June 18, 2010

for the sake of a dying art

June 18, 2010/ molly balint

For the past few weeks, every time I open the mailbox, it's been a bit depressing. Bills. Junk mail. Offers to switch to faster internet and cheaper phones. More TV channels. And even a free hearing aide consultation. Twice, in the past two weeks, I've had days without ANY mail.

There is rarely, if ever, the personal note.

When we lived on my grandmother's farm, and shared the same mailbox, I was always struck that she received a personal note from someone almost daily. Sometimes even two or three in a day.

But if you knew my grandmother, you'd know that she impacted many, many people's lives. And oftentimes, people wrote her letters to tell her so. But the other thing about my grandmother is that you could always find her in the back living room, sitting at her desk, balancing her checkbook or writing personal letters.

She'd drop you a note, say hello, send a clipping from the newspaper, remember your birthday or anniversary. And people often returned her kindness.

Letter writing is a dying art. Can you imagine if just half of the personal emails you received in a day, showed up in your mailbox as note?

Though I'm still failing miserably at letter-writing, I am determined to carry my grandmother's torch and keep this meaningful and timeless form of communication alive and well in my family.

With this in mind, I decided that I wanted to create my own stationery, hoping it would inspire me to begin to write.

When it comes to stationery, I prefer notecards versus folded cards and these are very small--only about 3 inches by 5 inches. I'm not out to write a novel, but just a small note to say "hello, I'm thinking of you." They are printed on cover stock with kraft brown recycled envelopes to go with them.

Now all I need is a good pen. Kidding. (though I do have a thing about pens!)

I thought it would be nice, in the spirit of keeping this tradition alive and to inspire some of you to write a few notes, to give two sets away. Each set will include eight notecards and eight envelopes.

I toyed with the idea of putting a few up in my neglected etsy shop, since I have printed myself a lifetime's supply, but for today, until I get my act together, I'd love to giveaway two sets here. It's fun to giveaway some of my own work for a change.

Just leave your own 'hello' on this post....I'll pick two "winners" soon.

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I would be remiss in writing this post without mentioning how I printed these cards. They were printed at home with my Epson R1900. It is a dream printer. The quality and true-ness to color, is remarkable. When my cards were coming out of the printer, I found myself running my hands over the designs, because they almost had the quality of a letterpress. The printer can print wide formats (13 inches) and long (up to 44 inches). You can even outfit it with a roll of paper to print panoramas. If you ever had any hopes of doing some serious designing and printing at home, or printing your own photographs in larger formats, scrapbooking pages, or other creative projects, this printer would be an amazing investment. And I can't wait to see all the great ideas we'll come up with to use it with homeschooling this year as well. I had to tell you, because I love it so! :)

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Happy Weekend, friends and happy old-fashioned letter writing.

May 17, 2010

opening up

May 17, 2010/ molly balint

Hello. I'm still here. Blogging has been taking a back seat to life these days. The weather. The Laundry. A year-end homeschooling review. New friends. Rearranging and decorating. Dishes. Four little girls.

Those are the things that have been calling to me and keeping me away.

But I've also been thinking about blogging a lot lately, as well. Thinking about what it means to me. What I want it to be. What has changed.

I've been a little nostalgic for the old days of blogging. Nowadays there are so many avenues for us to "connect"--twitter, facebook, flickr, blogging, that in the end all of those places feel kind of diluted to me and less meaningful.

And while I love my blog for the way it marks time, I miss the interaction and that community feeling. That seems to be missing for me lately.

I enjoy the communication.

I like hearing from people.

Last year I adopted this new "philosophy" about blog reading. I decided that I was only going to leave a comment on someone's blog if I felt like I had something to add to the discussion, or if I felt truly "moved" by what the person had said or written about.

But now, I've completely rejected that "approach". Blogging is about the interaction and the community and the people. And that means letting someone know you've stopped by.

To use Emily's analogy of blogland as a neighborhood...if we were neighbors, from the same neighborhood, and I passed you on the street, I would say hello. I wouldn't pass without saying anything just because I didn't have something "meaningful" to say. I'd at the very least, acknowledge you. Chances are good that I might even stop and join into conversation with you.

And that's kind of how I feel about blogging now. Even if I don't have a lot to say, I need to let people know I've stopped by. I need to say hello, leave a footprint.

But then, there's also reality. Who has time to leave a comment on every blog they read?

So for me, that has meant doing some serious slicing, dicing and editing of the blogs I subscribe to in my reader. That doesn't mean I'm reading every blog post, every day, but it does make it easier for me to respond to the blogs that I do read.

I liken it to my friendships in college. Freshman year, I was friends with lots of people. Tons of people. I was just happy to be finding friends and people to hang out with. Someone to sit with at lunch. Someone to save me a seat in a lecture hall. But as my college years went on, that group of friends became smaller and smaller. By my senior year, I had a small, close-knit group of friends that I cherished.

And I kind of feel like I'm in my "senior year" of blogging. I don't need to read 50 blogs. And while I still enjoy discovering new people and places, I have a small group of blogs that I consider part of my community and many I consider close friends. This way, I can hopefully bring back the "old school" approach to blogging. The interaction. The community. The relationships.

So I hope you don't think this is a slap on the wrist to all you blog "lurkers". I will be honest and say that sometimes it is discouraging when I venture over to take a peak at my stats and see how many of you stop by without saying hello...but that's not what this is about. This is strictly about my thoughts and feelings on blogging, for me.

I think we all go through these phases. Days when we're ready close it all down and walk away. Days when the posts are popping up in our head faster than we can get them out.

And I think it is good for all of us, me, to give something that oftentimes takes a lot of our time, plenty of thought, evaluation and inspection.

So if you've made it this far, thanks for reading and patiently wading through my thought-process, as I figure out what my "senior year" of blogging looks like for me.

December 16, 2009

dreams

December 16, 2009/ molly balint

Last night I had a dream. Actually, it was early this morning--in that time after Elizabeth woke up, coughing and congested and got into bed with me--the two of us falling sound asleep again. I dreamt that I had written a book. Except that it was still in the beginning stages, unpublished. I gave the pages to my mother, sister and brother-in-law to edit and correct. But I couldn't be there with them while they edited, because I had to be with my brother--we were out on the lake, on his speedboat, that was somehow kept afloat by balloons on long strings of red and white baker's twine. All the boats on the lake had these baker's twine balloons.

When I returned home, they gave me a copy of my edited writing. They took the liberty of rewriting my work, with their changes, and discarding the original. It was written on wide-ruled lined school paper, in cursive, by my 8 year-old niece. There were pages of kid illustrations stapled to the back, and rainbows and squiggly lines down the sides of the pages. Words were missing from sentences, written in the margins with arrows pointing to where they belonged in the page.

My mother sat across the kitchen table from me as I read, eager to hear how much I loved their changes, what a good job they'd done with it, how it was such an improvement. I couldn't understand where my professional-looking original manuscript had gone. I didn't understand why my niece had re-written this serious work, and how they thought it was remotely "okay" to submit it to my editor. "Well, your sister's typewriter was broken, so we had Abby write it for you. She did such a lovely job, didn't she?"

I read through their changes, their "improvements". They had changed almost everything. My heart-wrenching details were replaced with babyish sayings, and goofy cliches. I felt stunned. Angry. Betrayed. Heartbroken. Perplexed. Bewildered. Defeated by all the work that was ahead of me, again.

And then, because dreams never resolve themselves, never tie themselves up in a tidy bow before moving on, I woke up.

And there you have it, a peek inside the mind of a tossing and turning, fitfully-sleeping pregnant woman. I really had no intention of this being the post I wrote this morning, but it was so vivid in my head, I had to put it down somewhere. I had to remind myself not to be mad at my mother and sister when we talked on the phone today. That it was just a dream.

I'll be back tomorrow. I'm bringing back a "simple question". I need some suggestions, and I know you all are just the people to ask.....

August 29, 2008

am I a modern mom?

August 29, 2008/ molly balint

Does your library have these newfangled "playaway" devices? These digital audiobook recordings that you can check out? Well, our library has recently introduced them--a hand held ipod-looking device that has a book already loaded on to it. You just plug in your earbuds and listen.

My children have been hounding me about them since the posters started going up in the library and I've really been dragging my feet. I rarely allow the girls to listen to my iPod, though they beg all the time. They have to be really sick, or really pathetic-looking in order for me to give in. Just the sight of them walking around tuned out to the world, plugged in to something else kind of gets to me. It's similar to the whole zone-out in front of the TV thing.

But last night after a homeschooling meeting at the library, I was browsing for some things to bring home to the girls, and there in front of me was the "playaway" for A Cricket in Times Square, the book Emma and I just finished reading, and another easier-read that Mary would be able to enjoy.

And I folded. I stuck those little devices in my bag and checked out.

You can imagine the squealing and excitement that "mom brought iPods home from the library!" when I arrived home last night before bed. Batteries were checked and replaced, earbuds were untangled, buttons were explained, and "ipods" were set out carefully on bedside tables for morning.

This morning, two girls emerged at my bedside, talking extremely loud with wires trailing from their earlobes. Ugh! Am I a modern mom? I don't think I'm there yet.

I'm reminded of this fantastic post by Stefani. Now I just have to think of my "hook" to bring them back to my "little house on the prairie"-fantasy world that I want to live in.

On a more serious and important note, I hope you will take a moment to check out the important NieNie Auction going on at design mom. Amy asked me to share it with all of you. She thinks highly of you all, my dear readers, and hopes you can take a moment to help out. I was unfamiliar with Stephanie's story until this week. She tugs at my heart and demands my continual prayers. Please take a look.

Wishing you a wonderful, long weekend. xo.

August 18, 2008

Save Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

August 18, 2008/ molly balint

My children don't watch much television. In fact, since we've moved to Thomas Run we haven't set up the tv or even hooked up cable service. But we do go through spurts where the television comes out again--a round of sickness, the coldest days of the winter months...

When the television is on in our home and the children are watching, there is only one channel that they watch--PBS. When we lived in Wisconsin, that meant that the girls were able to watch thirty minutes of Mr Rogers each morning. Back then, Mr. Rogers was preceded by an episode of Sesame Street which included a short episode of Elmo's World sandwiched in the middle of the program.

On the days when my children would catch the last bits of Elmo's World before watching Mr. Rogers, the contrast between the two programs was stark. The busyness of Elmo's World, the chaotic music, the jumping from one snippet to the next, the throwing out of lots of information, delivered quickly and with a snappy, fast-paced approach. Some days I could barely stand to be in the same room while the show was on. It was too much to process. Sensory overload.

The show stood in strong contrast to Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. From the beginning, the show was like watching a work of art slowly unfolding. There was routine, a slower pace, peaceful music, a kind voice, a gentle curiosity and encouragement. I felt my mood soften and relax.

Recently, I became aware that Public Television is making plans (already implemented in some states) to remove Mr. Rogers Neighborhood from its weekly lineup for children. In some places, it will get shoved to a weekend time slot, for other stations it will be gone all together.

Mr. Rogers is timeless. It's not only about nostalgia-- watching a show with my children that I watched as a child. Fred Roger's carefully crafted program has a message that is just as important to today's children, if not more, as it was to children of my generation.

In an era where more and more children are parented by their televisions, the need for a program like Mr. Rogers to be on the air holds even more weight and importance. In my opinion, PBS is doing a disservice to children today by removing this show from their schedule.

For me, saving Mr. Roger's Neighborhood really isn't about keeping a show on the air that I want my children to watch. Because chances are, my children won't be watching television very often. My strong feelings about this are stirred up by a concern and care for children today--for the children I don't know and will probably never meet--but children who need the reassuring, encouraging presence of Fred Rogers in their life.

If this means something to you as well, I hope you'll take a moment to check out the site that started this all for me. Brian Linder, a concerned parent from South Carolina, has started a grassroots campaign to save Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

Has two quotes on his site that really captured some of what I believe about this program.

The first quote is by Fred Rogers himself in an interview with the Archive of American Television. His is talking about the feelings of nostalgia that his show evokes for the parents that watch along with their children:

If the Neighborhood re-evokes their own childhood, when they were watching, that could be one of the greatest gifts we’re giving the next generation because if they’re in touch with who they were as children, they’ll be able to be far more empathic with their own children. That’s something really important.”

The other quote is by Chicago artist and father Chris Ware in a letter he wrote to his station, WTTW:

My three and a half year old daughter is in the early throes of infatuation with the extraordinary person who was Mister Rogers, a man who left a legacy of one of the most carefully collected, collated and constructed works of art created specifically to cradle a child’s fragile, budding sensitivity and ethical consciousness.

Mister Rogers is not flashy, frisky, funky or fantastic. Mister Rogers is slow moving, awkward, simple, low-rent, and even a little bit peculiar and disquieting at times. So is life. In fact, it’s about the last place on television where real life may actually still be found.

I hope you'll take a few moments to explore his site and find out exactly what you can do to make your voice heard on this important issue.

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I received an email last week from Brian about creating a blog button for his campaign. Understandably, he has a full-plate right now, not to mention twin toddlers. I've taken the liberty of creating a blog button by resizing one of the downloadable desktop images on his site. Once I receive the okay from him, I'll be happy to email the code to anyone who is interested in placing a button on their blog as well. Just let me know.

**Brian got back to me last night: Code for a button like the one in my sidebar is below:**

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