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Story Archives of 'Family'
Kingswood Youth Center
By Deborah Schachter on Saturday, November 14, 2009.When Mike Sproul was a teenager, he needed some positive adult role models. He found them at the Kingswood Youth Center.
What's Becoming Obsolete?
By Jen Nathan on Thursday, November 5, 2009.Pity the poor maligned typewriter. It was once the axis of a writer’s life. Hemingway packed up his portable Royal in its well-worn leather case and dragged it to Cuba because he couldn’t live without it. In the 1960s, school children practiced speed typing on sturdy Underwoods and adults pushed down shiny black keys every time they paid a bill or wrote a letter.
So What if my Kid Doesn't Love to Read?
By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, November 5, 2009.
Writer and columnist Rebecca Lavoie is suffering from what she calls an Oprah-induced injury. Try as she might to engage her eight year-old son in bedtime reading, he’s just not that interested.
Oprah and all the experts say that a love of reading is a predictor of success, happiness, an attractive mate, the meaning of life…ok, we exaggerate.
Rebecca’s son loves math and is great at it, so she wonders, isn’t that enough?
(Photo by ehousley via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Smart Phones for Pre-Schoolers
By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, November 3, 2009.
Disney is offering refunds to parents who feel duped by its Baby Einstein videos, and parents and researchers alike are questioning brain-boosting tools for kids. So you might be surprised to learn that 60% of the 25 top-selling smart phone apps in the education section of iTunes are aimed at under five set.
Researchers are now finding that something as simple as a smart phone app might help little kids learn. The apps claim to teach children to recognize symbols and encourage kids’ interaction with the natural environment. With us to talk about whether smart phones are the next big teaching tool is Neil Swidey. He wrote about smart phones for toddlers for The Boston Globe Magazine
Boston Globe Magazine: Why an iPhone could actually be good for your 3-year-old
(Photo by Genta Masuda via Flickr/Creative Commons)
The Psychology of Fear
By Sheryl Rich-Kern on Thursday, October 29, 2009.
During the month of October, nearly 24 million Americans will wander through the twisted hallways of a haunted house, where zombies emerge from darkened corners and blood-curdling screams rise to the rafters.
Why do some people seek out that creepy feeling of being scared while others avoid haunted houses and horror films at all costs?
Word of Mouth’s Sheryl Rich-Kern visited one of the largest haunted houses in the country, Spooky World in Litchfield, New Hampshire, to find out.
(Photo courtesy of Spooky World)
Stopping Fake Swine Flu Cures
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, October 26, 2009.
A dramatic surge in swine flu cases in 46 states prompted President Obama to declare the pandemic a national emergency over the weekend. The first batch of H1N1 vaccine arrived in New Hampshire earlier this month, but dosages fell short of covering the priority populations of young children, pregnant women, and professionals who work with high-risk patients.
A national shortage of vaccines, combined with the media frenzy surrounding H1N1, has prompted some less than reputable companies to release counterfeit flu cures.
Think swine flu shampoos, fake doses of Tamiflu, even machines that claim to shoot flu-stopping protons through the body. The Food and Drug Administration is teaming up with the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on sketchy swine flu products. Alyson Saben is Deputy Director of the FDA’s Office of Enforcement and leader of the agency’s H1N1 Consumer Protection Team.
The Los Angeles Times: FDA cracks down on Internet sales of swine flu 'cures'
An Update on Flu Season
By Rick Ganley on Wednesday, October 21, 2009.37 states, including New Hampshire, are reporting that H1N1, or swine flu, is now widespread in their area.
And there have been several reports of the lack of vaccine for seasonal flu as well as that for the swine flu.
We thought we'd get an update on the situation from New Hampshire's Director of Public Health, Dr. Jose Montero.
He says the state had been expecting more than 180 thousand doses of the swine flu vaccine by the end of the month, but only 50 thousand have arrived.
And he says even though the state has not been testing everyone with flu like symptoms, there have been outbreaks of the flu across the state.
Ninety Days of Trash
By Virginia Prescott on Wednesday, October 21, 2009.Yesterday was garbage day in Concord, New Hampshire. People gathered their purple pay-as-you-throw bags filled with food wrappers, kitty litter, and paper towels and set them on the curb. By the time they got home from work, a garbage truck had whisked those bags away and trucked them to one of the nearly three thousand landfills in North America.
I recycle, I have a compost pile, and I’m admittedly a little neurotic about minimizing trash, so most weeks i don’t give my garbage a second thought. But if Canadian filmmaker Andrew Nisker saw my weekly output, he might put me up to a challenge: to collect and store all of my garbage for three months.
Nisker found a family who was willing to pile up ninety days worth of waste in their garage. He filmed the entire pungent ordeal in order to illustrate just how much trash one family can produce. Then he connected the dots between that mound of garbage and the pollution that clogs landfills and waterways around the world.
Andrew Nisker joins us for our Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home at the Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro, Vermont.
(Photo by Charley Lhasa via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Picture Books Run Wild
By Virginia Prescott on Wednesday, October 14, 2009.
Picture books have come a long way since the illustrated Aesop’s Fables. Sure, kids still read about The Tortoise and the Hare and The Boy Who Cried Wolf, but the moral tales of yesteryear have given way to a new breed of bedtime stories.
Popular children’s books like Olivia by Ian falconer and Constance and Tiny by Pierre Le Gall depict a world with few rules, no consequences, and lots of childish fits. Unlike the frazzled parents and minders from classics like Curious George and Where The Wild Things Are, many of today’s picture book parents don’t punish their children. They simply respond to bad behavior with a hug and a beleaguered “I love you.”
Daniel Zalewski noticed the trend while picking out books for his own kids. He’s features editor for The New Yorker, where he wrote about the rise of unruly children in picture books.
The New Yorker: The Defiant Ones
(Photo by pawpaw67 via Flickr/Creative Commons)
StoryCorps: Mary Wilkinson-Greenberg
By Andrew Parrella on Sunday, October 11, 2009.Mary Wilkinson-Greenberg of Jackson had a special affinity for children, which led her to become a teacher. And the highlight of her life, she says, was the day she first held her son, Tim.
