Now there's an event.

[fflo]

Apr. 15, May 20
“Read to the Library Dog”: Chelsea District Library. All beginning readers in grade 2 & under (accompanied by a parent or guardian) invited to read one-on-one for 10 minutes to a dog trained to act as if it’s listening. 3:30-5 p.m., CDL KidSpot, 221 S. Main, Chelsea. Free. Preregistration required. 475–8732.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I'll be even more impressed if the dog reads to children who are trained to act as if they're listening.

[paperkingdoms]

That is.... both an incredibly whimsical awesome event, and also kind of sad.

Unless it's somehow more reinforcing to feel like a dog is listening at that age than that a person is listening? I just... I don't even know.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Hee.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking it's the novelty factor. And kids like dogs.

And, um, I wanna read to the dog!

[paperkingdoms]

Yeah, I dig the novelty part. And think it's pretty awesome. And I'd read to the dog.


I think I get hung up, though, on the dog having been trained to appear as if they were listening. Like that's a service we need to train dogs to do, because we don't get it from actual people very often. And then my brain slips sideways to people who need those dogs, because the people in their lives don't give them that. And then I get all melancholy, and have lost the simple delights of reading to dogs, which I still do think is delightful with the part of me who didn't wander off into a mini-dystopia.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I thought I sensed some of that slipping sideways to the melancholic. It has a gravitation-like pull sometimes.

Of course you can have people just regular reading to dogs and then specially-trained listening dogs without the latter having to be that way, particularly, because of a lack of the former, or because we *need* dogs for that, though I admit I think the novelty is a trick to entice the little ones to want to read aloud in this whimsical way.

But the lens of what's sad about it is a lens I feel compelled to look through myself a lot of the time. Ya outdid me on this one that way, though. I don't think I'm in an exceptionally optimistic state of mind lately, too, so it gives me pause to see you given that pause.

Of course part of the "hey, cool" for me could have to do with that item being in a long listing of event announcements I was copyediting, and when a little nugget like that turns up among the details of which card games are played when at which senior center and which pieces by which composers are to be performed by which local musicians, it no doubt gets a little boost in its ability to give me a little boost.

I felt the same way about the last line in the listing for H.A.C. Ultimate:

Every Sun. All invited to a very relaxed pickup game of this spirited team sport played with a flying disc. Note: Overly competitive players are politely asked to leave.

(I also notice how the word "frisbee" doesn't appear anywhere in the Ultimate notes.)

[paperkingdoms]

A friend posted a link to this on facebook: Nonjudgmental Greyhounds with the commentary that she'd like a nonjudgemental greyhound to come watch her write her dissertation.

And you're right, of course. I'm not sure why this sent me to a melancholy place; I haven't been spending so much time there lately.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Now somehow I feel sad, thinking of the contrast between (the) nonjudgmental greyhounds and (the) judgmental (and/or absent) humans.

[paperkingdoms]

Ah, but see, dissertation writing is so fundamentally something one does on one's own that the idea of a nonjudgmental greyound companion for writing seems lovely and warm.

[And said person *does* actually have a rather hostile committee. So.]

But somehow *that* frame made it All Better for me, and kiddos reading to said dogs is just an extension of that. Hrm. Methinks we need more unambiguous warm fuzzies todya.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Remembering how we're not engaged in semi-hostile dissertating can't hurt! ;)

[paperkingdoms]

SO TRUE.