 for student groups.
• Better World Books sells collected books through 17 online marketplaces, including Amazon.com, Ebay, and their own online e-commerce site, betterworldbooks.com.
• The main charities Better World Books donates to are:
  * Books for Africa– the largest shipper of donated books to the African continent – since 1988, shipped over 18 million books to 37 countries
  * Room to Read– supports the construction of schools, libraries & language labs, publishes local-language children’s books and funds long-term scholarships for young girls in South Asia & Africa
  * National Center for Family Literacy– provides literacy materials and training to over 6,000 family literacy programs across the United States
  * Worldfund in Latin America - supports high-quality education for impoverished children in Latin America
  * Robinson Community Learning Center in South Bend, IN
  * Prison Book Program in Quincy, MA

For dinner tonight, I made everyone Stouffer's Stir-fry (the way my Dad and I always make it, minus the barbeque sauce and Emeril essence) with the Oberst classic "yummy rolls." It is a family secret what keeps the yummy rolls so yummy. Sorry guys, some things just can't be disclosed in a blog. It was a big hit, and I was happy to do it. Tomorrow I get to go to Mullins and play Legos with the kids! Should be a fun day :)

*Note: The Pictures in today's blog post are of: 1) Some of the cats the kids in summer reading colored and 2) My supervisor Cathy doing our baby storytime program Mother Goose on the Loose, which I have told you guys about before.*

CRAYZAY Blog Update

Yeah, so I haven't blogged in 3 days, so I apologize for keeping you guys on the edges of your seats regarding my current life.

Almost all of Thursday was spent fixing the bookkeeping computer - for some reason, it decided to crash and I worked very hard recovering everything back to the way it was. I also noticed the horrible conditions that the library office employees have to put up with - the wiring and electrical setup of the office basement, where everyone works, is simply atrocious, with power strips daisy-chained together into power supplies, into more power strips; this is not only in violation of the fire code but very dangerous, considering the basement floods whenever it rains. More and more, I see the need for an expanded facility for this library - they just can't do their jobs well when they are so cramped and pressed for resources.

Friday I spent working with Cathy's son on the musical that we are putting on in July, and doing lots of administrative things for the Summer Reading schedule. I'm going to continue to plan the music week I'm doing as well. I cut out some artwork that the kids colored, too.

Saturday was a lot of fun. Most of the Cheraw people came down to visit while Don was here, so we all got to catch up and enjoy each others company. We went to Benton's graduation party, which was some of the best Southern food I have ever eaten in my life, and a lot of fun. I am really really tired so I apologize for the lack of personality in this post. sleeeeepp timeee.

A Musical Day

So today, as indicated by my post title, was an extremely musical day. It started out pretty standard; I cut out some of the coloring activities that the kids had done earlier in the day (yeah, I'm a beast at cutting out pictures of cats), and I also got to use the awesomest laminating machine ever. I am a little obsessed with laminating currently, frankly. Anywho, later in the day was the fun part - Cathy asked me to help her plan a music-themed week for summer reading!
Drawing on my knowledge of Kindermusik, I suggested things that I had enjoyed in the past for the kids: composing music (in a very simple way), making instruments, singing songs, naming tunes... things like that. I think it's going to be a really awesome week and I'm excited to be more directly involved. I think I am going to be helping out with directing kids in a puppet show, too.
Last, I did stuff that reminded me of musical dictation from music theory back at Duke. We are putting on several musicals at the end of summer reading, and one of them will have a spoofed version of a song called "Big and Loud" from Disney's little-known movie Cats Don't Dance. Unfortunately, there isn't any sheet music for Big and Loud, so I sat down with the song and transcribed an accompaniment for it. All that ear training finally paid off at Duke! I finished transcribing it near the end of the work day. It was good to get my musical brain going again and to sit down with my keyboard. I'm going to record it for her soon as a backing track. I also got the pictures downloaded from yesterday's activities, so intermingled in this post are photos of the Van Gogh mosaic we made and the Be Creative at Your Library display I made at the front counter.
At home, we ordered pizza and watched the movie Taken. It was really epic and reminded me of 24 a lot - except the guy did everything he needed to do in 96 hours; Jack Bauer could have done that all in a fourth of the time! Oh well, it was still really exciting and definitely worth a watch. Check it out if you can't. Enjoy!

Grammar, Quesadillas, and Coloring

BONUS POST from YESTERDAY:
My final project yesterday was sorting a bunch of magnetic words (those poetry-word-type things) by parts of speech - oddly enough, I enjoyed this task way too much (thanks Mrs. Gordon!). We are making a poetry activity where the kids get to write poems with magnetic words. It's going to be really awesome. Ok, that's all I wanted to say about that.
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Today I worked in the Mullins library. The Mullins library is even more crippled by lack of space and finances than the Marion library; its walls are plainer and its technology is much more limited. I'm working on making the latter a little better, and the former we worked on today, as I will explain later. After creating a cool front counter display that spelled out 'Be Creative At Your Library' and doing some inventory in the library, I took lunch. Alice and I went to Webster's Restaurant, which is definitely the best food I have had the entire time I've been in Marion or Mullins. I walked in and paid $8 for an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of deliciousness. The place was southern down to the core; it was an old historic house that had been converted into a sit-down buffet restaurant of sorts (for those from Georgetown reading this, it reminded me a lot of Lafayette if it were in a house, but with food a 1000 times better). Everything I had was amazing, and they had plates just like my Gigi has at her house - the blue ones with pretty artwork that are so distinctly southern.

When I came back from lunch, I had the enjoyable experience of setting up activities for the summer reading later in the day. Once I was done, I noticed a girl whose mother was busy playing on the computers. Cathy had to go but was reading to her earlier so I continued to read to her. We read 3 books or so, one of which was Corduroy, one of my personal favorites. She seemed to really enjoy it, and I got a great personal fulfillment over how excited she was to grab another book the minute we finished one.

My last activity in the day was an arts and crafts project with a bunch of kids from a local daycare where each student colored a tile and then all the tiles were put together in a specific order in a grid pattern. These tiles all formed the pieces of a giant version of Van Gogh's Starry Night. The kids were surprisingly artistic, and the finished mural was hung on the walls of the kids room in the library- a definite improvement to the plain whiteness of before.

At home, John Luttrell and I cooked quesadillas for everyone for dinner and then later we all watched Mulan! I forgot how much I loved that movie and also how musical and epic Disney Movies are. Lots of fun there. More fun to be had tomorrow.. hopefully..

Express Yourself - At Your Library!

Today was the kickoff day for the library's Summer Reading Program - what I had originally been commissioned to help out with in the first place, as the main part of my internship. I arrived at the library at 8:30, helping Cathy set up tables, registration forms, and logistical things like that. Benton Wise also arrived unexpectedly and helped me set up the registration tent and some other things. This was really cool, because we got to catch up and tell each other how our summers had been going. I also helped Benton with room picks and other administrative Duke stuff - it's really weird thinking that it's already been a year since I was about to come as a freshman.
Anyways, the kickoff started with a performance by the Aynor Elementary steel drum band. They were really awesome and talented, performing both popular and traditional island tunes. While the performances were going on, I helped sign parents and children up for the program, giving them reading logs, registration forms, and bookmarks (the same ones I had slaved over in the previous days were finally being put to use!). This was exciting because it seemed like all the parents and children were excited not just by the creative activities we had planned, but by the essence of the program itself - reading. I saw one particular boy (one my supervisor informed me was a "regular") who took 3 or 4 of the reading log tracking sheets, because he knew he would fill them all up. This was no joke - he is the reading hour champ 2 years running. This kind of enthusiasm for learning and reading really strikes a chord with me (woah, first music metaphor!) - it's so harmonious and beautiful watching children get excited about something that is so often forced and prodded into the education system. Getting people excited about reading is a difficult task, but I think that the Marion County Library is doing an excellent job of it. I'm excited to be a part of it.
After the steel drum band, we had a sidewalk chalk drawing contest. All the kids got sidewalk chalk and their own reserved spot on the walkway to draw a picture. We gave out prizes for humor, creativity, best of show, and many more. Cathy dressed up in a French artist's outfit (complete with beret, paint brush, and palette) and judged the winners. The kids were sad to see that the kickoff had come to a close after that, but I know that we have a lot of fun activities in store for them in the future. Tomorrow I'll be in the Mullins library, supposedly working on our musical that we're planning for the end of Summer Reading.
I came back from work and we ate rotiserrie chicken and steamed vegetables, then had some thought-provoking chats about controversial issues in dating and race relations. I'm glad that our house is at a point where we can discuss these types of things with noone getting offended. I find these types of discussions very interesting, and I hope we get to have more of them in the future; we have such a wonderful collection of intellectuals here that it truly is a joy and privilege to participate in discourse with them.
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Below is a video of part of the Steel Drum Band's performances.