Author Archives: Jennifer Petty Mann

Happy Valentine’s Day! Did You Forget? Then This Column is for You …

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2-red-heartEditor’s Note: We first published this topical column by Jennifer Petty Mann on Feb. 14, 2014. We thought it would be fun to republish it today. And Happy Valentine’s Day to all our readers!  

Our columnist Jennifer Petty Mann has some great suggestions for those who haven’t quite got themselves together yet for the big day.

You still want to do something, but are looking for something a little different.

If this is you, read on!

Dear Jen,
Valentine’s Day is always so generic. Chocolate. Flowers. Hallmark cards. What can I do that’s different?
Sick of Same Ol’ Stuff

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Dear Sick of Same Ol’ Stuff,
I hear you. Excellent question.

Of course, love is personal, but being a romantic goofball is never out of style. Don’t be afraid to put it out there in your own way.

Here are some ideas:

  • Make cookies in the shape of your beloved’s initials.
  • Use kids’ washable crayons to write notes on the bathroom mirror.
  • Find or buy some henna (which comes off in a few days) and write stuff on your arms.  Like Melanie Griffiths’ huge I heart Antonio* on her arm.
  • Make a David Letterman Top 10 List of Reasons you love your beloved.
  • You can play 9 1/2 weeks with the fridge. Take weird food from the fridge, dip it in chocolate, and have anyone in the house guess what it is. Kids love this. Hey, is that a vegetable? No, no, sweetie. It’s chocolate … honest.

Anyway, have fun. That’s the bottom line.

Good luck!

Jen
* Seriously! Who doesn’t?  It’ll be hard to explain, but I may do that anyway …

Relive Memories, Raise Money for Your School with ClassPhotoFund.com

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So much of our childhood is hard to forget, yet hard to see with real clarity.

You remember how you felt going to that 7th grade dance.  How nervous you were.  And excited.  You remember joining the German club or the book club or making the JV Field Hockey team as a freshman, but other than your mind’s eye — which frankly gets weirder as one gets older (we all have tangible proof … mine certainly does) — there aren’t the images.  The photographic evidence that we were there.  We did it.  We loved it.  Or hated it.  But certainly it made us who we are as adults.

Peter Nordberg has found a way to help.  He has found a way to track down these photos of our formative years, predominately K-12.  He has also found a way that raises money for our schools.  How?

Classphotofund.com.  Look it up.  It’s so clever and unprecedented and potentially fabulous, both personally and altruistically, that you’ll be proud of him.  He and his wife have others start ups (nestnewyork.com) and years of experience in venture capital, both here and abroad.

What they saw in their own children’s New York City Public Schools was the need for a new way to fundraise and celebrate our K-12 schools.  140,000 plus schools.  That’s roughly 175 million high school graduates, who would love to have those pictures.  Can you find your yearbooks?  Doubt you could find more than a couple.

Here’s what though, if people look they will.  Someone will.  Then they upload it to the classphotofund.com site (through Facebook now, coming everywhere soon with a mobile app available this summer.)  Scan it.  Take a picture with your phone, upload it.  Tag people you remember.  Via Pay Pal, you will be paid $1.  Your alma mater will be paid $1.  Classphoto gets 50 cents to keep developing …

All Kindergarten through twelfth grade schools are eligible.  140,000 schools are already in the database.

If you search for and find a photo that your friend or arch nemesis from 8th grade has uploaded, you can buy it for $2.50.  It will load into a Facebook file only with your full permission.  No one can see that snaggle-toothed school picture without your permission.

Group photos, like teams and clubs are the main target because everyone is in them.  “Hey Bob – look you still had hair!”.

The ultimate goal is to bring alumni back into the fold.  Not to be hassled for donations, but to reconnect.  Generations younger than us (… if I can figure it out you can) are more technologically savvy than older alumni and could raise more money spending an afternoon at school uploading yearbooks to the site than making cookies.  Really – do we need more cookies?   One photo of 20 kids is potentially $20 for the school.  Booster clubs are promoting the sport legacies / heritage and raising money for their schools.

Reunion committees can connect and have fun alternately laughing their butts off and getting misty-eyed as they upload their history together.

I am going rummaging right now.  Watch out Brearley, ASL and Farmington …

Classphotofund can raise $100 million for these school by the end of 2013/2014.  How about $ one billion by the end of 2014/2015?  As more school budgets get cut and more art and music programs are eliminated, this money is literally invaluable.  Take one photo that you’ve had in your drawer for 20 years, upload it and give your friends a chuckle … and funding to the current students.  How easy!  How clever!

Go to classphotofund.com for more specifics and bucks.blogs.nytimes.com 2013/02/14 for additional insights.

‘House of Suns’ by Alastair Reynolds

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hosue_of_suns_180OK. You know who you are, you purveyor of science fiction literature hereto unreviewed by me. You are now solely responsible for my little head wandering off to space. With a few exceptions (The Host (12/05/08), I don’t read a lot of sci-fi and I think that’s about to change.

Many, many brilliant minds (not pompously including myself here – just sayin’) write and read sci-fi for the same reasons theologians like Phillip Pullman write fantasy. Things that are inexplicable in our day to day lives may have an explanation that lies outside of the realm of normalcy.

Religion and science have long sought to face these conundrums. Funny they should fight against each other as often as they do because, with a few idiotic closed minded exceptions, they are both have the same goal.*

People want answers. Indeed we all lie awake in bed and ponder existence. Alastair Reynolds has a PhD in Astronomy. He trained as an astrophysicist. Now he tells us what he lay awake in bed thinking about..

Six million years ago a girl named Abigail Gentian wanted more. She wanted to explore and be free. She wanted power and love. We all do, but she had a means at her disposal that we do not. She clones herself. She actually “shatters” herself into one thousand male and female copies.

They explore a world, a universe … what even to call it? Of empires both human and otherwise. Intellectual capabilities are beyond reason. Travel is beyond reason. Virtually anything is possible but the existence of some human qualities we recognize — love, anger, betrayal, sorrow — make it relatable. Its really cool.**

Campion and Purslane are two “shatterlings” who have bonded. There are mysteries afoot. Someone is killing off the Gentian line. Do they know too much or have they missed the point and need to start again? The book can be a little verbose (don’t even…) and I caught my mind wandering, but hang in there. You need to get to page 565 on your own.

The ending is worth it.

The full circle, theological, scientific proposal is truly wonderful.

Really, really wonderful.

*I will restrain myself to saying that the best religions are the open-minded, exploratory, all-encompassing ones. Those that condemn, pigeon hole and exclude infuriate me.

**cool
The best way to say something is neat-o, awesome, or swell. The phrase “cool” is very relaxed, never goes out of style, and people will never laugh at you for using it, very convenient for people like me who don’t care about what’s “in.”
Homestar is cool. The Red Sox are cool. Twinkies are cool.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

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Boot_jkt-182Right now my toenails are pink. They look very nice and I enjoy smiling down at them, but I can’t help feel a bit like a total spank. Cheryl Strayed lost six of hers. I’m guessing the remaining four were not visions of loveliness. Frankly, it’s a small sacrifice to have made in light of the enormity of her accomplishment both internally and externally.

She was lost and she decided not to rely on someone else to pick her up, not to whine, not to accept her state complacently but to get the hell up and do something. Ninety percent of success is showing up.

Cheryl had a tough childhood with no fatherly support and made subsequently predictable choice regarding men. She pushes away one man who could save her – knowing deep down she has to do it herself, and remains attracted to other men who will only make her feel worse. The loss of her mother sends her over the proverbial edge.

She is not a professional outdoors person. She is not a skilled backpacker. She has virtually no money and lots of time. She decides to do something alone. Something tough. Something where she will be left to face her inner demons with no distraction. She decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Eleven hundred miles. From the Mojave desert up through California to Oregon to Washington state.

“When I had no roof, I made audacity my roof”.* It really is brilliant. I admire her audacity. She does too. Imagine the sense of accomplishment. The sense of pride in overcoming her own obstacles on her own terms. She just keeps on keeping on. She meets wonderful people (with the exception of the nasty old couple at the Whitehorse Campground.**). Everyone looks after one another in a way that is reminiscent of World Made By Hand. (1/09). I love that small community tenderness. It serves her well.

Not only is her trek worth discovery, but also her telling of her tale is quite well done. She has a natural ability to capture detail that makes wild an excellent book.***

Author’s Notes: * Robert Pensky “ Samurai Song”

**WHITEHORSE CAMPGROUND

Quincy, CA 95971-6025. Tel: (530)

Guess what, they closed. HA! What goes around comes around, meanies …

*** re read A Walk In The Woods, Bill Bryson (3/10) for a grand story of The Appalachian trail.

Анна Каренина by Leo Tolstoy

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Anna_Karenina_163x259First off, sorry to anyone who was excited for a word from my dear mother, but she is a bit preoccupied at the moment, so I’ll be doing the review this week. Some of you might remember me from our joint review of Hamlet (in which, to be frank, I wrote terribly.) but enough about me, let’s get to the book.

In a letter to a friend, Tolstoy wrote of Anna Karenina, stating that it would be his only ‘great novel’. And he was correct on it being great (but maybe not his only great novel, because I can’t imagine anyone would want to endure all 1,225 pages of War and Peace if it were dreadful.)

Our (sort-of) heroine, Anna Karenina, has seemingly everything she could want — beauty, money, social position, and a loving son. But then she cheats on her husband (who, by the way, is a total jerk) with the young officer Count Vronsky. This, to put it bluntly, ruins her entire life.

However, among the gloom and doom of Anna’s story, there is the love story between Kitty (another poor girl lured in by Vronsky) and Levin (Anna’s brother’s friend). If you can catch it, there is a great event of foreshadowing regarding our poor Anna’s fate, when Vronsky and Anna’s brother, Stepen, go to the train station to meet Anna and Countess Vronsky.

So, this book was a little depressing, but that’s the nineteenth-century Russians for you. It was beautifully written, although some translations are a bit musty (but if you speak Russian, you’re home free).

It’s worth all 819 pages.