Bothy Ballads of Aberdeenshire

I didn't go about looking for something like this, but a craft blog, led to a Scottish craft blog and then a link in the sidebar to this video. Bill's father's family was from Aberdeenshire and this is some of their music.



There are 4 parts of this little documentary. I never even knew this Bothy ballad music existed. And it seems that the Scots use competition to keep tradition alive, just like with the dancing. Apparently during the contest there is a break during which the cooks see how fast they can feed stovies to 700 people. We didn't know what stovies were either - kind of a shepherds pie on the stove top. We used this recipe to make some for dinner tonight, with Rosemary Biscuits. Home ec, social studies and geography, a bit of family history, and some language with the Scots strewn throughout the video.

Baby Einsteins - I don't think so

What finally brings me back to the blog - the headline I heard today on NPR - "Baby Einstein videos shown to delay learning!" Yes, finally the research is showing what the "ditch the TV"" proponents have warned about (among other things), that interaction with a live human being is the most important thing for children and TV is not a substitute for that.

Here are a few choice quotes from the TIME article:

Led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis, both at the University of Washington, the research team found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form. "The more videos they watched, the fewer words they knew," says Christakis. "These babies scored about 10% lower on language skills than infants who had not watched these videos."

"Babies require face-to-face interaction to learn," says Dr. Vic Strasburger, professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. "They don't get that interaction from watching TV or videos. In fact, the watching probably interferes with the crucial wiring being laid down in their brains during early development.

As far as Christakis and his colleagues can determine, the only thing that baby videos are doing is producing a generation of overstimulated kids. "There is an assumption that stimulation is good, so more is better," he says. "But that's not true; there is such a thing as overstimulation." His group has found that the more television children watch, the shorter their attention spans later in life. "Their minds come to expect a high level of stimulation, and view that as normal," says Christakis, "and by comparison, reality is boring."

Ewan and I started reading about TV when our oldest was still small and have tried to make media a very occasional thing. Erin did watch Sesame street when she was still under 5, but we were happy that we weaned all of us off of TV and now we don't even own one. Of course, we can still get sucked into watching comic sketches and other funny things on youtube. In our hearts I think most human beings would like to escape reality and it is easier to "interact" with the TV rather than real live people who might say the wrong thing or otherwise offend. But, for us, keeping the video to a minimum (and making it not too pleasant by having to watch on a tiny computer screen) has been a good choice and one we have not regretted. We all read and create much more than we would if there was a TV in our living room.
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Now if all that wasn't enough, another study shows that all the marketing geared toward children is working. If food has golden arches wrapped around it, they think it tastes better.

Help! I'm Holding a Haggis!

If you are the master of ceremonies/host of a Burns dinner about to carry in the haggis and then you realize you need to find the man with the scotch, what do you do? You can't just sit it down next to the coats! You spot a boy and hand it to him - "Take care of this til I get back!" Julius was pretty pleased to have the honor of holding the haggis. It was heavy, but he wasn't giving it up.

Tonight we experienced another rite of passage in the Scottish community. We got to attend a Burns dinner, well, the parents got to spend time behind the scenes and the kids danced on stage. Held near the birthday of the poet Robert Burns this dinner honors the poet and all things Scottish. One of the hallmarks of the night is the piping in of the haggis. There is a certain way to go about this ritual and the reading of Burns' poem "Address to a Haggis". Then there's dancing and music. The Reid School of Highland Dance was part of the evening's entertainment as well as Charlie Zahm.

While the girls were getting changed in the dressing area, Julius spent some quality time with one of the fathers outside in the hall. They were reading from a display case about the history of different American Flags. I knew the "Don't Tread On Me" flag really impressed Julius as later on he treated me and another mom to an informative talk about its meaning. (Yet another example of how they are learning all the time.) After the dancing was through most of the dancers and parents had a social time at the diner across the street. This group is a great bunch of people, there is only one thing that could have made it better, really brought our family's two cultural interests together. Come on, click it! You won't believe Gung Haggis Fat Choy!