Three Things
Author Q&A, how to entertain with flair, and EU schools rein in tech
This morning, I texted a friend to tell her about my night—which wasn’t great.
My husband Jason was working a night shift. The smoke alarm went off three times in the night until, finally, I got Jason on speakerphone and had him walk me through how to unwire it from the ceiling.
Then my oldest sleepwalked into my room, spooking me and face-planting into my bed, and wouldn’t move, so we slept together till he woke me up at 4 a.m.
And then I woke up before my alarm at 5:20 a.m., only to discover that the basement had flooded and the whole house smelled faintly of sewage. Blockage? Still undetermined. I am waiting for a plumber as I write.
“Oh my gosh,” she wrote back. “Sounds like an insane asylum.” Yes. Some days it really does feel like that.
I am excited to try a new format for my Substack newsletter. I first saw it on Jenny Rosenstrach’s Dinner: A Love Story newsletter, which I have admired for years. She calls it “Three Things” and it’s essentially a weekly curation of three interesting bits of information, whether a story, a recipe, a photo, a book, or a reflection, that defined that particular week.
It seems like a good way to share the abundance of research, experiences, and thoughts that I sift through weekly, but don’t necessarily have the time or energy to write about in a specially dedicated post. So, I’m going to give it a try and see how it goes.
1. Author Q&A
I had a lengthy phone interview with the administrator for Silver Lake Mennonite Camp ahead of an author event that’s happening this weekend in Kitchener, ON. Jessa had lots of great questions, and she even managed to come up with some that I haven’t heard before (a rarity!).
One was, “What are some personal highlights you’ve seen with your own kids from raising them screen-free?” I told Jessa about the squirrel house that my son and his friend decided to build one day last week:
“I had no idea what a squirrel house was. They came up with this idea and they proceeded to spend four hours in our backyard. They built this gorgeous miniature structure out of twigs and sticks and moss, and then they made an all-you-can-eat squirrel buffet with acorns. It’s still standing and it’s just really beautiful. People come and they’re like, ‘What is that in your yard?’ Well, that’s our squirrel house. The boys made it.”
Read the full Q&A here. And if you’re in southwestern Ontario, please come out to this book launch event! It’s on Sunday, October 1 at 3 p.m., 50 Kent Avenue in the Community Room. I’ll be giving a talk, doing an in-person Q&A, and signing books.
2. The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
Do you ever have that experience where books seem to follow you around, popping up as mentions in other books, until you finally get around to reading it? That was me with The Art of Gathering. I kept hearing about it, but it took me years to order a copy from the library.
Ultimately, the book fascinated me. It’s a deep dive into the art of entertaining, which all of my friends know I love to do, but it really goes into how it works, e.g. how to craft an invite list (including the dreaded choice to exclude when necessary), how to prime guests for an experience, how to welcome and structure an event, how to end it with a bang, etc. Parker organizes big conferences and industry events, but she also knows a lot about dinner parties.
I loved Parker’s idea of requiring every guest to give a toast on a topic that’s announced at the start of dinner. And there’s an incentive to get up and do it—the last person must sing. Over the years, the themes at her dinners have ranged from
“toasts to the stranger, to faith, to happiness, to collateral damage, to escapes, to borders, to Them, to fear, to risk, to rebellion, to romance, to dignity, to the self, to education, to the story that changed my life, to the end of work, to beauty, to conflict, to tinkering, to the truth, to America, to local, to the fellow traveler, to origins, to the right problem, to the disrupted, to the fourth industrial revolution, to courage, to borders, and, yes, to vulnerability.”
The most successful themes were the darker ones that allows people to “show sides of themselves that were weak, confused and unprocessed, and morally complicated.”
I also want to have a device-free dinner party where everyone surrenders their phones and smartwatches for the evening. How do you think that would go over?
I think I know what I’m doing at my next dinner party…
3. European schools reject technology
I am fascinated by a recent news story that Sweden has decided that students should spend less time on tablets, computers, and online research, and instead pivot toward printed books, quiet reading time, and handwriting practice.
The Guardian reported, “The return to more traditional ways of learning is a response to politicians and experts questioning whether Sweden’s hyper-digitalised approach to education, including the introduction of tablets in nursery schools, had led to a decline in basic skills.”
I feel like my mind is blown. This goes against everything that’s happening here in Canada, where my 14-year-old was sent home with personal laptop during the first week of school and I was essentially told in a stern email from the principal that pushback would severely compromise his education and put him at a disadvantage relative to his classmates. Gah.
The most interesting thing to me is that Sweden isn’t the only one. The Netherlands’ education minister recently said that “tech is a distraction from learning” and all mobile phones, tablets, and smartwatches will be banned from classrooms by January 2024. Then there’s the Irish schoolboard that has done away with smartphones completely—and asked all families to voluntarily withhold the devices from any children that are 12 or under.
I wonder when Canada will wake up and reassess its classroom tech infatuation. How far behind Europe are we, typically, when it comes to these kinds of trends?!
If you need a copy of my new book, Childhood Unplugged:
You can order it from New Society Publishers, Bookshop (in USA), or from your local bookseller!
It is available wherever books are sold—and it's popping up in lots of fun, unexpected places, like Shoppers Drug Mart in eastern Canada, London Drugs in western Canada, and even on B.C. Ferries from Vancouver to Nanaimo! I love seeing pictures from readers who show me where they’ve spied it, so please keep them coming.
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