David Says His First Sentence!
Last night I put David in the backpack and Kristen and I walked over to the library with him. On the way back he said his first sentence (a proud moment in any language-loving papa's life)!

"Run dada!"

See, he really likes it when I jog with him in the backpack. I won't do it for long stretches because I'm afraid he'll get loosened in his straps too much, but for a short burst I imagine it feels to him something like riding a horse.

In any case, he's been saying "run" often - he and Kristen usually watch from the porch when I leave to go for a run, and he associates the donning of shorts and the lacing up of sneakers with running. And of course he's been saying "Dada" for months and months.

In all he's probably got more than 50 words he says and who knows exactly how many he understands (a great many more than one would think, I expect).

But it still seemed out of the blue and amazing when he put two of them together to form an imperative statement: "Run, Dada!"

So I did.

Variety Weighs In On The NY Times' Coverage Of Gibson's Passion
Peter Bart of Variety says, "it's a movie, not a political tract. It represents Gibson's vision, not his rhetoric. As such, it deserves to be judged as art, not prejudged as ideology. There are legitimate disagreements about the film's take on biblical history. What is beyond dispute, however, is that 'The Passion' is a true phenomenon in the history of motion pictures. As such, it is 'news' and deserving of objective reporting by the media." That's something he says didn't happen in the Times and he provides some interesting examples to back up his thesis.

Get Your Printer Ink, Prayer Request, With LaserMonks
High-quality low-cost printer ink, toner etc. from the monks at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank in Wisconsin. The LaserMonks tell us that the ordinary markup on printing supplies is sinfully high.

Ice Out, Lakers and Landlocks In!
They've officially declared ice-out on the big lake and people are catching some big, big fish. Check out this week's fishing report from NH Fish and Game, posted on NH.com. There are some good tips for fishing the lakes, and a picture of a kid with a 7-pound-plus salmon he caught in Alton Bay. Can't wait to break out the Gray Ghosts and Rusty Rats and get back on the water...

Vatican Says Mass Norms Must Be Followed Exactly To Ensure Reverence

My Old Pal Kevin Named Editor In Brattleboro
Kevin Moran was just named editor at the Reformer, leaving his post at The North Adams Transcript, his hometown paper and the paper where I got my start in newspapers. In fact, it was Kevin who led to my getting my first newspaper job. I hope the Brattleboro move is a great one for him. He's gifted, and beyond that, an amazingly nice guy, and beyond that, one heck of a fly fisherman.

We Win!
The Telegraph Online won Best Overall in its division (under 40,000) for the New England Associated Press News Executives Association (NEAPNEA) Web site contest. Boy does that feel good!

Who's Bad?
Kristen sent me this note:

"Just thought you would get a kick out of this...I was trying to mop the porch floor this morning and David wanted to help so I let him dump the mop in the bucket and had him clean the floor a little and when I told him it was my turn and he could do more later (he was getting big puddles everywhere and really only wanted to keep dumping the mop in the bucket) he went ballistic and I wouldn't give in and he started calling for you over and over, "Da Da! Da Da!" and I told him that Da Da would tell him to listen to Mommy and he said, "no, no...Da Da!" Anyway, it was pretty funny. Looks like I am turning out to be the bad-ass parent after all. *sigh*."

To which I replied that he does the same thing when he's with me and I tell him he can't do something: "mama, mama, mama!"

They learn so young. Amazing how cute he is, though, even when he's being obstinate.

Holy Cards See Resurgence In Popularity

Huckleberry Above A Persimmon!
Languagehat.com blogs on a great resource for 19th century slang: the Camp Chase Gazette and its 19th Century Slang Dictionary. "Huckleberry above a persimmon" means "a cut above," by the way.

Mollusk Shell Beads Suggest Earlier Development Of Language In Humans?
Archaeologists say that 75,000-year-old shell beads indicate people might have had advanced concepts of symbolism and language farther back than anyone realized. Christopher Henshilwood of the University of Bergen in Norway says: "They must have had a way of describing the symbolic message that the beads represent. If I were Catholic and you were not, and I wanted to explain to you how rosary beads are used to count prayers, it would be very hard to do that with sign language, or a grunt and a groan - you wouldn't get the message at all."

Playing With Style Sheets And ...
Kristen went to see a friend in a play tonight and I stayed home to babysit David. I got playing with the style sheets on the Web site, and thinking about all the Medieval studies I've been doing lately for this thing I'm writing and ... well, you see what happened.

Going Medieval On This Web Page
Doing some research and planning for a piece of writing ... and collected some useful links on the Middle Ages in the process.

And They Haven't Changed The Litterbox In 10,000 Years
Researches have unearthed the remains of a prehistoric cat, buried with its owner in such a way as to suggest it was a pet. The bones, found on the island of Cyprus, are more than 9,000 years old. It was thought until now the first people to keep cats were Egyptians, 4,000 years ago.

Chocolate Good For Pregnant Women
Turns out, according to Katri Raikkonen at the University of Helsinki anyway, that the more chocolate a woman eats during her pregnancy, the happier a baby is after she's born. I knew there was a reason I was so excited to deliver to Kristen that two-pound chocolate mouse pad they gave me as a speaker's gift at the New Media World conference at Hershey!

Hollywood Waking Up To Old News
Poynter "Book Babes" columnist Ellen Heltzel takes a look at the surge in media interest in Jesus. She writes: "The way the ink and the airwaves have been spent on Mel Gibson's film 'The Passion of the Christ,' you'd think that it was the first time anyone ever heard of Jesus. This comes as news to all the journalists who have been covering Christianity for years, lamenting how little space and energy the media normally gives to religion of any stripe, much less the faith that eight out of 10 Americans identify with. For their own part, book publishers are laughing -- in many cases, all the way to the bank."

The Passion of Neo?
I knew that folks were picking out theological elements in the Matrix movies - hadn't realized they were this serious about it or that anybody had yet connected it with Mel Gibson's The Passion. The author, Stephen Faller, says he's a Christian and has a couple of degrees in theology. He is clearly a big, big Matrix fan. Not sure what to think of his thesis, but it's interesting reading ... though a spoiler for the end of the third movie if you haven't seen it. Part 1 | Part 2

Study Finds Link Between Television Viewing And Attention Problems In Children
Yikes.

Samuel Bayer: Mike, Dammit
Is it "open mic" or "open mike" night? A linguist argues for the latter, on some good grounds.

A Trip To The Farm
Last summer Kristen, David and I went up to Webster Ridge Farm to learn about locally grown food. I was doing the Atkins thing back then and thinking quite a bit about where our food was coming from, and I wanted to try and buy more locally grown meat and produce. It was great trip, David loved the animals, and I wrote a piece about it for the magazine. Rick didn't end up running it until this month, and so I grabbed it while posting the magazine site and popped it on NH.com as well. Here it is, with a really cute pic.

Being A Mother Is A 24/7 Career
Great perspective on the women choosing stay-at-home mothering - addresses some of the flaws of the recent Time article on the subject. From today's Telegraph.

Bob Begeibing on NH Outlook
My friend and fellow Writer's Project trustee Bob Begeibing talks about the last book in historical trilogy, Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction, on Outlook.

Listening guide: Old and classical flamenco guitar
íUn lugar bueno para comenzar!

Sad News for the Broodstock Salmon Program
Looks like federal spending cuts are forcing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service salmon hatchery in Nashua to scale back. May be a boon to the salmon fishing in the short term (if they close the runs they'll release about five times the normal number of fish into the Merrimack this spring). But really sad news for the broodstock fishery program long-term.