Living the Dream!

I'm a prairie girl at heart. Need to know a tidbit about Laura Ingalls Wilder? I'm the go-to person among my co-workers and friends. So when I checked out the the Gale Virtual Reference Library recently, I naturally went to Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream and found a piece devoted to Little House on the Prairie. Well, that certainly made my day!

In perusing the piece, I discovered a factoid I was not aware of: because of anti-Native American attitudes depicted in the book, Little House on the Prairie has been banned in some libraries and classrooms. What?!? While I did experience a small amount of stress that my beloved Little House may have been banned, I did find myself relating this information on to anyone interested enough to listen.

As I investigated further in the volume, I found an essay on Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall". After visiting Frost's home (and woods!) in Franconia, NH, a couple of years ago, I am particularly interested in his poetry. One little tidbit I picked up was that the proverb, "Good fences make good neighbors" was not invented by him.

Oh, if only I would have had these resources available to me when I was writing all those English papers in college! But now I know how to direct others toward these fabulous resources.

As I sit here -- on the first day of March -- I'm watching yet more snowflakes float down from the sky. Winter has indeed dragged on long enough. And while I feel as if many of us may be starting to rise from winter's slumber, I got curious about Vitamin D deficiency. So I did a search in the Gale Virtual Reference Library. Yes -- just what I thought -- lack of sunshine can cause a Vitamin D deficiency in some people. But I also found out that a lack of certain foods and milk may also cause the deficiency. If left untreated in kids, rickets can occur. In adults, it is called osteomalacia. Both of these terms basically mean there are defects in the bones. It's a good thing spring isn't too far away. I did also take the opportunity to test out the listening feature on this article. I feel listening would be especially helpful when reading an article with unfamiliar terms.