{"id":4863,"date":"2005-07-25T10:16:28","date_gmt":"2005-07-25T10:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html"},"modified":"2005-07-25T10:16:28","modified_gmt":"2005-07-25T10:16:28","slug":"in-praise-of-legos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html","title":{"rendered":"In praise of Legos"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, not just because they can be used to uh…spread the Good News<\/a> (sort of), explain papal minutiae<\/a>, or explain church history<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Like every other family with toddlers, we’ve had Duplos for a while. Like every other family with toddlers, we’ve had lots<\/em> of Duplos. Joseph was interested in them for a while, but for the past year – not so much. <\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I noticed an Lego set, high up on  a closet shelf, that David had left behind. Gee – why didn’t he take his Legos to college? I dunno. It was pirates. On a whim (actually, probably in desparation), I took it down, gave it to Joseph and said, "Play with this."<\/p>\n

An hour and half later…<\/p>\n

Unbelievable. Nothing short of Jo-Jo’s Circus<\/em> had kept him so absorbed for even close to such a length of time.<\/p>\n

Last week, I decided to augment the set a bit – and since legos are expensive, of course I went to Ebay, where I got a good lot, cheap of miscellaneous pieces, including several horses and dinosaurs (ah!). Evidently not containing enough Star Wars or Harry Potter minifigs to make it worthwhile to serious LegoHeads.  (minifigs! See, I’m learning the lingo.)<\/p>\n

It came on Saturday, and I’m serious when I say that the four-year old played, in his corner, with his Legos, for probably five hours yeseterday. <\/p>\n

Anything for peace. Well…almost anything, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, not just because they can be used to uh…spread the Good News (sort of), explain papal minutiae, or explain church history. Like every other family with toddlers, we’ve had Duplos for a while. Like every other family with toddlers, we’ve had lots of Duplos. Joseph was interested in them for a while, but for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nIn praise of Legos - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In praise of Legos - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"No, not just because they can be used to uh…spread the Good News (sort of), explain papal minutiae, or explain church history. Like every other family with toddlers, we’ve had Duplos for a while. Like every other family with toddlers, we’ve had lots of Duplos. Joseph was interested in them for a while, but for…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-07-25T10:16:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"In praise of Legos - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"In praise of Legos - Via Media","og_description":"No, not just because they can be used to uh…spread the Good News (sort of), explain papal minutiae, or explain church history. Like every other family with toddlers, we’ve had Duplos for a while. Like every other family with toddlers, we’ve had lots of Duplos. Joseph was interested in them for a while, but for…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-07-25T10:16:28+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html","name":"In praise of Legos - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-07-25T10:16:28+00:00","dateModified":"2005-07-25T10:16:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-praise-of-legos.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"In praise of Legos"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}