{"id":84,"date":"2015-02-22T18:41:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T18:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/?p=84"},"modified":"2015-02-22T18:44:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T18:44:28","slug":"from-jack-saturday-20215","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/first-experiences-of-reading-2\/from-jack-saturday-20215\/","title":{"rendered":"From Jack Saturday, 20\/2\/15"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a tarpaper cabin Dad rough-carpentered into livability on an abandoned Indian reservation on Schooner Cove, Long Beach, Vancouver Island in 1956, to a crackling woodstove fire and coal-oil lanterns, with the roar of the Pacific surf always present and wild robins and raucous blue jays loud in the deep forest behind the cabin – age 4 and 5, curled up in pajamas against my mother’s warmth as she read us three kids poems with lines like:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,<\/p>\n

Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,<\/p>\n

Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.<\/p>\n

Dark behind it rose the forest,<\/p>\n

Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,<\/p>\n

Rose the firs with cones upon them;<\/p>\n

Bright before it beat the water,<\/p>\n

Beat the clear and sunny water,<\/p>\n

Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.<\/p>\n

There the wrinkled old Nokomis<\/p>\n

Nursed the little Hiawatha,<\/p>\n

Rocked him in his linden cradle,<\/p>\n

Bedded soft in moss and rushes,<\/p>\n

Safely bound with reindeer sinews;<\/p>\n

Stilled his fretful wail by saying,<\/p>\n

“Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!”<\/p>\n

Lulled him into slumber, singing,<\/p>\n

“Ewa-yea! my little owlet!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My mother’s voice bringing magical cadence and invoking visions in a magic land before schools brought all that down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But what inspired me to learn to read was my mother’s reading aloud of the Classics Illustrated comic The Time Machine,<\/em> based on the H. G. Wells story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"TIMEMACHINE\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Robert Bly said: “On the level of one to ten, it’s about a two to read great works on the spirit from the page. On the level of one to ten, it’s like a nine to hear a human being speak it, especially one you love – that brings the spirit inside the house, inside the family, inside your genetic line.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I wanted two things: a tape recorder so that I could record my mother reading that wonderful story, and the ability to read it myself. So I was ahead of the game when I started school. I started on books at 8 or 9, and got my first tape recorder at 11. Now I work and play with recordings of the living voices of people more than I read text, though of course I will never give that up. I think digital media has re-opened and universalized a path to oral forms (both oratory and reading aloud) that links us again past Gutenberg and Plato with the pre-Socratics and shamanism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a tarpaper cabin Dad rough-carpentered into livability on an abandoned Indian reservation on Schooner Cove, Long Beach, Vancouver Island in 1956, to a crackling woodstove fire and coal-oil lanterns, with the roar of the Pacific surf always present and wild robins and raucous blue jays loud in the deep forest behind the cabin – … Continue reading From Jack Saturday, 20\/2\/15<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-experiences-of-reading-2"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86,"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edwardpicot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}