Not Depriving Your Child of a World Globe
What a life it must have been growing up in the 20s and the 30s. If you had a radio at home, you were a bigshot. There was a time when Orson Welles came on the radio in 1938 to read the epic novel The War Of The Worlds, and many people actually believed it was a news broadcast and that the earth was under attack by aliens. Back in those days, the only way you had of reaching out to the world outside was an atlas or even better, a world globe right at home.
Know how they say that what with TV and the Internet and all those things putting the world and everything in it right in front of you, there is nothing left for the imagination to do in children? Well, there is something to that. Mystery is a good part of what inspires young people who throw themselves into something and dedicating themselves to it. It's hard to sense any mystery in anything when everything is completely presented to you three times a day on the Discovery Channel and on ten websites.
That's not how it was when all you had was a world globe at school. If you were rich or if your parents were really curious about this kind of thing, you had one at home. You couldn't ever find out and remember all the countries of the world without real practice poring over the globe. It wasn't like it is today, when every part of the world is completely mapped out orjust a click of the mouse away. Back then, when a teacher asked you to search for a country, you actually had to search. It didn't mean you had type it out in Google and press Enter.
But just the mere fact that there are all kinds of new ways to learn geography, doesn't mean that there isn't a place for a woreld globe at home still. That is a need that will always be. It will always fascinate children constantly to see for themselves where everything is. Acomputer can't show a child what the oceans are like and where the islands are, unless the child actually looks for those things on the computer.
An atlas can't show a child anything unless the child actually opens it. A globe on the other hand is right there waiting for the child, showing everything in the right perspective forever. A child that owns a world globe can always idly wonder about how large and complicated the world is.
These days, manufacturers have all kinds of new takes on what the world globe in a child's room should look like. They have internally illuminated ones for instance, that bring all the detail out in such clarity. People just don't give gifts like world globes anymore. They should. They make for such a classy gift.
Yard Landscaping Ideas Can Become Quite Interesting
My family lives in a neighborhood that is quite quirky, with some very interesting characters who call the community home. With that comes eccentricity, which I am all for, and it definitely shows in some of the yard landscaping ideas that people come up with in the neighborhood. Our family will sometimes drive around the neighborhood as a form of entertainment, just to look at all of the different lawns and ideas people have come up with.
One of the more interesting yard landscaping ideas I encountered was one in which a neighbor had covered his yard in bushes and then trimmed them into different shapes. The funny part about that is that he is a high school math teacher and will often tell my wife and I that he is trying to make his yard educational! When you look around the yard, you will see squares, circles, ovals, triangles, octagons and so forth, and they are all very close to perfect. It does make me chuckle a bit, but it is a very interesting concept.
Another one of my favorite yard landscaping ideas is one in which a guy two streets over has one flower throughout his entire lawn. The state flower of Texas is the bluebonnet, and it is so revered that it is actually against the law to pick one. They can be difficult to find at certain times of the year, but his entire front lawn is covered with them. What I love about his yard is the fact that while every other lawn on the street is green, his is blue. I asked him about it once and he just said he loved bluebonnets.
We also have a lady in our neighborhood who bought a book on villages in England. She is English herself and decided she wanted try some of the yard landscaping ideas from that book on her own yard. Over the span of about three years, we gradually watched her yard change from a typical Texas lawn with lush green grass, flowers and some bushes and shrubs to what one would expect to find out in front of a British cottage. She was quite content with it because it reminded her of home.
Yard landscaping ideas abound in this day and age and it seems that nothing is off limits. I love to see all of the different ideas people come up with, because it really is a reflection of who they are as a person and what they value. I think it is a great expression to the world regarding what we are all about.
