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Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media
Department of English
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611

Phone: (352) 392-6650, ex. 285
Fax: (352)392-0860
email: jcech@english.ufl.edu

Transcripts for December 1999

Programs #68-90

Program #68
December 1, 1999 -- Jim Haskins Commentary Rosa Parks Day

This is Recess and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Here's Jim Haskins, with some thoughts for Rosa Parks Day.

Rosa Parks, it is said, refused to move from the seat she had takenat the front of that Montgomery, Alabama, bus on December 1st, 1955 because she was, quite simply, tired -- tired from working a long day as a seamstress for 75 cents an hour. That's how this soft-spoken, dignified woman in her forties had put it for interviewers: she was just tired. Well, truth be told, Ms. Parks was tired about a lot more than that and had been for some time. She was tired of her low wages, tired of being demeaned by the white bus drivers, who forced African American riders to deposit their fare, then leave the bus to enter it through the rear door, sometimes to be left in the bus's fumes because the driver wouldn't wait. She was tired of having to give up her seat to white men, as was the custom, even if she was sitting in what was considered the black section of the bus.

Rosa Parks, in short, was tired of segregation, tired of Jim Crow Laws, tired of seeing things like fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin getting arrested earlier that year for sitting in a bus seat that a white passenger wanted. She was bone tired of the whole degrading mess that racism had made in this country, and I think she was tired of how slow the progress had been toward equality and justice in America -- after all, she had been quietly but actively working toward these ends most of her life, from the time she became a member of the NAACP in the early 1930s.

So when Rosa Parks says she was tired, it may be the metaphoric understatement of the century. And what this simple, powerful act says to young people today is that the smallest individual action does matter -- it does matter what you choose to do with your life, the moral stands you take, the things you decide, deep in your heart, that you won't stand for any more, the things that you're just too tired to take for another moment. A kind, gentle lady galvanized the Civil Rights Movement; now, one hopes the example of Ms. Parks' heroism will say to young people, what are you going to do?

Recess is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT-FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media.

Program #69
December 2, 1999 -- Rita Smith "Lost and Found" Essay The Letter "X"

This is Recess and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Rita Smith's "Lost and Found Essay" today is about one

The transcript for this program is currently not available.

Recess is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT-FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media.

Program #70
December 3 , 1999 -- Koren Stembridge Internet Essay Cool Sites for Cold Days

This is Recess and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Today, our internet correspondent, Koren Stembridge, has some ideas for holiday surfing.

It's December, 1999. You have only a few weeks left to teach your friends and family the words to Auld Lang Syne so that you won't be the only ones faking it when the big clock turns! Where do you find the words to this elusive tune? Well on the web of course! And while you're logged on, take yourself and kids in your life on virtual tour of the December holidays.

Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, begins at sundown on December 3rd. A fun place to begin learning about Chanukah at Torah Tots - with its great activities for kids - sing Chanuka songs, and play the dreidel game online! Next, stop by the Chanuka Resources Site to learn the history behind this holiday. Finally, don't miss the Virtual Jerusalem page for a beautiful and thoughtful look at this celebration. Oh, and be sure to print out a recipe for potato latkes somewhere along the way!

Christmas on the web is nearly as commercial as Christmas at the mall - so you really have to wade through the product endorsements to get to the more interesting and meaningful pages. For starters stop by Holidays on the Net and read the story of the nativity. Next, try the World Wide Christmas Calendar. This page is set up like an Advent calendar - each day you open a window to a different country to see how children there celebrate the Christmas holiday. To get your creative juices flowing, the Christmas Clipart page at Kidsdomain is a guaranteed hit - or if music is your thing, Guess the Carols is the site for you - can you guess which Christmas carol is represented by each of the 24 cartoons? I couldn't! And for all the techies in your family, you can send Santa your Christmas list via email at Homepage for the Holidays.

December 26th - January 1st, many African Americans celebrate Kwanzaa, a holiday of family, community and culture. The name Kwanzaa comes from a Swahili term for the "first fruits of the harvest." You can learn about Kwanzaa by visiting the Smithsonian Institute's page for a history of the holiday. Follow that with a visit to The Official Kwanzaa Web Site, which was developed by Dr. Karenga who established this holiday in 1966. At the official site, there is extensive information about how Kwanzaa is celebrated; its rituals and symbols.

On New Year's Eve, log on one last time! First, check out a history of New Year's Celebrations where you will learn that the act of celebrating the new year dates back 4000 years to ancient Babylon. And for a look at how new years day will be celebrated around the world, visit KidLink's Multi-Cultural Calendar.

There, we're done with the tour. Now turn off the computer and drink a toast to Auld Lang Syne!

It's not enough for kids to use the Internet. We have to teach them to use it well. Links to these sites and others may be found on the Recess! website.

Recess is a co-production of the University of Florida's WUFT-FM and the Center for the Study of Children's Literature and Media.

Program #71
December 6, 1999--St. Nicholas Day

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

Before he became a rotund Dutch uncle, smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe and trying to stuff his wide girth into an impossibly small chimney -- in the form made famous in Thomas Nast's cartoons--the original Saint Nicholas was hardly a rolly-polly figure with not much else to do but dispense toys one night a year.

In fact, he was the bishop of Myra, early in the fourth century, in that part of Asia Minor that is now Turkey, where St. Nicholas was known for his great charity. As a young man, his own parents had died and left him a fortune, which he gave away anonymously to those in need. There are many legends about his generosity--how he provided the dowries for three daughters of a poor man, so that they might be married; on three consecutive nights he dropped a sack of gold into their window, each so full of coins that it looked like a ball. (Why pawnbrokers long ago thought they could take these three golden balls--the three dowries -- and use it as their own symbol, which it remains to this day, and claim St. Nicholas as their patron saint is anybody's guess.)

St. Nicholas would also become the patron saint of others in need -- sailors and sea and, surprisingly, captives. There are several stories about how he saved men from execution who were unjustly sentenced--and once even persuaded the Emperor Constantine himself to rescind an execution order by appearing to the great man in a dream and angrily ordering him to release these innocent prisoners.

Most importantly, of course, he is the protecting spirit of children; one legend tells of his having discovered and restored to life three schoolboys who had been brutally murdered. He still appears in his bishop's robes throughout Europe, to distribute gifts to households, sometimes accompanied (at least in the woods of Bavaria and the hills of Switzerland) by wild men, howling and shaking bells, and threatening to beat the sinful. How these frightening figures got attached to him no one really knows--perhaps its a nod to the old gods, like Woden, who were said to pass through the heavens once a year distributing to the mortals below the presents and punishments appropriate to their deeds.

For us, on this side of the Atlantic, though, he's just plain old Saint Nick, always loaded with goodies, with the magical powers to fit through that chimney and drive a team of reindeer across the sky, never menacing, always forgiving (considering his omniscience)--and with a quality that brings him right down to earth: an insatiable sweet tooth.

Program #72
December 7, 1999--Linda Lamme: Orphan Stories

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Here's Linda Lamme with a review of two recent children's books that might end up on your gift list this year.

Holiday times, when we traditionally come together with our families, offer us an occasion to think about those without families. Harry Potter is not the only abused orphan in town. Two recently published children's books carry on the tradition of storytelling that features the heroic adventures of orphaned children who refuse to bow to their circumstances and, instead, seek a better life.

Dave at Night by Gail Carson Levine, set in New York City during the 1920s, is the story of what happens to a boy named Dave when his father dies and his aunts place him in a home for boys. Conditions there are brutal, and one night Dave decides that he has had enough and escapes by scaling the wall surrounding the orphanage. Wandering the streets of Harlem, through some unusual circumstances, Dave is introduced to the wonders of the Harlem Renaissance and this gives a new direction to this life. But Dave's transformation isn't easy--before he can go forward, he needs to return to the orphanage, out of loyalty to the boys who remain there and to retrieve Dave's most prized possession--a carving his father left him of their family.

Christopher Paul Curtis's Bud, Not Buddy features a ten-year-old boy who runs away from an abusive foster home in search of a band player whom he believes to be his father. The only clue Bud has is an old playbill with a picture of the man that Bud found in his mother's belongings after she died. The story, which takes place during the Depression, is about Bud's quest--a particularly dangerous one because Bud is black and travelling alone in 1930s America. Bud, not Buddy is an inspiring page-turner that honors the courageous acts of those who fought the injustices of prejudice. Christopher Paul Curtis has said that he carefully researched the information in his book and laments the fact that he did not listen more carefully to his family when they told stories of the Depression. He writes, "Be smarter than I was: Go talk to Gramdma and Grandpa...By keeping their stories alive you make them, and yourself, immortal."

What good advice! Buy these books as holiday presents for a senior citizen as well as for the children in your family. Read them together. Then ask those older family members about their lives, and listen while their experiences weave the fascinating fabric of their own stories.

Program #73
December 8, 1999--The Little Engine That Could: Still Chugging Along

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

Once, at a very scholarly conference, I met someone who told me, when he discovered that I was interested in children's books, that there was one book that had mattered most to him in his life. Every time he felt he couldn't go on, every time he felt discouraged, every time he felt put upon and beaten down, he would think of this book and somehow manage to continue and to plough through whatever was blocking the path. Did I know what that book was? he asked. I shook my head "no."

"Well," he said, "of course it was The Little Engine that Could!" He was peering at me like I was the dimmest of bulbs. "I thought of that little engine, pulling that train up the hill, and I made up my mind to be just like that."

What could be a better tribute to this quintessentiallly American book, which was published 70 years ago, about the same time in 1929 that the stock market crashed and started the Great Depression. The book is about bed-rock, positive, can-do American values: work hard, believe in yourself, and never, ever, ever give up: just keep chugging along.

As you start looking into the history of this book, it gets better and better. Watty Piper, the author's name on the title page was really a pseudonym; the real author's name was lost with the purchase of the original publisher and, eventually, the destruction of all their records. So, in a way, The Little Engine that Could really belongs to that rare group of works that have become myths, stories of core belief, that are written by millions of life experiences and not by the hand of any one person.

Oh, and one last thing to remember: the Little Engine who pulls that trainload of good things over the mountain for all the good boys and girls on the other side, is female--reflect on this, and the book takes on still another, deeper set of meanings. So. Whoever Watty Piper is, I think she must be very pleased with the endurance of this fable about all those female engines who have pulled this country over the hills and valleys of the American experience, and who are still doing that today.

Program #74
December 9, 1999--Rita Smith Lost and Found Essay: Joel Chandler Harris

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world ofchildren's culture. Here's Rita Smith with a Lost and Found Essay.

"Imagine a 19th century version of 'The Simpsons,' directed by Quentin Tarantino, in which Bart, Nelson and Mr. Burns are constantly getting medieval on each other."1 That is how Hal Jacobs, an Atlanta writer, describes the folktales in Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, written in 1880 by Joel Chandler Harris, whose birthday we are celebrating today.

Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia, and in his teens was hired to be a printer's apprentice on a plantation. During the evenings the young Harris often slipped down to the slave quarters and listened to the stories and legends told by the slaves. Later, Harris moved to Atlanta and worked as an editor and writer for the Atlanta Constitution. But it is not for his editorials and articles that he is remembered; it is for his folktales and legends of the Southern plantation, and for his creation of the black story teller, Uncle Remus.

The character first appeared in brief vignettes he wrote in dialect in the Atlanta Constitution The enthusiastic response to them led Harris to pull together in a book, the stories he had heard fifteen years earlier as a young boy on the plantation. He constructed the book with a slave narrator, Uncle Remus, telling the stories in dialect to a young white boy. The book, Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, was an immediate success.

Although the first book has never gone out of print, the popularity of the Remus tales waned. Then, in 1946, Disney produced an animated movie based on the tales entitled Song of the South. Technically, the movie was a success, but artistically and, as it turned out, politically it was not. Critics complained that Disney watered down the tales, making them sweet and lovable, and that this undermined their message, as Jacobs note above in his reference to "The Simpsons," about how difficult, even cruel, life could be. A Harris scholar, Dr. R. Bruce Bickley writes "Harris knew the trickster stories were much more than entertainment. He knew they carried serious messages about life, the human spirit, about violence, and human survival."2 Frank Stephenson , another Harris scholar, points out that the major criticism of Harris and of the Disney movie, is the portrayal of Uncle Remus as the ideal, subservient slave who, as Harris describes him in his preface, "has nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery."3

With the criticism of the movie and the advent of the civil rights movement, the Remus tales disappeared from libraries, but they are making something of a come back and they are being published again as children's books. Julius Lester has written and published several popular books reclaiming the tales, but eliminating the character of Uncle Remus.

So although the survival of Uncle Remus as a character appears to be in jeopardy, the tales themselves have survived, and that may be Harris' primary contribution to American folklore: that he saved the tales from oblivion by writing them down in the style and dialect in which they were originally spoken.

1Jacobs, Hal. "Brer Harris and the Briar Patch." On the internet: web.cln.com/archives/atlanta/newsstand/110798/anews.htm

2Bickley, R. Bruce, quoted by Frank Stephenson in "The Malevolent Rabbit," on the internet at www.accessatlanta.com <http://www.accessatlanta.com>; reprinted from Research in Review, published by Florida State University, Spring/Summer 1998.

3Harris, Joel Chandler. Uncle Remus: His Songs and his Sayings; the Folk-lore of the Old Plantation. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881, p. 12

Program #75
December 10, 1999--Elaine Needelman Media Review--It's Not Christmas Without You

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Here's Elaine Needelman, with her regular media review.

Since I was a child I've loved television during the month of December. I will watch The Nutcracker over and over--even if it's on ice, and I am instantly drawn to any version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol including the one starring Mr. Magoo. From all the choices out there, there are three films you have to watch with your children to really get into the holiday spirit.

The grandaddy of them all is the 1946 movie It's a Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a man who is, literally, at the end of his rope until an angel named Clarence comes to his rescue. Along with saving him, Clarence shows George what life would be like in his town, Bedford Falls, if he had never been born, and this allows George to see his life in flashback and to realize how important he has been to his community and how much he loves his family--you won't sit dry-eyed through the film's final sequences when George rushes home to be with them -- no matter how many time's you've seen it.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the animated short based on the Dr. Seuss book, has given us a name and a concept that has entered our cultural lexicon. Victorian England had Scrooge; we have the Grinch--that spiteful creature (Boris Karloff's voice is perfect for the role) who can't stand the happiness of the citizens of nearby Whoville, especially at Christmas. So he sets out, dressed as Santa Claus, to literally steal their holiday from them. His plan fails miserably, though, and he learns what Christmas is really about: love and family.

My final must see holiday film is A Christmas Story , written and narrated by one of America's great storytellers, Jean Shepherd, who died on October 16th of this year. Shepherd enjoyed lampooning sticky sweet holiday sentimentality, and he is in top form in this film about Ralphie, a boy growing up in the 1940's, and his and his Christmas wish--a Red Rider BB gun--a dream that every single adult he tells about it-- from his parents to his teacher, to a department store Santa Claus--tries to squash. It's a funny and touching nostalgic look at Christmas with wonderful performances especially by Peter Billingsley as Ralphie and Darren McGavin as his father.

So check your t.v. listings or your video store, get the popcorn ready, and shake your holiday spirit awake.

Program #76
December 13, 1999--Koren Stembridg e on the Internet

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

Program #77
December 14, 1999--Working Miracles Patty Duke

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

Today is the birthday of one of the most durable actresses of theater, television, and films-- Patty Duke--who was born Anne Marie Duke in 1946. Her managers changed her name at the beginning of her acting career when she was appearing in her first films like The Goddess, Country Music Holiday, and 4D Man and on soap operas like "A Brighter Day" and "Kitty Foyle." That career skyrocketed at the age of 12 when Ms. Duke played the role of the young Helen Keller in Willian Gibson's The Miracle Worker on Broadway. The story of Helen Keller's triumphant struggle, with the guidance of her devoted teacher, to break through the barriers of darkness, silence and anger that had imprisoned her since infancy is one of the astonishing early moments in the journey of an altogether fascinating and inspiring life. At a crucial point in the play, Helen's teacher, Annie Sullivan, has Helen hold an egg, which is just about to hatch its chick, and tells her pupil, "The chick has to come out of its egg, Helen, you come out, too."

And that is, in many ways, just what happened. After two years on Broadway, Patty and Anne Bancroft, who portrayed Annie Sullivan in the play, reprised their roles, under Arthur Penn's direction, for a film version of the story. Ms. Bancroft won the Oscar for Best Actress that year, and Patty Duke won for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the youngest person, at sixteen, ever to do so; and this success quickly lead to a very popular television series, "The Patty Duke Show."

But then came the roller coaster ride of both her personal and professional lives. It wasn't until the early 1980s that she was finally diagnosed as having Manic Depression Illness and treated for the mood swings that had plagued her for decades, even though she somehow managed to keep working, mostly in television, during that time. Among her many successes, she won an Emmy for a remake of The Miracle Worker, in which she played Annie Sullivan to Melissa Gilbert's Helen Keller.

Ms. Duke has also go on to write two books--one about her illness titled A Brilliant Madness, and a memoir about her own troubled (and until then hidden) childhood, Call Me Anna, in which she reclaimed the identity that had been lost to her with her name. Talking about that recovery --- of that original child and her mental health--in Call Me Anna, she wrote, "On some days, most days, that feels like a miracle."

Program #78
December 15, 1999--Halcyon Days: Shelley Frazer Mickle

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

This transcript is currently unavailable.

Program #79
December 16, 1999--Gift Books II

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

We always give books to the young people in our family for the holidays and birthdays. The books don't have batteries (usually) or need any assembling--and if they're good enough, they'll last for a long, long time.

This year, I'm giving all the toddlers books by Rosemary Wells, especially her board books about Max and Ruby, which are among the best first books I know--mini-story masterpieces with wonderful, rich pictures about brother and sister rabbits who manage to pack more lasting drama into their twelve thick pages than some novels I've read. Wells' two big Mother Goose books, the award-winning My Very First Mother Goose and the brand new Here Comes Mother Goose are also a must for filling the nursery with rhythm and rhyme.

Once kids begin experimenting with words, using nursery rhymes to launch their own language play, they're ready for Maurice Sendak's incomparable boxed set of four small books in his Nutshell Library, -- Chicken Soup With Rice, One Was Johnnie, Alligators All Around, and Pierre. The books are just right for a child's hands, they're a tactile delight, and the poems--well, don't be surprised if you aren't chanting these around the house, too.

All the buddy naturalists and artists in the family are getting the Caldecott Award-winning Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin with the subtle, lyrical illustrations of Mary Azarian--it's about Wilson Bentley, a Vermont farmboy who had a passion for snowflakes and discovered how to take some of the first pictures of these crystallline miracles.

If the children on your list don't already have their own fresh copies of E. B. White's Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, or the boxed set of Winnie-the-Pooh, or the The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends, James Marshall's delightful saga about the two hippopotamuses, George and Martha, or The All Jahdu Storybook, a collection of Viginia Hamilton's tales about a boy trickster, or, for older kids, the classic fantasy series by C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, or to stretch the Potterians a little, Phillip Pullman's superb new fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, then you have some can't miss choices.

We even give books to adolescents in the family, who make their appearances for dinner and then drift out with friends for movies. Try one of the new Pocket Pulse books, like Fearless by Francine Pascal, or MTV's premier in publishing for teenagers, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. And then there is Francesca Block's already classic series of novels about growing up in contemporary Los Angeles, Dangerous Angels, which is about teenagers moving into adulthood, and their lives filled with pain and joy and magic.

Program #80
December 17, 1999--Elaine Needelman: New Holiday Movies

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Here's Elaine Needelman, who's been watching the media for us.

There is nothing better than going to the movies during the holidays. You can take a break from rushing around shopping, eat popcorn and spend some relaxing time with your kids. This is traditionally a time when a large number of new films are available--over fifty this holiday season -- unfortunately for parents, though, most of these movies are aimed for adult audiences. One film suitable for the whole family is Stuart Little, which will be released on Dec. 17th. This film is based on E. B. White's classic children's book about a talking mouse born into a human family. Michael J. Fox provides Stuart's voice, and the famous comic, Bill Irwin, the model for Stuart's facial expressions. Stuart's nemesis is the family cat, Snowball, who, of course, wants to eat him. Stuart manages to survive a number of hilarious and harrowing adventures to find the true meaning of friendship and family. It's a dazzling film, a seamless blend of live action, computer generated images, and animatronics--in the winning style of films like Babe.

For older children there is the comedy GalaxyQuest , due out Dec. 25th, starring Sigourney Weaver and Tim Allen. This is one for all Star Trek fans in your family. The film is about the cast of a popular sci-fi show similar to Star Trek who are bored out of their skulls with their roles -- the costumes, the make-up, the story lines, the obligatory conventions they have to attend--everything. One day space alien fans of the show appear. They believe the actors are actually the characters they play on the program and request their help to save the galaxy from cosmic upheaval. Before they know it the actors are on a real space ship in outer space fighting evil aliens and doing their best to survive. This is a wonderful, goofy movie that pokes fun at pretentious actors, Hollywood, and all those ponderous sci-fi series.

Older kids will also enjoy Anna and the King, which will be in the theaters the week before Christmas. It's a nonmusical retelling of the true story that was portrayed in The King and I. Jodie Foster stars as the governess, Anna, who is brought to Siam to teach the children of the king. The Hong Kong action star, Chow Yun-Fat plays the king in this big historical romance, with its sweeping action and beautiful scenes set in the exotic splendor of old Siam.

To end the holiday movie season on a high note, on Jan 1, 2000, Disney will release Fantasia 2000, a redone version of their classic animated film Fantasia with new and restored sequences. The original Fantasia was one of Walt Disney's favorite films, and in this buffed and polished edition, it might turn out to be one of yours.

Program #81
December 20, 1999--Koren Stembridge on the Internet

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Here's Koren Stembridge, on the Internet.

As the new Millennium approaches, don't miss a great opportunity to work with your kids on a project that will have meaning in the years to come. Before the clock strikes and the ball drops -- you have just enough time create a time capsule with your family to mark the transition into the next century, and there are some great Internet sites to help you along the way.

Both Kids Domain and the LAC New York offer instructions on how to construct a simple time capsule using a large manila envelope or a cardboard shoebox-materials you probably have around the house. These simple capsu les, stored in a cool dry place should last several years. Your fifth grader could design a time capsule to be opened on his first day of high school. Your middle-schooler's capsule might be opened at her high school graduation. And high school students may want to create capsules to be opened an important milestone in their future, on their wedding day, for instance, or when they have children of their own.

For ideas about what to put in your time capsule, visit the Queens Tribune. Their brief history of the time capsule lists the items that were included in the 1939 and 1964 World's Fair capsules. Children could include favorite drawings, photographs, and treasures in your capsule, along with copies of important records such as birth certificates, report cards, or awards--plastic archival sleeves will protect special photographs and other delicate items. Your children may wish to create a list of favorite things--favorite color, favorite song, favorite game, favorite pizza topping, favorite teacher --and ask them to write a letter to their older, future self with their dreams of what they hope they will become. When your child eventually opens this capsule, they should have a remarkably good snapshot of what they were like at this earlier age.

There are ready-made time capsule kits available online, such as the relatively inexpensive Millennium Family Time Capsule and the Baby's Personal Time Capsule, an easy way for new parents to compile and store memories of a new baby. My personal favorite is the M&M's Official Time Capsule, which comes filled with both suggestions and chocolate!

Finally, if you are REALLY ambitious, you may purchase high quality capsule canisters from Future Archaeology and Second Millennium Time Capsules--the kind you can actually seal and bury for 50 years.

Whatever form it, your capsule will be fun to put together now, and you are assured a remarkable experience when you open it at some point in your future.

Links to these sites and others may be found on the Recess web site: w w w . recess . ufl. edu

Program #82
December 21, 1999--Rita Smith Lost and Found Essay: Crossword Puzzles

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

According to the Oxford Guide to Word Games, the crossword puzzle is "the most popular and widespread word game in the world." It was invented by a journalist named Arthur Wynne who published the first crossword in The New York World, a Sunday newspaper, on December 21, 1913. Readers loved the puzzle, so Wynne created more. For over ten years the World was the only newspaper to run crossword puzzles, which had a small, but growing and very loyal following.

Then, in 1924, according to Roger Millington in Crossword Puzzles, their History and Their Cult, the newly established publishing firm of Simon and Schuster gathered together fifty crosswords and published them in a book. The response was overwhelming. Within three months, sales reached 40,000 and within a year, three volumes of puzzles had appeared with total sales of over 400,000.(1) Crossword mania had hit America.

Millington records some of the results of this obsession. A man on a train taveling between New York and Boston discovered that 60% of the passengers were working crossword puzzles. The B&O Railroad promptly put dictionaries on all its main line trains. The Los Angeles Library kept the latest dictionaries at the reference desk, fastened to racks available only under supervision and limited to a five minute use. A New York hospital reported increased headache complaints, arising from eye strain caused not only by the small type the clues were set in, but also by the constant shifting to and fro of the eyes between the squares and the clues.

There were all kinds of opinions about the crossword craze. James Lough, Dean of New York University, saw it as a manifestation of mankind's old instinct for combat. "People may think they are seeking to improve their minds when they find the correct solution to a puzzle," he says, "but what they are really doing is working off a little of their primitive instinct for combat; which has been sublimated enough to enjoy a tussle with elusive synonyms."(3)

I personally love to do crosswords and I have my ritual way of going about it. First, I fill in all the across and down clues that I know absolutely to be correct; that way I don't have any wrong letters which could mislead me in solving another clue. Then I go back and begin to fill in those words which I can now guess since there is a letter in place. The process is filled with wonderful "aha" moments where I finally get down to the third meaning of the clue word and I can say, with confidence and triumph, Yes!

That's it! When the puzzle is done, everything fits together so perfectly; it all makes sense and is so logical, so tidy and so satisfying. I guess James Lough could have been right. Maybe it does work off a little of my primitive instinct for combat, because successfully completing a tricky, complicated crossword puzzle with witty and ambiguous clues, certainly is one of my life's little victories.

1 Millington, p. 17-18.
2 Millington, p. 26.
3 Millington, p. 25.

Sources:
Augarde, Tony. The Oxford Guide to Word Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Millington, Roger. Crossword Puzzles: Their History and Their Cult. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Inc., 1974.

Program #83
December 22, 1999--First Snow, Magic Snow First Day of Winter

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

It's the first day of winter today, the time of the Winter Solstice, the ancient days of Yule, the darkest night of the year. It's also the perfect time for the first snow to fall. In Russian villages, they collected (and still collect) the snow from the first snowfall, melted it and had it blessed; they used this snow water in medicines and as a balm. My Russian mother-in-law had been cured of headaches as a child by a gypsy woman who placed a compress dipped in this holy snow water on her head and sang to her all night. Throughout her life, even when she lived in Chicago, my mother-in-law would faithfully gather this first snow like something priceless, have it blessed, and bring flasks of it to Florida, where she spent most of the winter with us; she placed a drop or two of this snow water each morning on her failing eyes. Our young daughter watched her do this, wide-eyed, --well, we all did actually--and if lived in a place where it snowed at all, we'd be saving up jars of this elixir today, I'm sure, helping the old ways live on, in our own and our children's lives--through the things we carry forward from these wise teachers of the imagination.

So in lieu of snowflakes, here's a poem in her memory--for this first day.

The first snow of winter: We ran outside to play, And made a hundred angels In the drifts that day. The first snow is magic, I heard my grandma say. And in the night it happened The hundred angels flew away.

I know because I watched them As one by one they rose Up in the quiet moonlight In their snowy clothes. The hundred angels gathered Up in the sky that night, And made a giant snowflake In their stary flight.

Next morning all the snowbanks Were smooth and soft and white Because our hundred angels Had swept them overnight.

Program #84
December 23, 1999--Music for the Holidays

This is John Cech and this is Recess. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

There's something about the sound of xylophones, that usually makes me want to head for the hills--unless it's Pappageno's glockenspiel in the Magic Flute, or Carl Orff's kids with their magic rhythms. But I must confess that a groupof recordings have won me over--the Classiks on Toys series from Robert laFond's group in Canada that feature some surprising musical delights from an orchestra of real toy instruments -- pianos and other keyboards, horns, drums, recorders, and, yes xylophones -- that you can find in any well-stocked toystore-- played with wonderful spirit and playful seriousness . For instance, how can you resist this:

(Sound clip.)

That's the rollicking Russian Dance from "Snoopy's Nutcracker and other Tchaikovsky Classics on Toys." I should mention that the introducers of this music at the start of each album are Schroeder, Charlie Brown, and some of the other characters from the Peanuts comic strip.

"Snoopy's Christmas" has a bunch of standard christmas carols, including an elegant setting for "Jingle Bells":

(Sound clip.)

And the treats aren't limited to the classical repertoire. There's a country collection and a Beatles anthology with a truly lovely version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamons," and a jazz cd with a terrific version of Brubeck's "Take Five" that really hums:

(Sound clip.)

But my personal favorite is "Snoopy's Classical." How about Ravel's "Bolero," some of Handel's Water Music, a little Brahms, a touch of Vivaldi, and, an "Ode to Joy" like you've never heard before:

(Sound clip.)

Program #85
December 24, 1999--Shelley Frazer Mickle Remembering: Sawed-Off Santa

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

This transcript is currently unvailable.

Program #86
December 27, 1999--Elaine Needelman: Howdy Doody

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture. Here's Elaine Needelman who's been watching the media for us.

On December 27, 1947, the Howdy Doody Show premiered on NBC. Originally called Puppet Playhouse Presents, Howdy Doody was a show of firsts. It was the first children's show on NBC, the first network series in color, the first tv show to air over 2000 episodes, and the first program to receive a large viewer response by mail. The Howdy Doody song was also the first popular tv theme song. It was the first tv show to use interactive programming--the live audience of children, known as "The Peanut Gallery." In short, Howdy Doody became a national phenomenon. The show's success changed forever the way children were entertained, and the Howdy Doody show is generally considered to be the most popular children's show of all time.

The show was set in the town of "Doodyville," Texas, and hosted by Buffalo Bob Smith, who liked to dress up in Western costumes. His sidekick Howdy Doody was a marionette version of a freckled redhaired boy with a big grin. Other regular characters included Clarabell, a seltzer squirting, horn-honking mute clown, Phineas T. Bluster, the town's grumpy mayor, Flub-a-Dub, a creature who was made up of the parts of 7 animals, and Captain Windy Scuttlebutt, an old sea captain. Each episode had a story involving the characters of Doodyville, a film short, and a song or two. It was a formula that hundreds of children's shows would follow.

As you can imagine, Howdy Doody was enormously popular with advertisers. Buffalo Bob would tell kids about the importance of telling the truth, or not eating sweets before meals but he would also happily shill for products of dubious nutritional value. The show was "sold out" to advertisers for its entire 13 year run and marked a major turning point in how advertising could be aimed directly at a child audience.

The Howdy Doody Show was also the epitome of political incorrectness. The very names of the characters were often ethnic or physical slurs. Native Americans were especially singled out with the characters of Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring or the gullible Chief Thunderthud. The Howdy Doody Show was loud, silly entertainment. But this didn't seem to bother the millions of kids who watched it every day after school, yearing to be in the Peanut Gallery when Buffalo Bob asked that now-famous question:

(Sound clip.)

Program #87
December 28, 1999--Rita Smith Lost and Found Essay: Poor Richard's Almanac

Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, made its first appearance in print on this date in 1732. Franklin saw the Almanac as an opportunity for

educating the public, both children and adults, because both read them, and he considered it, as he wrote in his autobiography, "a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people." Books were generally expensive in Colonial America and the average New England household library would have consisted of only the Bible, a New England Primer and an almanac. Poor Richard's Almanac was a miscellany filled with a wide variety of information and entertainment. There was the usual calendar of days, weather forecasts, and agricultural advice, but it also contained medical advice, lists of public officials, biographies, essays, poetry, humor, and predictions on many topics. In the first edition, in fact, Franklin predicted the death date of a rival almanac publisher. It didn't happen, of course, when Franklin said it would. The most popular feature of the Almanacs were the sayings of Poor Richard, those wise, witty and memorable phrases which were scattered throughout each edition. Franklin's hope in including these sayings was that they would inspire people to hard work which would lead to enough wealth that people could afford to be good. "I filled all the little spaces," he writes in his Autobiography," that occurr'd between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being more difficult for a man in want, to act always honestly."

In the 1758 edition of the Almanac, now entitled Poor Richard Improved, Franklin pulled together many of the proverbs from the preceeding twenty five issues and published them in an essay. The reprints of this essay were widely circulated throughout America, Europe and Great Britain and, according to one recent writer, some people thought that the industry and frugality championed in this pamphlet accounted for the growing availability of money which was observable for several years after its publication.1

Most of the proverbs were not original with Franklin. He gathered them from his wide reading and travels, but he made no apologies for this, asking, Why should I give my readers bad lines of my own, when good ones of other people are so plentiful? (1748 almanac, quoted in Stowell) Here are some of these "good lines" which, after 260 years, continue to be a part of the everyday language of Americans.

Fish and visitors smell in three days A penny saved is a penny earned Little strokes fell great oaks Genius without education is like silver in the mine God helps them that help themselves Haste makes waste Kill no more pigeons than you can eat Never confuse motion with action The sleeping fox catches no poultry

Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals Well done is better than well said

Sources:

1Stowell, Marion Barber. Early American Almanacs: The Colonial Weekday

Bible. New York. Burth Franklin. 1977.

Program #88
December 29, 1999--Marketing Childhood

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

It seems that each week, in major newspapers or magazines, someone is doing an article about how much money is to be made on the merchandise of childhood. This fall alone, we've had the Harry Potter books phenomenon -- a story that always seemed to end in how many copies were being sold and (with the film deal) how much money its author, Joanne Rowling, had made on the reading bonanza she had started.

Then we were besieged by PokÈmon-- the 154 cards, the television show, the video games, the movie, the gum, the candy, the action figures, the key chains, the racks and racks of Pinkachotchkes that have been carefully planned to outlast the usual year and a half to three years of a fad toy's shelf-life. That means, of course, adding new pocket monsters to collect (the slogan of PokÈmon is, after all, "Gotta catch 'em all, ") it means attracting new audiences of kids as the old ones move on, generation after generation, if you expect to stay in the game, teasing five or six billion dollars out of the pockets of children and their families every year--for decades.

According to one estimate, advertisers will spend about 12 billion dollars this year alone to sell Pokestuff and many other child-related products, and one of the niche jobs that will make this merchandise irresistably adorable, are a small, highly paid group called Baby Wranglers, who are skilled at drawing melting performaces from their diminutive di Caprios and Diazes. As Patricia Winters Lauro puts it in her recent article on the subject in the New York Times, "An awful lot is riding on the tiny shoulders that the wranglers try to keep in line."

And then there are the 27 million Tweens, that Newsweek featured in a cover story a few months ago. We used to call them pre-teens, those older kids between chilhood and adolescence but now they have been given a catchy name and, in the elaborately labeled pictures of Tween boys and girls and their rooms, a marketing diagram of their likes and dislikes in clothing, musical groups, movie and sports stars. After all, we're told in the article, "tweens had direct influence over $ 128 billion in family spending in 1997."

Well, I probably shouldn't be bringing any of this flabbergasting stuff up after the holidays, when we've all been influenced, directly or indirectly, and more than we'd probably care to admit by tweens, wrangled babies, and little yellow monsters with funny names. I'm done.

Program #89
December 30, 1999--Rudyard Kipling: Just So

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

Today is Rudyard Kipling's birthday. He was born in Bombay, India, in 1865, to British parents who had been posted to the subcontinent, then part of the England's colonial empire; Kipling would make India the setting of dozens of his short stories and a number of his most famous works for children, including Kim and the Jungle Book. The latter novel, published in 1894, about Mowgli, a boy who grows up with the wolves and eventually becomes the Master of the Jungle, were so popular that Baden Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, modelled his wolf-cub "dens" after those in Kipling's story.

The ruddy-cheeked masculinity that Kipling drew on so often in his books, was a zeitgeist in the air at the turn of the century, and Kipling's muscular, hale fellow use of it made him enormously famous, wealthy, and, as he put it, "one of the gentry." Kipling would go to that well again and again. In his novel about the fishermen of the Grand Banks, Captains Courageous, he once again extolled the ennobling values of being "licked into shape" by discipline, when he dropped a rich boy overboard during a luxury cruise, to be rescued, befriended, and schooled in the important virtues of life by the crew of a fishing schooner.

Though he went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1907, becoming the first English writer to do so (and wrote very funny letters to his three children about the somber ceremony--"I felt rather like a bad boy up to be caned"), his reputation has been in a kind of limbo for years, in part because of the colonialist attitudes that percolate through much of his work. In a sense, he has been trapped by his time and nationality and its questionable values.

But read Kipling's rollicking letters to his children, collected in a volume aptly titled O Beloved Kids, and you will find in them a remarkable portrait of a devoted father who adored his children who, in their turn, inspired their dear Daddoo to tell and later to write, arguably, his best work for them: the 1902 Just-So Stories, those extraordinarily inventive myths about the origins of language and elephants trunks, the solitary nature of cats and the camel's hump. He was making it all up for them, his "dear people," as he called them--for Josephine, his daughter, who died at the age of six, the grief of whose loss almost stopped him from continuing with the stories; for his son, John, who would become a young officer and be lost in the trenches in World War I (Kipling could not forgive himself for having pushed the lad into the service); and for his second daughter Elsie, who would marry but had no children of her own. Kipling drove himself in his work, relentlessly till his death in 1936, in the end, trying to hold off the question that he had posed in one of his own poems about the young men lost in the Great War: "But who shall return us the children?"

Program #90
December 31, 1999--By and By--Milennial Reflections

This is "Recess!" and this is John Cech. We're talking about some of the things that are happening in the world of children's culture.

The millenium turns tonight--an occasion for all sorts of celebrations--and reflections. There will be, I'm sure, a watchful media to tell (and show) us which child was born first in the new millenium -- quite an honor indeed. For the child, symbolically and literally, always represents the future, and future possibilities-- wether in society at large or within ourselves. The noted psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, went even further when he argued that the symbolic figure of the child "unites the opposites; [is] a mediator, bringer of healing, that is, one who makes whole."

Needless to say, in our culture, we don't usually think of children in reality, or the child spirit in our own psyches in such an exalted way -- at least not since Shirley Temple turned the American child into a transcendent national archetype in the 1930s, offering in film after film a spirit of reconcilliation, hope, and healing for a nation deeply concerned about its future. Our own kids today, when we see them in public forms (usually on t.v.), are more often than not associated with commercial interests or else with some sad news story about abuse, neglect, or violence. And though many adults dress like children and continue to practice the ego-centric, tantrum-throwing manners of their five-year-old selves, one of the more insulting things you can say to an adult is that they are "childish." Too often childhood is seen as a burden, a cost, a weakness, a vulnerability.

Jung again gives us something to reflect on here. He was sorting out this paradox in our feelings about the child when he wrote that "the 'child' is all that is abandoned and exposed and at the same time divinely powerful; the insignificant, dubious beginning, and the triumphal end. The 'eternal child' in mankind is an indescribable experience, an incongruity, a handicap, and a divine prerogative; an imponderable that determines the ultimate worth or worthlessness of a personality."

What he was saying, of course, was: we must value and care for and honor that child, in society and in ourselves, if we wish to have a new millenium that 's worth celebrating.