The Friday Four, Part 42

~1~

I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving with lots of yummy food and time with friends and family! We sure did!

Setting the table and filling plates for the kids...
So much yummy food!!!!!!!

(Random tidbit: Did you know that yesterday was a very rare occurrence? Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah haven't coincided since 1888, and won't again in our lifetimes! Nifty!)

~2~

The Pew Research Center recently released a study about the reading habits of teens and young adults, as well as their opinions regarding libraries.  And it gives me great hope for the future!  One section in particular, regarding ebooks, caught my attention:

As with other age groups, younger Americans were significantly more likely to have read an e-book during 2012 than a year earlier. Among all those ages 16-29, 19% read an e-book during 2011, while 25% did so in 2012. At the same time, however, print reading among younger Americans has remained steady: When asked if they had read at least one print book in the past year, the same proportion (75%) of Americans under age 30 said they had both in 2011 and in 2012.

In fact, younger Americans under age 30 are now significantly more likely than older adults to have read a book in print in the past year (75% of all Americans ages 16-29 say this, compared with 64% of those ages 30 and older). And more than eight in ten (85%) older teens ages 16-17 read a print book in the past year, making them significantly more likely to have done so than any other age group.

I love my Kindle and you can't beat it for convenience, but nothing can quite compare to holding a print book in your hands.  It's almost cliche to talk about the way a book smells, but reading has always been a sensory experience for me.  I love the sound of pages turning, the feel of the paper between my fingers, and yes, the scent of paper and glue and ink and dust.  Glad to know that the younger generation recognizes the charms of old-fashioned books, too.

~3~

The New York Film Academy released a fascinating infographic titled "Gender Inequality in Film."  It points out in stark visuals the disparity between roles for men and women both in front of and behind the camera.  The graphic is pretty big, so I won't embed it here, but check it out on the NYFA website.

Just a few of the startling stats:
* In the top 500 films of 2007-2012, only 30.8% of the speaking characters are women.
* Likewise, only 10.7% feature a balanced cast where half of the characters are female.
* Roughly a third of female speaking characters are shown in sexually revealing attire or are partially naked.
* There is a 5:1 ratio of men working on films to women.
* In this year's Academy Awards, across the 19 major categories, only 35 women were nominated compared to 140 men.

C'mon, Hollywood, you can do better than that!  Those of us who, at least occasionally, go out and pay money to see movies can, too.  Hollywood will continue to make movies that make money; it's supply and demand, folks. (Yes, I know that's an extreme simplification, but there's still quite a bit of truth to it.)  Take a minute to think about what you want the future of filmmaking to look like, and choose movies today that will help send that message to the industry.

~4~

We're almost to the end of These Happy Golden Years, the second to last book of the Little House series.  Here are a couple more songs I found:

"Highland Mary" is, not surprisingly, Mary's song. The family sang it one night when they were missing Mary away at college:

And singing one Scottish song brought another one to Pa's mind.  Here's "My Heart Is Sair":