ABOUT
THE EGOCENTRICS
People are self-centered
to a nauseous degree.
They will keep on about themselves
while I'm explaining me.
Piet Hein
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome!
Hi there! My name is Britta Elmberg. I am a teacher specializing in early reading. Prior to the arrival of my children, I taught for the Toronto District School Board at a Project School in the Inner City. The focus of the project was reading and language development.
Since rejoining the workforce in 2008, I have worked primarily in early literacy. I taught early Reading to children in Junior Kindergarten up to grade two for the Professor's Lake Kumon Centre in Brampton for nearly five years.
During this time, I accumulated Additional Qualifications at OISE namely ESL parts one and two, and a Primary Education Specialist with a focus on literacy. Also having attained the qualification to teach Intermediate English, I occasionally found myself teaching senior students English: finally, those Shakespeare courses from University were getting put to some use!
digital
available at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
soft-cover
Currently, I am busy with publishing my own books. Last year a small collection of poetry titled Poems for Now was published. This book is written from a Canadian perspective, features some contemporary events and comments on experiences shared by everybody. The book was accepted as part of The Read Local initiative at our local library in which local authors are recognized and their works promoted.
As a teacher and a mother, I cannot overstate the importance of reading as a life skill. It seems that reading is more important than ever especially in this post print culture we are living in. The advent of technology with its many accessories including ipods, ipads, iphones as well as the given standbys--desktop and laptop computers---has not guaranteed the formation and practice of literacy. Additionally, it can be seen as curtailing the most postive aspects of oral language that promote storytelling, social discourse and personal relationships. The presence of technology has had obvious isolating tendencies. For young children who benefit from meaningful talk, it has distracted them in such a way that their natural inclinations in language use become easily set aside.
So if anyone wonders if there is one, or even two things, I would say to parents of young children it's this: read together often, make it fun and try to recognize learning opportunities but never force them. Happy reading to all!
PINEAPPLE, Princess of Fruit
Since colonial times, the warm and welcoming pineapple has, quite literally, been put on a pedestal in America. It has been used again and again as a motif in architecture, in furniture, in textiles, in illumination, and, of course, in food!
http://library.ucf.edu/rosen/pineapple.php
Love
Love is like a pineapple
Sweet and undefinable.
Piet Hein
Navigation:
What's with those pineapples?
Earlier this year (2015), I published two new children's books. The first one is title Bunny and Anka and is about a young girl's stay at her aunt and uncle's place in Montreal where she also gets to visit with their two adorable dachshunds. The story looks at family relationships and the nature of being a guest.
The second book was published shortly after and is titled The Passage of Agnes May. This story is about a cow who is the natural leader of her herd, and whose life changes greatly when her owner puts a bell around her neck. The story looks at the nature of leadership and how characters can still be limited by their own circumstances.
creator of grooks
Who's this guy?
PIET HEIN
A small window on a large world...
P. Hein was indeed a manysided man in the best sense: he was philosopher, mathematician, designer, scientist, game inventor and author! He also created a new form of poetry he called 'Grook' ("gruk" in Danish). Piet defined art as a way of thinking about all subjects, so for him 'being a poet' was only one outlet for his astonishing creativity. He asserted in his philosophical writings that the great cultural divide was not between the haves and the have-nots, but between the knows and the know-nots.
. . .but why mention Piet Hein?
"What in the world is a Grook?"
: "What in the world is a Grook? A grook is a short, aphoristic poem, accompanied by an appropriate drawing, revealing in a minimum of words and with a minimum of lines some basic truth about the human condition.
Grooks can be seen as an artful way of stating the big idea.
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
P. Hein wrote over 10,000 of grooks, most in Danish or English, published in more than 60 books. Some say that the name is short for 'GRin & sUK' ("laugh & sigh", in Danish), but Piet said he felt that the word had come out of thin air. His grooks or gruks first started to appear in the daily newspaper "Politiken" in April 1940 - shortly after the Nazi occupation - under the Old Norse pseudonym 'Kumbel' meaning "tombstone". In more exact terms, grooks are small aphoristic verses characterized by irony, paradox, brevity, precise use of language, sophisticated rhythms and rhymes, revealing in a minimum of words and with a minimum of lines some basic truth about the human condition. Grooks were meant as a spirit-building... In fact, those light, tiny poems - that sound almost like mental improvisations - exorcice the feeling of void or anxiety arising from our unquiet modern time
:Grooks were created originally during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. They began life as a sort of underground language just out of reach of the understanding of the Germans. They have since become one of the most widely read forms of composition in the Scandinavian - and English - languages. Grooks are the product of one of the most ingenious minds of this or any other century. A Danish scientist turned poet, Piet Hein has published longer poems, fiction, drama and essays; he has designed a 'rectangular oval', the Super-Ellipse, http://www.amazon.com/
American colonists began importing the pineapple from the Caribbean in the 17th century. Due to its seemingly exotic qualities and rareness, the pineapple soon became a symbol of hospitality in early America. Because trade routes between America and Caribbean islands were often slow and perilous, it was considered a significant achievement for a host to procure a ripe pineapple for guests. Similarly, some accounts tell of New England sea captains who, upon returning from trade routes in the Caribbean or Pacific, would place a pineapple outside their homes as a symbol of a safe return.
Due to its association with warmth and friendliness, pineapples in America were often used as the “crowning” piece in large displays of food. Similarly, the pineapple symbol was used frequently in the 18th and 19th centuries to decorate bed posts, tablecloths, napkins—anything associated with welcoming guests. Today, the pineapple remains a fitting symbol for the hospitality industry, and pineapple-themed products still abound. From lamps to candle holders to salt and pepper shakers and beyond, the pineapple motif says "Welcome!"
Links about the pineapple as a symbol of hospitality
http://www.learn2grow.com/inspirations/gettingstarted/findingideas/WelcomingPineapple.aspx
Spongebob's Place
THOUGHTS ON A STATION PLATFORM
It ought to be plain
how little you gain
by getting excited and vexed.
You'll always be late
for the previous train,
and always in time for the next
Piet Hein
Imagine: SpongeBob as a subject of a serious academic paper: check out the link below for a really interesting anaylsis about the cartoon many know and love.