Magic Snow?

From November through January I am scheduled to present an educational school assembly program called Arctic Express over 75 times. We already have 22 shows on the books for winter of 2007.

Part of the reason the program is so popular is that in addition to being a reading program, it also addresses and teaches about the many diverse ways that people around the world celebrate holidays during the winter months. From Thanksgiving, Diwali, Ramadan, and Hanukkah to New Years and of course, Christmas.

It is based on the story of a boy who had dreams and goals as a child that seemed impossible, but through determination and a constant belief in himself he was finally able to achieve his goals. The show ends with a very powerful emotional send-off that leaves everyone (students AND teachers) inspired to live each day to the fullest.

But here’s the really strange part…

I debuted this program in the winter of 2004. I performed it all over Texas, from Houston all the way to the Rio Grande Valley at the southern tip of Texas. The story in the presentation is about a boy who wants to create snow in the parts of Texas where it is too hot to snow.

And then, on December 25, 2004 something happened that had never happened before:

It snowed on Christmas morning in southern Texas. Not just in isolated places either. It snowed from Dallas/Fort Worth all the way down to the Rio Grande Valley.

For those of you who live in colder states this might not seem so amazing, but in southern Texas, particularly down in Falfurrias, Victoria, and McAllen (just a few miles from Mexico) the very idea of snow is magic. And to have it happen on Christmas day is simply unbelievable.

I know what causes snow. I know that my program had nothing to do with the snow.

But if you’ve seen the Arctic Express program, you know that I sure like to believe that it did play a part.

--Julian Franklin

The Greatest Invention Ever

I remember a few years ago, when I was in Toastmasters International, one of the first times I was ever asked a question during the "Table Topics" portion of our meeting, the question was "What do you think is the greatest invention of all time".

If you are not familiar with Toastmasters or Table Topics, I will tell you that the idea is to catch a person off-guard and see how quickly they can think on their feet and speak eloquently and intelligently about a topic they may know very little about.

I was nervous when he called my name, but as soon as he finished the question I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn't imagine an easier question to answer.

Clearly, the printing press has been the greatest invention of all time. Without it, we would still be in the dark ages. Only through the knowledge that was able to be preserved and widely distributed through the use of the printing press, was mankind able to progress past the limits that oral tradition imposes.

Even today, the spread of information that happens at the speed of light (including this blog), happens only because of the logical and gradual progression that began with the widespread information distribution made possible by the printing press.

To this day, the thoughts and ideas of the greatest minds in the world are preserved forever on paper and ink for generations to come to learn from and enjoy.

The original printing press was a very small snow ball that with each generation has grown larger and faster. Today we reap the benefits of a very simple invention created a little over 500 years ago.

I thank you Johannes Gutenberg.

The Betty Glover Library Workout Tape

A short video that will have anyone who has ever worked in a library rolling on the floor.

Better Glover Library Workout Tape

Passion (even about Math)

If you teach what you are passionate about, your passion is transferred to your students or audience. This is why a teacher who doesn't enjoy reading should not teach reading, English, literature, or even writing. The best teachers lead by example and with passion.

As an example, I had a Statistics professor at Sam Houston State University who literally inspired me with his passion. I could not imagine a course with more potential to bore a person to tears than a Statistics class. But this man was so passionate about it that you couldn't help but love the course.

It was his passion for statistics that led me to love probability and to actually learn to love mathematics. As a child I despised math. But now, in large part because of this amazing teacher, I not only understand it better, but actually enjoy it to the point that I have several books on mathematics that I have purchased and read for pleasure.

Can you actually read for pleasure a book on math? You bet! Here are a few children's books that make math concepts fun:

• Almost anything by Greg Tang (Grapes of Math, Math Appeal, Math Fables, etc.)
• The Sir Cumference series by Cindy Neuschwanderander
• Cool Math by Christy Maganzini (a VERY cool book!)

My favorite series is the Math Start series, divided by difficulty levels. The stories are realistic, compelling, and meaningful to children including things like setting up a lemonade stand, running races, and riding on elevators. Suddenly abstract concepts like number lines, division, and fractions become something that children can easily grasp and make sense of.

If you are interested in fun math reading geared for an older child or adult, you might want to try these:

• Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott (a fable that opens the mind to pondering multiple dimensions, but makes that mental exercise much less exhausting).
• Why do Buses Come in Threes? by Rob Eastaway (Mathematically explains many of the everyday questions we have like "Why does the grocery line I'm in always move the slowest?" And yes, there is a mathematical answer. You aren't just imagining it--your line IS the slowest!)
• Mathenauts edited by Rudy Rucker. This collection of short stories by the likes of Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, and Frederik Pohl provide fictional stories that bring to life in a very fun and stimulating way, some of the puzzles of math. And you don't have to be a mathematician or do any number crunching to enjoy these fun stories.

Elephant Butt

While I'm on this topic of correct use of words I was reminded of a vacation my wife and I took. We were watching the evening news and the newscaster announced a wildfire raging in Elephant Butte, NM.

Having owned property in New Mexico, I will tell you that residents of New Mexico have a hard enough time convincing geographically illiterate people that New Mexico is a state and part of the United States and not at all part of the country of Mexico, but that's another story.

On this broadcast, the so-called professional newscaster announces the fire is in "Elephant Butt" and then begins to giggle. This would be bad enough, but she doesn't even realize that what makes it so funny is that she is the butt of her own joke (or is she the butte of her own joke?)

She wasn't content to let well enough alone, she decided to explore this a bit more.

"Is that really the name of a city? Elephant Butt?" and then she began laughing again.

Why wouldn't someone on the staff alert her that it was pronounced "byute" and not "butt"? Did they have it out for this girl or was the entire staff all so stupid that no one knew how to pronounce "Butte"?

Of course, I still laugh when I think about it. I'm sure she thought she was funny at the time, but little did she know people would be laughing at her ignorance for years and years to come. Probably not the mark she wanted to leave when she got into television.

Google, Band-aids, and Xeroxes

My last post was about vocabulary, grammar and proper use of certain words. It might have seemed like I'm way too uptight. I used to think the same thing about anyone who thought grammar was important.

But as a writer I learned that when words are used carelessly, not only can messages get lost, but fortunes can be made and lost. This was reconfirmed this week when Google made an announcement that they were trying to protect their trademarked name from falling into open use.

It seems that if too many people begin using your trademarked names and you do nothing to stop them, the names fall into public domain. Xerox and Kleenex have been fighting for years to get people to stop calling all photocopies "Xeroxes" and all tissue "Kleenex".

Seems silly doesn't it? Until you realized that band-aid used to be a brand name for adhesive bandages, but now no one calls them adhesive bandages and everyone calls them "band-aids" even if they are Curel branded products. Aspirin found the same fate decades ago and you'd be hard pressed to even find someone who remembers when Aspirin was a brand name.

Mattel has guidelines about the use of the term "Barbie" (always singular, NEVER plural as in "Want to play Barbies?"). Companies take out full page ads in Writer's Digest magazine reminding writers not to use their brand name as a generic product category, but people still do. Now Merriam-Webster makes things even more confusing by validating the use of "google" as a verb meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web". Needless to say, Google is rather concerned about where this might lead.

It's good to have your brand name so closely linked to a product category that people assume you ARE the product category. But you have to draw the line somewhere or you can become as generic as band-aids and aspririn (both with lower case letters you might note, the same way Webster listed the verb "google" in their new dictionary).

Concrete Doesn't Dry

I always hated grammar as a child, but as I began to write more and more throughout my life I began to realize the power of words. Much of that power is lost if you don't understand what words mean when you use them.

On the surface, it just broadcasts to the world a lack of understanding or education. Like when people consistently use "alot" or "allot" when they mean "a lot".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a nit picky person trying to rid the world of dangling participles. I just get a kick out of grammar. If you don't yet, you should check out "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynn Truss.

This is at the front of my mind because I am developing an educational school assembly program about the writing process.

Then, on the local news last night I heard a commentator announce something about concrete on a construction project drying. But concrete doesn't dry, it cures. In fact, if you pour concrete in very arid places, you have to cover it with plastic and/or spritz it down with water periodically as it cures because if it does dry before it cures then the concrete is less stable.

So should she have used "cured" rather than "dried"?

It might have confused a large part of the audience and everyone knew what she meant when she said "dried". But a great part of how we learn things is by seeing, hearing, and experiencing them in context. This is why the school programs I produce are so effective. They aren't a list of vocabulary words to be defined and copied and recited. My programs are a living example of the vocabulary words, defined and presented in context, then used appropriately.

Shouldn't we strive to speak and write as examples to the greatest extent possible?

By the way, I'm not talking about stuffy writing. I think that you have to write to your audience. This is why the concrete thing bothered me so much. Not because she said "dried" rather than "cured" but because I think it was a good choice in this situation. I think saying "cured" might have confused some of her listeners and no one was confused when she said "dried".

So as I develop this program on the writing process I find myself supporting the decision to perpetuate a misunderstanding just because it is already a misunderstanding. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Performing at My Elementary Alma Mater

Today I got to do an educational, motivational assembly program at Oak Ridge Elementary in Conroe ISD in Texas. I've done thousands of elementary school assembly programs over the years but this is the first one at the school where it all started for me.

I still remember the very first time I stepped onto that campus, thirty-some-odd years ago. The school was brand new at the time and I was brand new to the whole "school experience". I showed up petrified, like most kindergartners. My father walked me in and introduced me to someone he said was his friend, but I got the distinct impression that it was just another scared kid who was just as happy to have someone to cling to on that first day as I was.

I remember my teacher, Miss Norman, who no longer works there (surprise, surprise!). I wonder if she knows how in love I was with her. Not in the way a high school senior might fall in love with his 24-year-old teacher, but like a child loves a parent. I don't really know if she was a good teacher or not as I didn't know as much about pedagogy then as I do now, but I know that in my mind, there were simply none better than her.

I still feel that way about her and am sure, in my heart, that she was everything I remember.

The school has changed to be almost completely unrecognizable. When I went there, "open concept" was the new thing. They have since found that this just created loud, somewhat disruptive learning environments and so all the rooms have had walls built. What was once the front office is no longer. Now the front office is where the art room used to be. I think.

It's hard to tell. So much has changed there within the walls.

The only thing that really looks the same is the play ground. I mean, all the equipment has since been replace with newer, safer, more colorful stuff, but the shape of the playground, the way the trees lay, the shape of the outside of the building (which hasn't changed) and the road and fence line. All that remains the same.

So, I'm spending the rest of the evening remembering long forgotten times. Like the day the first graders made tie-dyed t-shirts. And our field trip to some place that made HUGE tires (and that is ALL I remember from that field trip, but I still think it is worthwhile). The games we used to play in the playground. Being "in love" with Kelly Portera and Shea Gustavsen (the former in Kindergarten and the latter in 2nd or 3rd grade).

It was cool to go back for a day.

I even got my old year book out and am excited about our upcoming 20 year reunion. I guess I'll blog on that as well.

--Julian Franklin (a.k.a. Jay Pugh)

You Should Move to Las Vegas

Every now and then someone will tell me I should move to Las Vegas.

"Why?"

"Because you're so good!"

If I had any modesty I'd brush it aside for the purpose of this post, but I don't. Lack of modesty has always been a shortcoming of mine. I've always felt that if I had just a little bit of modesty, I'd be perfect. But, alas.

So they think I'm good (by the way, I am NOT a very good magician as any competent magician who has ever seen one of my shows will quickly testify). But some fans think I may be a contender in Las Vegas and I graciously accept the compliment for what it is (a compliment) and dismiss it for what it is NOT (good business advice).

Even if I were the type of performer that Las Vegas wants and needs, why would I want to move there to compete against all the other performers? You may say Vegas is where the gigs are, but that simply isn't true. The magicians outnumber the gigs a hundred to one in Sin City, where as back here in Texas I can't even do all the shows I get calls for.

So what I miss out on is the glory. I don't have adoring fans throwing themselves at me. Or rather, my adoring fans consist of eight-year-old boys who want me to tell them how the handkerchief trick works and second-graders who want my autograph.

I prefer it this way. They are a better fan club anyway.

I was thinking of this after finishing up a Family Fun Night at Travis Elementary in Mineral Wells, Texas and while loading up my stuff a group of kids came up asking for an autograph. That's all the glory I need.

Where I was on 9/11/01

I was a school teacher that year.

My wife and I had recently (about a week before) learned that she was pregnant with our first child.

I was in the classroom and a fellow teacher came in to tell us the news. She wasn't sure (no one was at this point) if it was an accident or terrorist attack.

I turned on the television set we had in our room and we were able to tune in just as the second plane hit the other tower. At that point there was no question we were under attack.

I taught high school in a self-contained classroom. I worked with children with Severe Emotional Disturbance and I made the decision to keep the news on for the day. I still don't know if it was the right thing to do, but I felt like we spent enough time studying History that had happened decades or centuries before, and this was History in the making. I wanted them to know they were experiencing something they would remember for the rest of their lives.

"Why are you watching this stuff?" the students asked.

"This is history. One day, people will ask you where you were when you heard abou this. One day your children will study this in their history books."

"Psshaw!" They scofffed. "That's what you said about the Monica Lewinski thing!"

Yeah. Go figure.

How Much Would You Pay for US Gasoline?

I just read that we recently discovered an HUGE oil field in the US Gulf of Mexico. The oil contained therein are supposed to boost our available reserves by 50%. That's pretty amazing if you think about it.

But we still import a lot of oil from the Middle East because we use so much and because we can get it there pretty cheap.

Now, this isn't a political blog and I'm not going to turn it into one, but I was curious how much, if any, a person would be willing to pay as a premium to know that their gasoline was refined only from US oil. It would be more expensive, but the cheapest price isn't always the only factor when determing purchases. Most often other factors like reliability, quality, and cost of ownership come into play at least as much or more than price. This is why people pay much more for a BMW than they do for a VW.

But lately people have been willing to buy everything from salad dressing and ice cream all the way to electricity based on how those products were created and what the profits were spent on.

So I asked myself if I would pay a 20% premium on fuel costs if it came only from US reserves or from close allies.

Any thoughts?

Teachable Moments

I am a big believer in the value and importance of "teachable moments". These are the little opportunities that arise dozens of times each day to teach the children in our lives more about the world around them. This is a tale of caution, however.

Children are human sponges, and sometimes we jump on those teachable moments without thinking about potential consequences.

So one day my daughter's skirt is slipping down. She is oblivious to the "plumber's crack" that she's showing the world and so my wife, Andrea says "Pull up your skirt. You're mooning us."

"What does 'mooning' mean?" Madeleline asks.

"A 'moon' is when your bottom is showing." I explained.

That was the end of the conversation. It was never brought up again by anyone.

Two days later, we went out to the video rental store to get a movie. We were coming out of the store at around dusk and I could see the moon in the sky. I asked my daughter, "Do you see the moon, Madeleine? Where's the moon?"

I don't suppose I have to finish the story for you other than to say, while we are proud of our four-year-old's ability to recall and apply information in new and creative ways, and while we are very proud of her well developed sense of humor, we were not really that impressed with her response to my question in the parking lot of Blockbuster Video.

--Julian Franklin

How my Customers Help Create my Programs

I was in Killeen last week presenting COLOR YOUR WOLRD, a school assembly program on reading and diversity. It's a great program, and a wonderful way to start the year off right. The kids learn about respect and standing up for what's right.

During lunch I was talking to the librarian there about the show that I'm writing for this coming summer. The theme is "Sail Away with a Book" and my show is called "Set Sail". It is a program about the writing process, but I told her I wasn't too sure what areas I wanted to cover.

So she pulled out a collection of ideas including a program they use called "6+1". She even had a bibliography of potential books that tied into these concepts, complete with summaries of each book.

You have to LOVE librarians! They are such resources of information.

I finished the programs that day and remembered that the highlight of the whole Color Your World Show (the program I was presenting at her school) is a song and a book that was suggested to me by another librarian years earlier.

It's great when you can get your customers to do the hardest part of your job for you.

Thank you, to librarians everywhere, but particularly to those of you who have hired me and helped me improve the lives of students.

I Skewed the Test Results!

I was doing a school assembly program last week performing the GO WILD program on science and reading. After the program the counselor came up to me and said "You just skewed my testing for the start of the year! I ask some logical thinking questions and your program gave everyone a leg up on the diagnostic!"

Now, as a former special ed. teacher, I can assure you that I do not set out to sabotage any diagnostic instrument. However, I must admit that I felt a certain amount of pride at having ruined her question bank.

I mean, ultimately, my real goal is to skew test results. I want the kids at the schools where I present to have an almost unfair advantage when it comes to testing, logical thinking skills, and the ability to think through problems and find workable solutions. Every teacher should have those same goals.

So to the schools in north central Texas, I apologize for making you find new diagnostic testing instruments, but I am glad that we were able to bump the whole school up a few notches during the first week back at school! What a great way to start off the year!

--Julian Franklin

P.S. If you are interested in having similar programs at YOUR school, visit www.JulianFranklin.com or drop me a line. I'd love to help you out, too.

Black Bear in Tennessee

It’s been over a week since I last posted and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I just got back from one of the coolest professional conferences I’ve ever attended. It is a four-day event for children’s performers called KIDabra. I’ve lectured there for the last few years and have been attending for even longer. It’s a great convention.

This year I took my family including my beautiful daughter, Madeleine. You can imagine the attention she got at a convention of children’s performers. She left after seeing a couple of hundred magic tricks, speaking with no fewer than 27 puppets, receiving about 22 napkin roses, and about 391 balloon animals.

She loved every minute of it.

In addition to all the great stuff at the convention we also went to Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede, and went hiking in the Smoky Mountains. The Dixie Stampede was a lot of fun and very interesting. I’ll be writing a blog article on the money machine that Dolly Parton has created there which I’ll post on my Business Building Blog: KidShowBusiness.blogspot.com

But now I’ll tell you that one of the highlights of my trip was seeing a black bear in the wild.

We were hiking in the Smoky Mountains with my wife in the lead when she turned and yelled “There’s a bear!” She then very instinctively grabbed our daughter, turned her to be facing toward a tree and then wrapped herself around our daughter to protect her. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do, but my wife sure did it fast like she knew what she was doing.

Meanwhile I grabbed the camera and started running toward the bear to get a good picture. This, by the way is NOT the right thing to do.

Fortunately my wife has enough sense for both of us and she yelled out to me “We’re not in a zoo!”

Oh, yeah. Bears maul people. They are strong and this one was lean. He looked hungry. He crossed the trail and went up the hill. I watched him from what I hoped was a safe distance, about 30 yards.

He didn’t seem the least bit interested in me (thank goodness). He just slowly sauntered up the hill, stopping once to glance back at me before continuing up the hill.

Every time I tell this story my daughter starts crying and saying “I didn’t get to see the bear ‘cause Mommy made me look at the tree and wouldn’t let me turn around!”
The real bummer is that I never got a good photo.

McDonald's Food

McDonald's food is not healthy.

McDonald's food is not particularly tasty.

But it is fast and convenient. As a professional performer I often find myself eating meals at fast food establishments out of necessity. I have to eat. I have to get where I am going quickly. And so I eat at fast food places because they are built on the premise of selling speed and convenience.

So why do places like McDonald's allow systems and employees who CONSISTENTLY forget to put syrup in with the pancakes? Why do they regularly fail to put spoons in with yogurt? Why do they refuse to put ketchup in the bag with the french fries unless YOU remember to ask them to?

I'm more than a little bit ticked off this morning after eating cold, crappy pancakes that contain NO nutritional value but pack in an entire day's worth of fat calories and they would have at least tasted good if I could have eaten them with syrup when they were hot. Instead, I was 3 miles down the road from the morons at the drive thru window in Meridian, Mississippi before I noticed that they didn't think syrup was something people might want to eat with an order of pancakes.

So I had to decide what to do: Turn around and go back and ask for my syrup (an extra 10 minutes and at gas prices another $2.50 added to the cost of my breakfast) or keep going and hope there is another McDonald's at the next exit. Either way this is neither fast, nor convenient. This is torture.

And as luck would have it, there wasn't another McDonald's for many, many miles. So I would up eating my pancakes cold.

The sad thing is, this isn't limited to the McDonald's in Meridian, Mississippi. This happens at the McDonald's right by my house. It happens at McDonald's all over the country and it happens to me at least 40% of the time. It also happens at other fast food places. McDonald's has perfected ruining breakfast, but they don't have a monopoly on it. I've learned to sit and double check every single thing in the bag before I drive off and if I ever fail to do so (like today) then I pay for it.

Part of the price of a fast food meal is realizing that YOU have to do the work of the drive through person. You pay less than a sit down restaurant because YOU are doing the important work of a manager. You have to make sure that the employee is doing their job.

Otherwise, you don't get what you are paying for. You are paying for speed and convenience. If you aren't getting it, you might as well order a real breakfast from a sit down restaurant.

--Julian Franklin

P.S. We ate at Subway for lunch. Not as fast, but when you watch them make it, there are NO mistakes and the food is healthier, too.

Movie Review: Hoodwinked

Hoodwinked is an animated motion picture that is an example of everything children's entertainment should strive to become. The movie is based on the Red Riding Hood story re-told as a modern tale. But it is SOOooo much more.

For starters, there are many layers of humor that strike adults as well as children. This is nothing new in children's entertainment, but it is done particularly well in this movie.

What I really like about Hoodwinked, however, is the very inventive and creative way that the story is told from several different perspectives as a "mystery" seems to unfold in the telling. As each character's story is told you aren't sure if you are getting closer to the truth or farther away.

And then, just when things couldn't get any weirder or funnier, the story comes to a conclusion that makes sense of everything in a very satisfying way. I won't say anything else because I want to preserve the "whodunit" for those who haven't seen the movie yet.

I will tell you that you will enjoy this movie, even if you have no children. It is funny and engaging in a way that few movies are anymore. If you are a children's performer (as I am) then you owe it to yourself to rend this movie and study it. Notice how the humor is kept clean and yet riotously funny? Notice how the reference to pop culture are tossed out without much fan fare, to be enjoyed by those who get it, but not to become stumbling blocks for those who didn't? You don't want your audience to spend time wondering about the joke they didn't get.

Particularly, pay attention to the creative way that an old, worn-out tale (Little Red Riding Hood) has been given new life through a little bit of creativity and imagination.

--Julian Franklin

Payback

My very first job as a teacher, I worked for a principal who had given me a paddling 12 years before. I kept hoping that he didn't remember me, but I can't imagine that he could have forgotten. I had received corporal punishment from him on more than one occasion.

When I was a student, I was not the best kid in class. I wasn't BAD, but I was definitely not the teacher's pet.

The reason I bring this up is because of a fun e-mail I got recently from the director of Library Services in a Texas School district. He saw my school assembly program and wanted to share it with all the schools in his district. He passed on the word of my program to some of the school officials and they all wanted more information.

So he e-mailed me asking me to send him some promotional materials to share with everyone. He included this fun line and the right to attribute it to him…

"This guy is such a showman that I'm sure he was a thorn in the side of many teachers"
--Steve Neal

Okay Steve. So you're more right than you probably knew.

However, I'm making up for it now. I spend my life educating children all over the country and inspiring them to read more, learn more, and become more. I motivate them to explore the learning process through self-directed learning, reading books on any subject they love and care about.

It might not make up for the underground newspaper I published my junior year ("The Harlequin", I got three issues out before being shut down by "the man"), nor does it reverse the fact that I organized a walk-out of our Political Science class. I had no good reason for the walk-out, other than we had been discussing them in class and it seemed like a fun thing to try. When the teacher left to get some coffee, I saw the opportunity and I grabbed it.

These things are done-and-over long ago. But I'm still paying retribution and making good on my debt to educators everywhere. And I intend to continue to do so.

--Julian Franklin

Summer of 2005 at the Library Changed My Life

My last few posts have been about how the summer library club reading program in Texas has changed my life and how it continues to do so each new year that I'm involved with the program. This post is about the summer of 2005, when the theme established by The Texas State Library was "Go Wild: Read!"

By the time 2005 rolled around I had learned a bit about costuming. Summer Library Programs in Texas are held in the summer…in Texas. It gets HOT!! No longer was I wearing trench coats, no matter how cool they looked in promo photos. So for the 2005 theme I dressed like a safari explorer.

Because I take my summer reading shows into the public schools and perform school assembly programs that promote reading, I also put an educational message into my programs. "Go Wild!" is about recycling and the scientific process. With the state mandated TAKS now testing Science, this has been a VERY popular program!

So, several times a day, dozens of times a week, and hundreds of times over the course of a school year, I teach about the importance of recycling.

Now, I've been a recycler for as long as I can remember. I paid for most of my gasoline in college by recycling all the aluminum beer cans consumed by the guys in my dorm.

But when you lecture about something day in and day out, any inconsistencies in your own life begin to haunt you. Even when I knew no one was looking, I just couldn't bring myself to throw out the tiny glass jelly jar. Empty soda cans consumed on the road were usually tossed in a trash can when I stopped for gas. Now I trucked them all home to recycle.

It seems little, but the fact is, that every year I perform, I learn more as I teach and I always grow as a human being as well as a performer and educator.

Summer of 2004 at the Library Changed My Life

I'm on a roll here. I've been writing about all the ways that the Summer Reading Club in Texas, created by The Texas State Library, and hosted by libraries all over Texas, has changed my life and continues to change my life in simple, but profound ways each year.

This post is about what happened in 2004 when the summer reading theme in Texas was "Color Your World". I created a show with the same name, in which I dress like a crazy artist and my dragon puppet (named Meihoo) magically steals color from the world. Only through an understanding we get from books found in the library are we able to convince Meihoo of the error of his ways.

I wanted to create a show about bullying and diversity, but as a former special education teacher I wanted to address diversity in a way that hadn't been explored in as much depth as many other forms of diversity. I wanted to address the diverse abilities and unique capabilities of different children.

So yes, we talk about different clothes, different foods that people eat, different languages, different cultures, but we also focus on how similar we all are.

We talk about how people love to read and I bring out a book in Braille and show the kids how children read who are unable to see printed words. I hold a book from the Moses series by Issac Millman. These books are about a deaf child who visits various places and each book teaches some sign language.

We cover children in wheel chairs and those who use walkers, too. In the end I sing a song, and this is where the real growth for me came. I am not a singer. I have never (prior to 2004) had voice lessons, sung in a choir, or in any other way made any real attempt to sing. But here I was, singing a very powerful song that almost all the children can relate to.

Was it scary? Yeah. Was it a risk for me to include this in my show? A HUGE risk! Was it worth it? When I see fifth graders watching the show and leave with red eyes and wet cheeks, and I see them look at each other in a different way, then yeah, there's no doubt it was worth it.

Color Your World