Brevity

When I was in the fourth grade, I wrote a fourteen page book report on George Washington Carver. Title page not included.

I'm not sure what I wrote about for all those fourteen pages (Any chance you still have this Mom? I'm sure it's gold.) Maybe I pontificated a bit about what it would be like to share a name with a president. Or what I would have done with the money Mr. Carver could have made. But I expect it was mostly about peanuts.

I recall thinking that my teacher, Mrs. Andringa, would be delighted to read those fourteen pages--all written out in my careful but cramped cursive. In retrospect, I was probably wrong about that. And wrong abut the teachers who followed in her footsteps--those poor souls who were forced to endure the pages and pages (and pages) of my rambling. Somehow, I doubt my 1.5 spacing, 10.5 font, and .8" margins succeeded in convincing them that my papers were within their assigned page limits.

All that is to say: brevity is not my strong suit. Of course, if you regularly read this blog, or if you took Comm 110 with me in college, or if you've ever heard me preach, you probably know that already. So I was rather impressed with myself for condensing our latest collection of Adrian videos down to a mere five and a half minutes (one minute of which is him sleeping--and I'll understand if you skip that part). I know it's still a little long--unless you are one of his grandparents or a parents--and some of you might want to skip to one of the high point at 4.15 (I won't blame you). But it's the best I could do.*


Adrian, Late Sept 08 from Joel Schreurs on Vimeo.

*I really don't feel that bad because (a) It's my blog and I'll post what I want to (b) my last Adrian video had twice as many hits as the moose video--which was short, and not about Adrian.