AFRICA'S ONLINE READING & WRITING DIGEST CAMPAIGN

There is a writer in all of us

2010-05-09T10:37:00.003-04:00

You could be a treasure yet to be discovered!"No matter how quiet or gregarious, ordinary or unusual, every person's life is an unfolding narrative, with it's own cliffhangers, surprises, and touching revelations."The more you read the more likely you will find and acquire reading’s imperative value.Reading and writing is not rocket science. But as the late Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869) said in his famous introduction to the Thesaurus named after him:

"Some, indeed, are more highly gifted than others with this facility of expression, and naturally endowed with the power of eloquence; but to none is it at all times an easy process to embody, in exact and appropriate language, the various trains of ideas that are passing through the mind, or to depict in their true colors and proportions, the diversified and nicer shades of feeling which accompany them. To those who are unpracticed in the art of composition, or unused to extempore speaking, these difficulties present themselves in their most formidable aspect. However distinct may be our views, however vivid our conceptions, or however fervent our emotions, we cannot but be often conscious that the phraseology we have at our command is inadequate to do them justice. We seek in vain the words we need, and strive ineffectually to devise forms of expression which shall faithfully portray our thoughts and sentiments. The appropriate terms, notwithstanding our utmost efforts, cannot be conjured up at will. Like “spirits from the vasty deep,” they come not when we call; and we are driven to the employment of a set of words and phrases either too general or too limited, too strong or too feeble, which suit not the occasion, which hit not the mark we aim at; and the result of our prolonged exertion is a style at once labored and obscure, vapid and redundant, or vitiated by the still graver faults of affectation or ambiguity."

Like Roget. each of us with enough broad based reading can develop a set of words and phrases to become if not a prolific writer, but a fair enough good writer!

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

2010-04-18T09:06:00.001-04:00

Description and Reviews
From The Publisher:

"A revelatory examination of how the wildfire-like spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill

A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war. Activists use the Internet and e-mail to bring offensive comments made by Trent Lott and Don Imus to a wide public and hound them from their positions. A few people find that a world-class online encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wiki, is not an impractical idea. Jihadi groups trade inspiration and instruction and showcase terrorist atrocities to the world, entirely online. A wide group of unrelated people swarms to a Web site about the theft of a cell phone and ultimately goads the New York City police to take action, leading to the culprit's arrest.

With accelerating velocity, our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things better and more easily. You don't have to have a MySpace page to know that the times they are a changin'. Hierarchical structures that exist to manage the work of groups are seeing their raisons d'être swiftly eroded by the rising technological tide. Business models are being destroyed, transformed, born at dizzying speeds, and the larger socialimpact is profound.

One of the culture's wisest observers of the transformational power of the new forms of tech-enabled social interaction is Clay Shirky, and Here Comes Everybody is his marvelous reckoning with the ramifications of all this on what we do and who we are. Like Lawrence Lessig on the effect of new technology on regimes of cultural creation, Shirky's assessment of the impact of new technology on the nature and use of groups is marvelously broad minded, lucid, and penetrating; it integrates the views of a number of other thinkers across a broad range of disciplines with his own pioneering work to provide a holistic framework for understanding the opportunities and the threats to the existing order that these new, spontaneous networks of social interaction represent. Wikinomics, yes, but also wikigovernment, wikiculture, wikievery imaginable interest group, including the far from savory. A revolution in social organization has commenced, and Clay Shirky is its brilliant chronicler. "

The “best” are the brightest only in one narrow sense.

2010-04-16T11:23:00.001-04:00

Most of us are left out from life's Big prizes!
Like becoming "president for life!" or person of the year!
Winning an olympic medal, the nobel prize or becoming a famous pundit!
The list goes on, but many of us are simply better know for our backyard victories and unrealized goals!

An article by William Deresiewicz (a former professor at Yale) demystifies these myths, by revealing otherwise open secretes about elitism. The following are insightful excerpts from his article:

I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to elite colleges, often precisely for reasons of class. I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all.
I also never learned that there are smart people who aren’t “smart.”

But social intelligence and emotional intelligence and creative ability, to name just three other forms, are not distributed preferentially among the educational elite. The “best” are the brightest only in one narrow sense. One needs to wander away from the educational elite to begin to discover this.

Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more. Their souls do not weigh more. If I were religious, I would say, God does not love them more.

The first time I blew a test, I walked out of the room feeling like I no longer knew who I was. The second time, it was easier; I had started to learn that failure isn’t the end of the world.

But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most damning disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual. This will seem counterintuitive. Aren’t kids at elite schools the smartest ones around, at least in the narrow academic sense? Don’t they work harder than anyone else—indeed, harder than any previous generation? They are. They do. But being an intellectual is not the same as being smart. Being an intellectual means more than doing your homework.
If so few kids come to college understanding this, it is no wonder. They are products of a system that rarely asked them to think about something bigger than the next assignment. The system forgot to teach them, along the way to the prestige admissions and the lucrative jobs, that the most important achievements can’t be measured by a letter or a number or a name. It forgot that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.

An independent mind is independent of all allegiances, and elite schools, which get a large percentage of their budget from alumni giving, are strongly invested in fostering institutional loyalty.

Yet there is a dimension of the intellectual life that lies above the passion for ideas, though so thoroughly has our culture been sanitized of it that it is hardly surprising if it was beyond the reach of even my most alert students. Since the idea of the intellectual emerged in the 18th century, it has had, at its core, a commitment to social transformation. Being an intellectual means thinking your way toward a vision of the good society and then trying to realize that vision by speaking truth to power. It means going into spiritual exile. It means foreswearing your allegiance, in lonely freedom, to God, to country, and to Yale. It takes more than just intellect; it takes imagination and courage. “I am not afraid to make a mistake,” Stephen Dedalus says, “even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps as long as eternity, too.”
Being an intellectual begins with thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them. But students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so it’s almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that it’s even there. Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting A’s in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time. Paradoxically, the situation may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities. Some students end up at second-tier schools because they’re exactly like students at Harvard or Yale, only less gifted or driven. But others end up there because they have a more independent spirit. They didn’t get straight A’s because they couldn’t be bothered to give everything in every class. They concentrated on the ones that meant the most to them or on a single strong extracurricular passion or on projects that had nothing to do with school or even with looking good on a college application. Maybe they just sat in their room, reading a lot and writing in their journal. These are the kinds of kids who are likely, once they get to college, to be more interested in the human spirit than in school spirit, and to think about leaving college bearing questions, not resumés.
I’ve been struck, during my time at Yale, by how similar everyone looks. You hardly see any hippies or punks or art-school types, and at a college that was known in the ’80s as the Gay Ivy, few out lesbians and no gender queers. The geeks don’t look all that geeky; the fashionable kids go in for understated elegance. Thirty-two flavors, all of them vanilla. The most elite schools have become places of a narrow and suffocating normalcy. Everyone feels pressure to maintain the kind of appearance—and affect—that go with achievement. (Dress for success, medicate for success.) I know from long experience as an adviser that not every Yale student is appropriate and well-adjusted, which is exactly why it worries me that so many of them act that way. The tyranny of the normal must be very heavy in their lives. One consequence is that those who can’t get with the program (and they tend to be students from poorer backgrounds) often polarize in the opposite direction, flying off into extremes of disaffection and self-destruction. But another consequence has to do with the large majority who can get with the program.

That same day, as it happened, another student gave a presentation on Emerson’s essay on friendship. Emerson says, he reported, that one of the purposes of friendship is to equip you for solitude. As I was asking my students what they thought that meant, one of them interrupted to say, wait a second, why do you need solitude in the first place? What can you do by yourself that you can’t do with a friend?
So there they were: one young person who had lost the capacity for solitude and another who couldn’t see the point of it. There’s been much talk of late about the loss of privacy, but equally calamitous is its corollary, the loss of solitude. It used to be that you couldn’t always get together with your friends even when you wanted to. Now that students are in constant electronic contact, they never have trouble finding each other. But it’s not as if their compulsive sociability is enabling them to develop deep friendships. “To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?”: my student was in her friend’s room writing a paper, not having a heart-to-heart. She probably didn’t have the time; indeed, other students told me they found their peers too busy for intimacy.
What happens when busyness and sociability leave no room for solitude? The ability to engage in introspection, I put it to my students that day, is the essential precondition for living an intellectual life, and the essential precondition for introspection is solitude. They took this in for a second, and then one of them said, with a dawning sense of self-awareness, “So are you saying that we’re all just, like, really excellent sheep?” Well, I don’t know. But I do know that the life of the mind is lived one mind at a time: one solitary, skeptical, resistant mind at a time. The best place to cultivate it is not within an educational system whose real purpose is to reproduce the class system.
The world that produced John Kerry and George Bush is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders. The kid who’s loading up on AP courses junior year or editing three campus publications while double-majoring, the kid whom everyone wants at their college or law school but no one wants in their classroom, the kid who doesn’t have a minute to breathe, let alone think, will soon be running a corporation or an institution or a government. She will have many achievements but little experience, great success but no vision. The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have.

WHY A READING & WRITING CAMPAIGN?

2010-04-15T06:09:00.002-04:00

The purpose of this blog is to challenge and inspire Africans, period!

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Muriel Strode

This blog is not just about being able to read and write. Its about raising a real awareness to the value of reading, and being able to read a wide variety of books, magazines and newspaper articles. Such broad based reading is the only way we can challenge and inspire our people to become broad minded, independent, critical, analytical and creative thinkers and writers.
The developed world arena today is abundant with innovative creative writers and authors that are constantly redefining the way thoughts and ideas are communicated through the use of language that Africa simply just can't afford to be left out of this league anymore.

The luck of this awareness has left Africa with the least number of creative writers and authors, despite the fact that Africa has such diverse culture and natural beauty, let alone, being the cradle of Mankind!
Every prosperous and developed nation in the world today, has a national reading and writing campaign. Its one of the easiest and least expensive program for any government to run. The return on money put into such a program is immeasurable! Unfortunately, African leaders are the last ones to catch on with this idea as in so many other endeavors. Governments instead continue to impose draconian censorship and freedom of speech laws that hinder independent creative thinkers and writers. This is the prescription for the palpable poor reading, writing and communication skills in Africa.

If African leaders were ever called upon in a High Court for their sins of Omission, one of the first questions would be: "Why haven't you started national reading and writing awareness campaigns?

The value of reading and writing awareness correlates to a nations level of success and achievement in every endeavor that make a nation prosper or stagnate.
Even though, most of Africa is still poor and struggling, it too has its own human unwritten dramas of dreams and aspirations that are universal; with anectodes and narratives that can have their own epic cliffhangers, surprises and touching revelations of the traditional African spirit.
Many Africans have nurtured strength of spirit that somehow shields them from all the misfortunes they have to endure just to survive.
Being at the bottom of the developed worlds ladder may be a blessing in disguise for Africa, because from this position (with some will power!) Africa's potential has no where to go but up!

Being Obama's Brother

2010-01-10T11:00:00.013-05:00

"I still live in one of Africa's biggest slums, along with some 4.5 million others. We have little or no access to health care, no welfare, and no free schooling. The average income is less than $5 a day—and that's for those who find work as servants, taxi drivers, or garbage collectors. For the rest, there is nothing. My brother has risen to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world. In Kenya I hope to be a leader among the poorest, most powerless people on earth—the people of the ghetto." - George Obama Read the full article at Newsweek.com
If Obama's brother's life in a Nirobi slum can be turned into such a compelling story, there has to be more, yet, unwritten compelling stories out of Africa that can inspire us all!

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story | Video on TED.com

2010-01-07T22:09:00.002-05:00

Iowa Writers' Workshop: Michael Cunningham (part 4 of 4)

2009-12-25T16:51:00.001-05:00

Music is kind of like writing!
You've to read a lot to become a good writer!
The great thing is there are so many good writers today that that do so many different things with language to learn from!

Random Clips

2007-01-16T20:45:00.018-05:00

Reading builds a better foundation for a richer vocabulary, better critical thinking, creative and innovative writers!

"Much has been made of Mr. Obama’s eloquence — his ability to use words in his speeches to persuade and uplift and inspire. But his appreciation of the magic of language and his ardent love of reading have not only endowed him with a rare ability to communicate his ideas to millions of Americans while contextualizing complex ideas about race and religion, they have also shaped his sense of who he is and his apprehension of the world"

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DO YOU KNOW, GOOD, BROAD MINDED READERS, HAVE BETTER CHANCES FOR EMPLOYMENT IN TODAYS KNOWLEDGE BASED WORLD? AND GOOD TALENTED WRITERS IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD OFTEN EARN MILLION DOLLAR CONTRACTS ?
If you didn't know this, you're probably not reading or worse still, know or appreciate the value of Reading!

Better To Light A Candle Than Curse The Darkness

2006-09-09T17:48:00.014-04:00

WRITING GALLERY: 826 VALENCIA

Dave Eggers Blends Fact, Fiction of Sudanese "Lost Boys"

Writers' Proofs Project: 826 VALENCIA

LITERATURE: British Arts Council

I was reading Scott Turow's review of a novel by Tillie Olsen titled: "TELL ME A RIDDLE", and Mr. Turow said something that struck me as brilliant: " ... many members of the English department at the college he went to, regarded Creative writing as an academic discipline on the level of woodshop, ..."
Mr. Turow is an attoney, but also an author. So I began to wonder: How many of our African lawyers or any other profession are also authors?
My point is that you dont have to be trained as a writer to be an author. The mere effort of reading widely can enable anyone acquire the skills of writing creatively.

In 2005 the biggest celebration of African culture ever organised in Britain began with a huge display of art exhibitions and concerts that gave the world a revelation of the promise and potential of African culture and dignity. You had to see it to believe it

. If Africa puts its mind up to it, and embraces freedom and demoracy, there is plenty of light at the end of Africa's tunnel!

Your Vocabulary is the linchpin for your Language Skills!

Look at the following examples:

at the age of 4 you probably knew 5,600 words
at the age of 5 you probably knew 9,600 words
at the age of 6 you probably knew 14,700 words
at the age of 7 you probably knew 21,200 words
at the age of 8 you probably knew 26,300 words
at the age of 9 you probably knew 29,300 words
at the age of 10 you probably knew 34,300 words
college sophomore you probably knew 120,000 words

What this tells you is the more you read, the more vocabulary you will know. No matter what your age, you must continue to learn. Words are "symbols" for ideas. These ideas formulate knowledge and knowledge is gained largely through words. Words are gained through reading!

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Some suggestions which may help you:

Read. the more you read, the more words you will come in contact with.
Use new found vocabulary in your everyday communication (writing, speaking).
Become familiar with the glossary of your textbooks.
Become familiar with the dictionary. Understand the pronunciation keys as well as why there are multiple meanings for words.
Try to learn 5 new words a day. If you know these words - use them in your communication process. Without using these new words, it is a waste of your time.
Read. Read magazines, newspapers, the internet, the links on this sight and books from fields other than your major. Read books which interest you and concentrate while you read. - Adapted from Virginia Tech.

HOW CAN YOU HELP ?

By adding your voice!
By letting others know about this campaign!
By instilling the value of reading & writing in our youth!
By posting suggestions & writing short inspiring African stories or narratives!
By starting your own Local Community campaign and getting others, especially government leaders involved!

A link to labelled African flags

The first African United Nations Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Kofi A. Annan, made the following moving introduction to A Day in the Life of Africa: a consecutive 24 hour photographic journal by nearly 100 of the world's top photojournalists. I am including his introduction because its a wonderful narrative and therefore a good read. Kofi Annan

is also among the few African leaders that is also an exemplary writer we can all emulate.

"Africa is a continent of remarkable human, cultural, and natural diversity-a place of both tradition and transformation-and a deeply cherished home to millions of people. A the dawn of the 21st century, Africa is also a place of opportunity regained.

Certainly, Africans face challanges that would dishearten even the richest and most powerful members of the human family. Conflicts continue to cause untold human misery, disrupt normal economic life, swell the ranks of refugees and displaced persons, and frighten away investments even from countries that are not directly affected. The AIDS pandemic is taxing already overstretched public-health services and killing far more people than all the region's conflicts combined. Poverty is widspread and severe. Crushing debt burden, insufficient international aid, and high tariffs imposed on African goods make it extremely hard for African nations to compete in the global economy. For too many Africans, daily life is unremittingly grim and painful.

But there are also places- far more than are commonly recognized-where we are witnessing dramatic changes for the better. A majority of Africans now live under democratic systems, led by democratically elected leaders accountable to their peoples. Where attempts to undermine democratic gains have occurred, they have been met with strong resistance from people determined to see their rights respected.
A vibrant civil society is emerging, overcoming the legacy of colonial and authoritarian regimes that stifled the voices of ordinary people. African nations are also reforming their economies, and doing their utmost to liberate the creative and entrepreneurial energies of their peoples. They are confronting the scourge of AIDS with innovative community-based programs and relentless campaigns of public education. And they are beginning to harness the great power of the Internet for education, health care, and commerce. Africans have made clear not only their yearning for peace, stability, and development, but also their willingness to work for it and take contol of their own destinies.

A Day in the Life of Africa

gives us a complex and nuanced portait. These beautiful and deeply moving images compel us to see that despite the tragedy that aflicts some parts of the continent, the bright spots must not be forgotten, nor the achievements overlooked. The vast majority of Africans are striving to bring positive change to their countries, and in many places these efforts are begining to bear fruit.

The United Nations, for its part, has long championed African rights, progress, and self-sufficiency. I hope that people of goodwill throughout the world will see the great dignity and resilience of my fellow Africans, and join them in their struggle for the chance to create a better life that is every human being's birthright."

Kofi A. Annan
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Secretary-General, United Nations
Jan.1997 - Dec. 2006

I wish I could have written this blog in a single African language that all of us understood. The reality is, as we're all aware, there is no such language as of this writing. For historical reasons we all know, either English, French, or Spanish are the languages that unite us all. "Today, Africa is home to 53 independent countries, which mostly still have the borders drawn during the era of European colonialism."

"There are an estimated 1800 languages

spoken in Africa. Some African languages, such as Swahili, Hausa, and Yoruba, are spoken by millions of people. Others, such as Laal, Shabo, and Dahalo, are spoken by a few hundred or fewer. In addition, Africa has a wide variety of sign languages, many of whose genetic classification has yet to be worked out. Several African languages are also whistled for special purposes.
The abundant linguistic diversity of many African countries has made language policy an extremely important issue in the neo-colonial era. In recent years, African countries have become increasingly aware of the value of their linguistic inheritance. Language policies that are being developed nowadays are mostly aimed at multilingualism. For example, all African languages are considered official languages of the African Union (AU). 2006 has been declared by AU as the Year of African Languages."

I am using English

for this blog because its widely used in Africa and the world far more than any other laguange; from schools, to international business & diplomacy; and cross cultural communication within several countries.
This should, however, not negate the value of Africa's indigenous languages. Ones language is a large part of ones culture and heritage.

Understanding and being able to read and write effectively in English will not only enable us to meet the challanges of working, dealing and negotiating within the cross cultural global village of today, but also enrich our languages in the way we write and express our literature to the rest of the world.

Two reasons why much of Africa lags behind

in the way of arts, science, technology and literature, is that colonialisn had set up systems of second-class citizenship that hampered the progress of our people. Since the end of colonialism, the African despotism that replaced it, impossed a systematic censorship of books, periodicals, and newspapers from abroad that would have stimulated, inspired, and challenged minds in Africa to far greater horizons of experience in creativity and imagination.
I hope the internet breaks down these barriers henceforth.

While its a fact that many Africans have no access to computers and the internet; governments have access to these technologies and they can use it to spread this campaign through already existing means of communication, like radio, television, news papers and religious institutions.

DESIDERATUM :

“ ... The communication of our thoughts by means of language, whether spoken or written, like every other object of mental exertion, constitutes a peculiar art, which, like other arts, cannot be acquired in any perfection but by long-continued practice. Some, indeed, are more highly gifted than others with a facility of expression, and naturally endowed with the power of eloquence; but to none is it at all times an easy process to embody, in exact and appropriate language, the various trains of ideas that are passing through the mind, or to depict in their true colors and proportions, the diversified and nicer shades of feeling which accompany them. To those who are unpracticed in the art of composition, or unused to extempore speaking, these difficulties present themselves in their most formidable aspect. However distinct may be our views, however vivid our conceptions, or however fervent our emotions, we cannot but be often conscious that the phraseology we have at our command is inadequate to do them justice. We seek in vain the words we need, and strive ineffectually to devise forms of expression which shall faithfully portray our thoughts and sentiments. The appropriate terms, notwithstanding our utmost efforts, cannot be conjured up at will. Like “spirits from the vasty deep,” they come not when we call; and we are driven to the employment of a set of words and phrases either too general or too limited, too strong or too feeble, which suit not the occasion, which hit not the mark we aim at; and the result of our prolonged exertion is a style at once labored and obscure, vapid and redundant, or vitiated by the still graver faults of affectation or ambiguity. ...” From the : Introduction to Roget’s International Thesaurus

THE WONDER OF WORDS :

My love of stories was first nurtured by my family -- and then at the public library.

By Arlene Alda

From Reader's Digest
September 2005

My mother, Jean, would sit at the kitchen table in our Bronx apartment and tell us tales of Russia, the old country -- stories about "Minsk" and "Pinsk" and "Chelm," the village of simpletons. My father, Simon, would tell us jokes:

"There was this poor Yiddish scholar. He said to a friend, 'If I were a Rothschild, I'd be richer than a Rothschild.' 'Why?' asked the friend. The scholar said, 'Because I'd do a little teaching on the side.'"

I was the youngest and most insistent of the three children in our family -- what they called a pest in those days. "Pleeeease can I have candy?" I would ask. "Pleeeease tell me another story. Pleeeease read to me."

My mother, along with my older sister, Shirley, usually gave in. Over and over, I would listen to the dangerous adventures of Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, The Gingerbread Man and Cinderella. They came to life in my mind, along with the kindly Mother Goose, with her wire-rimmed eyeglasses. Even though I never understood why Humpty Dumpty was an egg, or why Jack Horner put his thumb in a pie, it never seemed to matter.

What I heard was the rhythmic music of it all, and the stories became easy to recite. I would carefully examine the color illustrations in the old falling-apart-at-the-seams book. Most of all, I would soak up all the attention I got during those reading times when closeness, imagination, curiosity and love of learning were forged.

Books cost money and money was scarce in those Depression days in the 1930s and '40s. The one small bookcase in the hallway of our home contained some worn copies of fairy tales, a few volumes of classic authors, like Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde, and an encyclopedia. The single encyclopedia volume our family had went from A to B.

That first book in the set was sent to us free of charge, no obligation...If you weren't satisfied, you could still keep it. I know that my parents were satisfied, but we just couldn't afford to buy the rest of the alphabet. So if I needed to look up any word starting with a C or beyond, the library was the place to go.

That was not such a hardship. I loved the Bainbridge Library in our neighborhood, with its seemingly endless supply of stories. Besides which, the library was the place everyone I knew went to borrow, read and return. All for free. Free!

Like many immigrants then and now, my mother knew that education was key. Early on, she would encourage me by saying, "You can be anything that you want to be in life." That meant that I could have a career, even though not many mothers pushed their daughters in that direction in those days. My mother, however, was also practical. When I was ready for college she told me, "Get your teacher's license. You never know..." Four years later, I graduated from Hunter. I had taken her advice, kind of...

But first, I earned money by playing the clarinet, which was my passion. It was the thing I most wanted to do. Later on, when I changed careers, that same passion hung on. It transferred from music to photography and to writing children's books. I write my books for young children. Why young children, you might ask? Because I'm touched by their innocence. And I have this insistent need to pass on the values that I hold dear. The oldest of my grandchildren -- Emi, Scott, Jake, Izzy and Livvie -- have all asked me at one time or another why I don't write for older kids -- what they call chapter books.

My answer is, I guess I'm not yet finished saying, "Look, look. Isn't this amazing? Isn't that beautiful? Isn't this funny?"

And I know I'm not finished hearing "Pleeeease read me a story" in my own mind. I'm not finished being a young child myself. Maybe sometime later I'll change, but this is good for now.

When I go to bookstores these days, I get overwhelmed. There's so much competition for a kid's attention. I don't necessarily mean between authors and publishers. I worry that TV, DVDs, videos, CDs, cell phones and other machinery will replace the intimate quiet family activities that foster closeness and imagination.

Recently I went to visit my nine-year-old grandson Jake's class. I was there to read some new stories of mine. Jake smiled from ear to ear as he introduced me to everyone. "This is my grandma," he said. "She writes books for kids."

I was happy to see the eagerness on all the children's faces. I talked to them about the weather and about planting flowers and about looking around to see things that they might not have noticed before. I talked to them about stories and writing. And then I read to them.

The kids asked intelligent questions. They were bright and cheerful and full of ideas. They had even written stories of their own, illustrated with their own drawings. They loved the human contact, the interaction between us.

So did I. There was hope for the future, I thought.

I'm lucky. I have a wonderful husband, three terrific grown daughters, seven beautiful grandchildren, a job that I love and a life beyond my wildest dreams. Even if Rothschild had what I have -- like the old joke says -- I'd be richer than a Rothschild.

Why?

Because...I'd do a little teaching on the side.

Arlene Alda, wife of actor Alan Alda, is the author of "The Book of ZZZs," "Morning Glory Monday," and nine other books for children. Her new book, "Did You Say Pears?," is due out next year.