Josh Shaine

It was all well and good to go flitting about and casting spells, but nobody seemed to appreciate the prep work that went into the daily routine of magic and granting wishes and the like. She loved Mal and did everything she could to make him happy, within the limits of her charge, but there were times when his needs exceeded her ability to anticipate them.

This was one of those times.

Somehow, Mal had gotten himself locked up. "Something I said" was all the explanation she'd been able to coax out of him, but he looked pretty embarrassed and miserable down in the cell. (Why did every castle seem to come with a dank prison?) When she asked if she should get him out, he shook his head and advised her not to.

Nixie frowned. "What can I do, then? What do you need?"

"I need a string. After that, maybe I will be able to leave. Maybe"

She'd disappeared and reappeared with a ball of twine. He shook his head, and before he could say more, she'd vanished again. When next she arrived in his cell, carrying several kinds of string, he stopped her, and showed her what he needed.

Off she went to the barn yard. His instructions had been clear - and what he demanded of her here was beyond her ability to manage. She cursed and returned, dismayed, to the cell. "All of the animals are hale and hearty," she reported.

He, too, cursed. Then he thought for a bit, and sent her to the laundry. She looked about and poked and prodded. With a big smile, or at least as big a smile as her size would permit, she tossed some of her fairy dust, grabbed her prize, and hastened back to Mal. He took it from her, twisted and turned it, and tied a couple knots in it.

She was startled by a loud noise behind her - the guard, demanding to know if Mal had changed his mind! When Mal said he had, the guard opened the door and none-to-gently helped Mal upstairs.

The ruling noble (not that she could remember which title went with which castles) looked down at her friend. "So! Now you are willing? I knew a bit of time in the cell would change your mind." He turned to the guard. "Put him in the next room. He knows what to do." She followed them.

A few minutes later, from the next room, came music - alternately soothing and inspirational. The noble smiled vacuously. The guard returned.

"Mal, do we have to stay any more?"

He continued to play, but talked softly. "I don't know if I am going to be permitted to leave just yet."

"If we left, where could we go to be safe?"

Mal gave brief consideration. "We just need to get into the next duchy - across the river. But I don't think there's a bridge or a boat nearby."

Nixie giggled. "If you are ready to go, I think we'll be fine. Just keep playing." She blew some fairy dust on his fingers. "Now step away. Even as his fingers worked as if to play, the music continued without interruption.

Out the window they went, and over to the river, which was too strong for him to swim across.

A bit more fairy dust and a two bits of wood grew - one flat and the other long and thin. Mal stepped onto it, with Nixie on his shoulder, and he poled them across, surely if not swiftly. As soon as they were safely on shore, the wood returned to being a piece of bark and a twig.

"I didn't know you could do all that," exclaimed he.

With another big grin, she replied.

"Well, I am a Harper's Fairy."

On hiding your gifts:
If one is unwitting about one's intelligence, then hiding it is not the issue, because it is not a goal. However it is still quite possible for it to remain hidden *depending on the area of giftedness* and how it manifests.

If one is aware of one's intelligence and one *wishes* to hide it, the ways to do so are myriad and moderately trivial, personality depending. The simplest is near-silence. Few or zero comments makes it pretty hard to judge. Then whatever work you do is what you are evaluated on by the teachers and, to a lesser extent, your age mates..

A bright enough kid can (and does) figure out a system for seeming to fit in. A socially adept kid can even fit in without such extreme measures - and they often do. Top 1% can and does include some kids who do not stick out unless they choose to, after a certain age - and sometimes that age is 2 or 3.

On finding true peers: Miraca Gross's paper on Sure Shelters is perhaps the best at discussing this that I have read, in terms of presenting the issues - for all that it has bits that are... more technical than necessary for this particular discussion.

The introverts among that 1% are seldom seeking more than 1 or 2 "best friends." The extroverts are... often frustrated. However, we don't need a 1-1 match in interests. However divergent we may be as we spread in aptitude from the center of the bell curve, complementary personalities exist sans depth of mutual interests. And... as one delves into the worlds of specialization, one finds others with that common obsession passion! The age gap may be a tad wider than expected by the unassuming parental units, but the shared focus is more powerful than that chronological split for many.

(My personal example of the age issue was when I asked my mother if I could bring a friend with me for a particular chess tournament and she gave her permission. She was more than a bit taken aback by the 45 year old cabbie at her door for the ride north to the tournament. *grins at the memory*)

(For the examples of the divergent interests/deep bonding, you will have to wait for the book.)

So, if you were going to tell a class of counseling psych grad students about me, in 15 minutes or less, what would *you* tell them?

Sheroes is was down, but should be back up shortly. (11:17pm, EDT) is back up now. (11:30pm, EDT)

When one source stops writing about group politics, another source starts.

It is both very creative and rather anachronistic how their society is run.

A friend linked me to a powerful letter from a man to his daughter:
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2011/05/16/your-body-is-not-so-powerful-it-can-drive-others-to-distraction-a-letter-to-a-teenage-girl-about-clothing-modesty-and-slutwalk/

I commented that there should be a note to the boys, too, on that topic. Sarah S's letter is shorter and a bit less over the top, but no less important, in my opinion:

a) Strength in a boy is not about having sex with girls who don't want to. Strength is about resisting that biological urge and protecting them from boys who don't.

b) If you act like an adult, a lot of your friends won't get it. Not now. But they will later, and they'll be immensely admiring about how early you figured it out.

c) Despite what the media say, research shows that men with one sexual partner, in a loving relationship, are happier than men with multiple sexual partners. Be good to them and you'll be good to you, too.

(Thanks, Sarah S!)

For all that one may wish to live forever, truth be told, we can only expect to live on in the impact we have on other people.

There are those like Jesus or Buddha whose footprints on the future are huge. Shakespeare, Aristotle, etc.

But for lesser luminaries - especially those whose published works are limited (to non-existent), our person-to-person connections are the best we can normally expect.
*********

To a limited extent, the Internet has changed this. Anybody can put up verbiage or images that live on past her or his lifetime. This is not to suggest that it is all that likely, but the hope is there. The chance exists.

My mother's published works are limited in scope. What Can We Do With Blocks, What if Tiny Little Dinosaurs Played House, and other such works, entertaining as they are, tend not to be the sorts of things that people go looking for - and, even when they find them in English or French, they tend not to be life changers.

So, it was with a great deal of pleasure that for the first time, it was one of my mother's pieces that I've put on line that prompted contact from a desperate parent seeking help. Normally, it is my work on underachievement that catches the attention, and Patterns for Charlie gets read as an afterthought if at all.

Her work matters. This is not news to me.

That it matters to others and will for years to come puts a smile on my face.

I was amused when I looked at how I would do this one, so I am doing it.

To play along, make a post with the following statements in order of when they occurred in your life (feel free to add/remove/edit as appropriate).

[I only did first occurrences of each. Gets confusing for me otherwise.]

Become gainfully employed.
Buy a car.
Start college.
Graduate high school.
Get laid off.
Move out of parent's house for good.
Buy a house.
Meet future spouse.
Get married.
Try to start a business (and succeed).
Get a cell phone.
Graduate college.

Haven't done:
Move across the country for a job.
Have kids.
Get divorced.
Get remarried.

Three years ago, long about now, my mother died abruptly, though she had been dying in quiet (and not so quiet) ways for a while, before and after we noticed.

She left behind 2 and a half novels, 5 children's books (4 of which had peel-and-sticks), and a broad variety of poetry, including her (almost) epic quasi-children's poem-story, Ermengard Bear.

As the yahrzeit candle burns down, I'm contemplating what to do with her works. I like her writing, for the most part, but that does not mean there is a market for it. I kind of like the idea of tampering with it - bringing the out-of-date pieces up to date or twisting them to make the out-of-date parts work in a modern or beyond-modern world.

Yet, I am somewhat daunted. I am not among those who has every done NaNoWriMo nor even written any complete fiction longer than perhaps 10 pages (unless you count my research papers and technical writing documents). To rewrite, to undo and redo what was carefully written by my mother, may be a bigger task than I can handle - or than I really want to handle.

Yet, if I wish to give her work a longer life than my own death, something more must be done than merely having them on an unlinked, unsought, unlooked at website.

There are parts of my mother that I miss, parts that I would share given my druthers. Some of these are reflected in her writing. Some are reflected in mine.

Perhaps I can make this 4th year after her death the year in which either Moonlight in Gstaad or Fandango make there way from my own personal slush pile into the light of day (or laptop screen).

After all, I have homework that needs procrastinating from! And if anything would be a fitting tribute to my relationship with my mother - beyond my having gotten my undergrad degree on her birthday - it would be putting off my class assignments to work on her novels!

Farewell to the Court

Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expir'd,
And past return are all my dandled days;
My love misled, and fancy quite retir'd
Of all which pass'd the sorrow only stays.

My lost delights, now clean from sight of land,
Have left me all alone in unknown ways;
My mind to woe, my life in fortune's hand
Of all which pass'd the sorrow only stays.

As in a country strange, without companion,
I only wail the wrong of death's delays,
Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well-nigh done
Of all which pass'd only the sorrow stays.

Whom care forewarns, ere age and winter cold,
To haste me hence to find my fortune's fold.

Sir Walter Raleigh

My father sold the house.

That's a saga all its own and not one that I will write about now. But a side effect of his having sold the house is that it needs emptying of (most of (don't ask)) his stuff and the family's accumulated stuff over the nearly 50 years that we were in it.

Up in the attic, today, Susan and I found a number of pictures of family - most especially of my mother.

Not a small number of pictures, at least by my (nuclear) family's standards. Portraits from when she was 1, 2, 3, 4. A variety of pictures with her mother, with her friend, etc. A couple pics from a couple years with her on a pony. Family outings - not scads, but a few. Looks of intense concentration, looks of joy. Very familiar expressions to me, even though they came to me in an older face, decades down the road.

We found her baby scrap book, with a picture of my late great uncle Sam looking dapper and gay, indeed. Her "first business correspondence," a letter from American Telephone & Telegraph congratulating her on her acquisition of stock and encouragement to keep her address updated - along with her father's response to them, noting her relative youth and her hopes that the company will send her dividend checks regularly.

This is stuff I've never seen. Never ever heard discussion of.

Her father died when she was very young - but there are pics of her step-father, as well as of her father.

Was there a birth scrap book of me? Of my siblings? I know that there were pics aplenty of my brother at one point. A few of us - not lots, by any means - odd enough in a family that had camera after camera come into the house.

There's no real direction to this post. I will probably scan a bunch of the photos into the computer at some point, to share with those who care - and there are a few. Meanwhile, though, I am enjoying the look backward, if not so much the questions that twin with it --> Why did my mother's father's family not stay in touch after their son's untimely death? Why was there such a difference in upbringings? My sense has been from other families with whom I deal that there is some degree of consistency in those regards.

*shrugs* these are not questions I have any expectation to have answered - they just wander into and out of my consciousness.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kpzaEp0IVw4J:truthonthemarket.com/2010/09/15/we-are-the-super-rich/+%22we+are+the+super+rich%22&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

If you post it, you must expect it to live forever.

I want to thank those of you on LJ who responded to my questionnaire!

4% of my respondents were LiveJournal members. They recommended an average of 8 books each. The most frequent recommendation was Ender's Game, which was not recommended by anybody who did not identify LJ as their source for the survey.

I will probably run a follow-up survey aimed just at fiction, as more of you listed fiction than any other group, and I would be interested in seeing more of that input.
*******

The overall responses showed those to be the 2nd and 3rd most frequently cited books (22% and 20% respectively), with the Davidson's Genius Denied as the book mentioned the most, with 24% of the survey-takers endorsing it.

104 total books were mentioned, including 15 fiction titles. In addition, Hoagies Gifted was mentioned multiple times.

Top Nine Titles:
1. Genius Denied
2. Misdiagnosis And Dual Diagnoses Of Gifted Children And Adults
3. Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom
4. Exceptionally Gifted Children by Miraca Gross
4. A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children by Webb, Gore, Amend, & DeVries
6. Creative Homeschooling by Lisa Rivero
7. Living with Intensity, edited by Daniels and Piechowski
7. 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options by Ruf
7. Guiding the Gifted Child by James T. Webb, Meckstroth, & Tolan

No other book was mentioned more than 10% of the time.

Again, thank you for your help!

One of the questions that arises along the way is "Are gifted children at risk?" Inevitably, the question brings the reply "At risk of what?"

Dropping out, depression, drugs, delinquency, and death (self-inflicted) are the answers. 4 of these five are pretty commonly discussed within the gifted lit - and often researchers seek to support or refute them. There are lots of stories and fewer statistics - and what stats there are may be misquoted, misremembered, or misremembered.

For the moment, I am going to focus on delinquency. I've been reading one of the studies that set out to disprove the notion that violent adolescents are any likelier to be gifted than the general population: High intelligence and severe delinquency: Evidence disputing the connection, by Dewey G. Cornell, in Roeper Review, May 92, Vol. 14, Issue 4.

Dr. Cornell had 157 violent offenders to examine and he did a pretty thorough job of illustrating his general point. Of the 157, "only 2 subjects obtaining scores greater than 130, and 2 more scoring greater than 120" on their full scale IQs (WISC-R or WAIS-R). He took it further, correctly observing that prison populations are known for higher performance scores than verbal.

"There were 13 subjects with Performance IQ's of at least 120. This included two subjects with IQ's greater than 140 and two more with IQ's greater than 130. In contrast, there were only 3 subjects with Verbal IQ's of 120 or higher, and all 3 had equivalent or higher Performance IQ's."

13 out of 157 is not overrepresented for 120+ (9% is the expected percentage.)

He talked a bit about race, and looks at the fact that the 'minority' members of the 13 above 120 performance IQ group were only 31% (4 of 13) vs. being 75% of the below 110 population. From there, he continued to explore his 2nd question, "Do highly intelligent delinquents differ from other delinquents in their social background and prior adjustment?"
*******

And that is where I think Dr. Cornell made his mistake.

The white population of the total 157 group was 44, or 28% of the whole. The number of whites who scored 120 and above on the Performance Scale was 9, or more than 20% of the white population, when 9% would have been expected.

Cornell wrote, in conclusion: "The results of this study provide evidence that high intelligence is not associated with severe delinquency. In fact, the majority of delinquents are of below average intelligence, and only a few delinquents obtained scores above the high average range. While it is possible to identify delinquents with high intelligence, it is not reasonable to infer a connection between delinquency and high intelligence."

I think he missed a vital segment of his population.
********

This is hardly conclusive to prove risk, let alone to be as definitive in the opposite direction from Cornell. But it does at least raise an unanswered question: Might there be a greater risk for gifted (high performance scale) white adolescents to become seriously delinquent than for the norm?

I'm prepping a bibliography for a class. If you have an opinion on the topic, would you mind sharing it? Thanks!

What is your favorite book about gifted kids, gifted education, gifted adults, or generally about giftedness?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/53LBKP6

One of the problems I have with the NYC Islamic Community Center uproar (a.k.a. the "Ground Zero Mosque" (*sigh*) is the double standard of the right wing/conservative treatment of non-Christian religions vs. Christian religions.

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c0de059c122e533b0256073298b653f8&tab=core&_cview=1

The link is to the program that permitted/caused the subject line - U.S. soldiers having been punished for not having gone to one of these "Spiritual Fitness" concerts that was overtly and explicitly a Christian event.

I don't hear Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin raising their voices.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/8/19/113223/843

"The week prior to the event the informed us of a Christian rock event that was about to take place on Thursday the 13th.

"On Thursday 13th at 1730 we were informed that instead of being dismissed for the day, the entire company (about 250 soldiers) would march as a whole to the event. Not only that, but to make sure that everyone is present we were prohibited from going back to the barracks (to eliminate the off chance that some might 'hide' in their rooms and not come back down).



While these concerts are not run by the Chaplain's office - they are the brain-child of the Commanding General, who started them at another fort the year before.

"the Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concert Series"

The following links are from the Peninsula Warrior - the "authorized publication for members of the U.S. Army. Contents of the Peninsula Warrior are not necessarily official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Fort Eustis or Fort Story."

It is published by the Fort Eustis Public Affairs Office.

Christian artists herald season with songs of praise, worship
http://www.forteustiswheel.com/articles/2009/12/11/news/top_stories/top08.txt

"Following the Apostle Paul’s message to the Ephesians in the Bible, Christian rock music’s edgy, all-girl band BarlowGirl brought the armor of God to the warriors and families of Fort Eustis"
http://www.forteustiswheel.com/articles/2010/07/21/military_life/religious_activity/religious01.txt

"Contemporary Christian music lovers immersed themselves in God’s message of hope and salvation during the SonicFlood concert July 16 at Fort Eustis’ Jacobs Theater."
http://forteustiswheel.com/articles/2010/07/23/news/top_stories/top03.txt

"Like the messenger angel Gabriel, contemporary Christian music singer-songwriter David Phelps trumpeted God’s message of hope and salvation to an audience of Soldiers, civilians and family members Feb. 19 at Jacobs Theater on Fort Eustis."
http://www.forteustiswheel.com/articles/2010/03/05/news/top_stories/top01.txt

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VFNX9LB

I'm sitting, staring at my computer, thinking that while I could pick up the next piece of entertaining fiction, I don't have to... So, I figured to ask folks here, on FB, on Sheroes, and on a TAG list or two what I should work on next.

Okay - what should I work on next?

Yes, Sheroes, et al, are down. Yes, it's being worked on.

Sheroes is up.

"a log file got too big. sorry for the delay in getting this fixed ... this does not happen that often and there was NO error message to indicate the problem."

Many of you, I know, do not wander the pathways of Facebook. And many others read news at varying levels of attention.

So, please let me call to your attention the words of David Souter, Harvard Commencement speaker. It is worth a read. It is worth repetition. And it will be discussed and considered for a long time to come.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/05/text-of-justice-david-souters-speech/

I cannot decide, easily, which of his words to excerpt here...
"Even the First Amendment, then, expressing the value of speech and publication in the terms of a right as paramount as any fundamental right can be, does not quite get to the point of an absolute guarantee. It fails because the Constitution has to be read as a whole, and when it is, other values crop up in potential conflict with an unfettered right to publish, the value of security for the nation and the value of the president’s authority in matters foreign and military. The explicit terms of the Constitution, in other words, can create a conflict of approved values, and the explicit terms of the Constitution do not resolve that conflict when it arises. The guarantee of the right to publish is unconditional in its terms, and in its terms the power of the government to govern is plenary. A choice may have to be made, not because language is vague but because the Constitution embodies the desire of the American people, like most people, to have things both ways. We want order and security, and we want liberty. And we want not only liberty but equality as well. These paired desires of ours can clash, and when they do a court is forced to choose between them, between one constitutional good and another one. The court has to decide which of our approved desires has the better claim, right here, right now, and a court has to do more than read fairly when it makes this kind of choice. And choices like the ones that the justices envisioned in the Papers case make up much of what we call law."

Italics and bolding mine.

I'm going to screen the answers to this - please note if you want your answers to remain screened and if you are open to follow-up questions.

Obviously, this is targeted towards professionals in the field of gifted education, but I am interested in whichever answers anybody wishes to offer to me!
**********

Were you in a gifted program growing up? How did your having been/having not been in one affect your interest in and approach to this field?

What has changed in your work over time?

Which part of your work do you find the most difficult?

How do you respond to claims that giftedness is elitist or doesn't matter once one has left school?

Do you prefer working with kids, with adults, with whole families, or with school systems? Why?

Some states have gifted education under the Special Education (SPED) umbrella, some do not though they still recognize gifted education, and some states have no support or requirement of services for gifted students at all. Of the two approaches to services - in or out of SPED - which do you think works better and why?