Thinking Sticks: Playing with Ideas

Big, float, camera, Ecclesfield, hospital, national health...

2011-12-20T08:25:00.001-07:00

A 1933 horse-drawn float that seems to be made of flowers. I thought "Rose Bowl"?

But I could see (even in the smaller image that was in the e-mail from Retronaut) "Ecclesfield." For all I know, there's an Ecclesfield, California. So I googled it. Found "Ecclesfield parade," and all in just seconds.

Ecclesfield is in South Yorkshire, near Sheffield. I read about hospital parades, which were held there from the 1890's to 1936, and looked back at the photo. I could see "Ecclesfield Parade," but there was another word on the left. I got a magnifying glass, and it says "Hospital."

Now I know how hospitals were funded before the National Health program, and I have more pictures in my head of England. Nice.

Hospital Parades

The link says they were paper and flour paste on a wire frame. I wonder what they did with them afterwards. Maybe left them at someone's farmyard until the weather dissolved them?

When I was a kid I worked on a float once. We were wiring paper flowers (paper napkins made flowerish with a fluffy fold and a piece of wire) to chicken wire. I suppose (never thought about it until today) that at the end of it all, they cut the wire off the truck, rolled it all up and took it to the dump.

One thought leads to another, if you let your thoughts gallump along. :-) Retronaut has sparked a LOT Of thought! Here's their entry (introduced in the e-mail): http://www.retronaut.co/2011/12/vintage-big Vintage Big. All they cared about was that it was a big camera, in an old photo. That's enough.

Ganesha and the Methodists

2011-12-18T10:28:00.005-07:00

In a twelve-hour span, I read a hymn in a new Methodist hymnal (and took notes so I could look it up). I knew the tune, so I could hear it in my head. The notable thing was that the text was pretty much a prayer asking God to help people reconcile faith and science, mystery and proof.

The tune I know it to is here (let the intro stuff go by before the real melody starts):

Here's another organist playing it, also informally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgbS42n_U8

Here's the arrangement and words I grew up with, from The Baptist Hymnal of 1956:

I can play that on the piano. I'm likely to make a few mistakes but it still feels good.

I read the new text while waiting for a Christmas concert Holly was in. It's called "Praise the source of faith and learning," by Thomas Troeger. The hymnal was The Faith we Sing, 2004.

Here are lyrics: http://faculty.samford.edu/~twwoolle/Praise%20the%20Source%20of%20Faith%20and%20Learning.htm "...lest we justify some terror with the antiquated creed" was the end of one verse. It's to the tune above.

That's Holly with the short hair in the front row, black dress with sleeves, above the first poinsettia.

This morning I checked the overnight/international e-mail. Hema Bharadwaj and I have been having an exchange about Ganesha, because Marty did his final project in an Eastern Religions class on how to set up an altar to Ganesha. Hema sent a link she liked about the origin of Ganesha and some regional variations and symbolism. The final paragraph is this:

Thus various symbols with potent metaphysical themes telescope into the form and narrative that is Ganesha. They speak a profound truth in a language that bypasses the rational mind and connects intuitively with the soul. It is this silent language that we – a generation bombarded with unsubtle ‘Breaking News’ – are longing perhaps to hear. That is why we are so drawn to him, going to the extent of turning him into celluloid cartoons and plastic China-made dashboard displays. And Ganesha does not mind, so long as we appreciate the realm of his mother, and aspire for the realm of his father. (http://devdutt.com/decoding-ganesha/)

His mother(Shakti/Pavarti) wants to accept life and death in the real world; his father (Shiva) would prefer a spiritual life of renunciation. Ganesha melds those, and understands both.

I was excited to read this on that page, too: " Ganesha’s rat may be depicted in films as a cute mouse but it is a bandicoot..." I was in India a month and didn't see a single monkey, but the last night, on the way to the airport, I saw something running in the raised, wide median between lanes on the highway in Mumbai. I saw more than one. In Albuquerque it might've been prairie dogs, living in the dirt next to a freeway, but it was nighttime and this wasn't Albuquerque. I'm glad I saw them, and I'm glad that Hema and Pardnya believed I had seen them, and said "bandicoots." So I didn't see monkeys, but I did see bandicoots (fleetingly), and now I understand why sometimes (in English) I read that Ganesha has a rat, and sometimes I read it's a mouse, because as far as I (and probably others in the western-English-speaking-world) knew, Crash Bandicoot was nothing more than a video game character.

I've seen Ganesha's rodential friend portrayed sleeping, pulling Ganesha in a chariot, giving him a ride on his back, playing chess with him... On a wikipedia discussion of symbolism, there was this statement: "Martin-Dubost notes a view that the rat is a symbol suggesting that Ganesha, like the rat, penetrates even the most secret places." That's kind of cool. In Christian parallel, that's like The Holy Spirit. Kind of.

"Tractor" (the word, the thing)

2011-11-17T09:21:00.000-07:00

This morning my mind wandered through the events of the day, a coming road trip, and the literal meaning of the word "tractor." I had never thought of it. Traction. Retract. A tractor is a thing that pulls!

The thing it most basically pulls is a plow, that tool said to have so profoundly advanced human culture.

I wondered then whether anyone (maybe Icelanders) called them "iron oxen" or "power plows" or anything more Germanic. So I started poking around.

number:	3114
English:	cart, carriage, wagon (wheeled vehicle; not self-propelled)
Deutsch:	Karren
Nederlands:	wagon
Italiano:	vettura, vagone (of train), carro (with animal traction)
Nihongo:	?
Esperanto:	vagono, ĉaro
Novial:	chare
Tsolyani:	hóggukh

That came up, when I tried to see what "tractor" was called in other languages. It's not tractor, but I was excited to see that in Italian, "carro" is something pulled by animal traction (which fit right in, and also gave me a good clue why we called our automobiles "cars." In English a "cart" is pulled by animals, but people didn't so often ride in them as they do "wagons" or "carriages."

Britannica Concise Encycopedia had some cool tractor details:

High-power, low-speed traction vehicle. The two main types are wheeled and continuous-track. Most modern tractors are powered by internal-combustion engines running on gasoline or diesel fuel. Tractors are used in agriculture, construction, and road building, for pulling equipment such as plows and cultivators, for pushing implements such as bulldozers and diggers, and for operating stationary devices such as saws and winches. The first tractors grew out of the steam engines used on farms in the late 19th century; in 1892 an Iowa blacksmith, John Froehlich, built the first farm vehicle powered by a gasoline engine. The tractor revolutionized farming, displacing draft animals and many farm workers. By World War I the tractor inspired the tanks built by the British and French.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/tractor#ixzz1dya3raeO

I saw some steam tractors at an outdoor museum called Hollycombe Steam in the Country last summer.

It was pulling visitors in a wagon like... like... an omnibus !

Car trunks and glove boxes

2011-11-17T08:00:00.002-07:00

October 1940. "Grand Forks, North Dakota." 35mm nitrate negative by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration.

Four of five have real trunk-looking trunks, and this is about the end of that era.

From the Shorpy blog: http://www.shorpy.com/node/11699?size=_original

I wondered whether maybe in carriages, pre-automobile, there was a box for the driver to keep things in. I don't know, but if anyone does know, please leave a note!

Wikipedia has an article on glove compartments. There's more, but I liked this part best:

A glove compartment is occasionally referred to as a "jockey box," especially in the U.S. Upper Rocky Mountain states such as Idaho and Montana, but is found as far south as Texas. In South Africa, it is called a "cubby-hole". In Turkey, it is called "Torpedo Compartment".

According to the BBC Four programme "Penelope Keith and the Fast Lady" it was Dorothy Levitt who first coined the phrase 'glove compartment' as she advised motorists to carry a number of pairs of gloves to deal with many eventualities.

Halloween bi-plane

2011-10-31T10:24:00.002-06:00

This card came in the daily e-mail from How to Be a Retronaut, and I recognized the shape and general mechanism. I had seen one just like it many times, though not made of playing cards. Wood and canvas, steel and rubber.

Other images from that set of cards are here: http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/10/vintage-halloween-postcards, and the blog notes that they are from The New York Public Library Picture Collection. There wasn't a date, but the biplane was 1914. The card was probably made within ten years of the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903, so it's not a card of a witch in an old airplane. It was a picture of the very newest, most modern technology!

The plane is in Albuquerque; I see it pretty often. The photos of the plane, I lifted from an online search, and if you click the second one, you can see more image of the plane and information on its history and why it's at the Albuquerque Sunport.

Because of the internet, they can be set beside one another all over the world on Halloween! Ta-daaa!

Shadows and graffiti

2011-10-19T11:16:00.003-06:00

One of my favorite things lately is the daily mail that comes from a blog called "How to Be a Retronaut." There are several topics per day, but today two cool things arrived, and one reminds me of a stop I made in my home town a couple of weeks ago specifically to photograph the bar where my mom used to "live." (For a while she literally did live in the apartment above and behind it, but for many years she was there all the time it was open, drinking and hanging out with her friends.)

First, this teenaged photo of Robert Mapplethorpe, in a collection of photos of young artists. The shadow of his hair is awesome. They don't say whether he took the photo himself. I think that first because Holly has taken some of the best photos of her, herself.

Here's a piece of graffiti inside an abandoned factory in New York. The article isn't about the graffiti, it's just images of that factory. They say nothing about who or what, but that graffiti, in that place, is striking.

So my mom used to drink in a bar called The Mel Patch Lounge. It was one of the only bars in my hometown that was all-English. So it was where cowboys and Indians went. Most of the other bars had Hispanic owners, managers and patrons, and as they would get drunker, they would speak less English. (Generally speaking.)

My mom has been dead for several years, and the bar has been closed longer than that, but I thought I should take some photos of the building, when we passed through Española recently. It doesn't look nearly the same. :-)

Here's a picture with a good shadow in it:

My sister, who has connections with the local art scene, says it is being set up as a studio for various forms of graphic and performance arts. That's nice. And they call it "the old Mel Patch," still, informally, she said.

(I think this was to save that part of the wall for one particular purpose, not a message to all painters for the whole building; it was just to the right of the entrance, so it might have been saved for the name and address and hours or some such... don't know.)

It says "Only the best are crowned." This is very much a Catholic town.

trail, trailer, wagon, fender

2011-10-16T11:52:00.003-06:00

When I was 13 or 14 or so, one day I couldn't remember the name of that wide path paved with asphalt, for cars, outside my house. I thought and thought, and all I came up with was "trail." Okay, maybe I was 15 and I was stoned. But before long I remembered "road" and "street." They had just escaped me, temporarily.

But when I thought about "trail" I thought of "trailer" and the idea of something following something. A trailer trails behind a car (or truck, or tractor). And the trail itself is something people follow. Nice.

When I was 58, I saw or heard the root of the word "wagon" (it was being "waggon," the UK spelling at that moment) for the first time. It wags. It's like a trailer, often, but it has a single point of connection. Huh.

So "fender" came to mind. It fends off bumps or damage to or disruption of the wheels, on a wagon, or trailer, or truck. Nice. Plain old (really old) English words were just sitting there being meaningful antiques, and I had only heard them as sounds and pictures, without really looking.

A beautiful matching car and trailer spotted west of Albuquerque in August, 2011:

I like the reflection best (click for a better view of the car itself):

An interestingly parallel car and trailer I saw south of London (nearly to West Wittering, outside a butchershop where we stopped for meat pies for lunch, next to this place) in May, 2011:

It's a car and a half.

Threes

2011-05-17T16:21:00.001-06:00

All threes from West Wittering,

Sussex

Another one, from Hampton Court:

another 20 lives or another 20 minutes

2011-01-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

In objecting to someone's new-age objection to a simple statement, I wrote something worth keeping.

My self is myself. That's what I was talking about in the first place. Live in a way so that you're being aware and honest. Integrity. No "true self" and some other self. Just the one, whole self. Whether you think I'm more evolved than you are or not doesn't matter to me OR to you. Whether you think what you're discussing is "a much deeper perspective" than mine or not, mine stands and yours wasn't the topic.

You probably assume I don't know about the whole astral plane, third level, spirit guide, children choose their parents, blahdeblah, but I've known quite a bit about it since 1967. References on request. :-)

I will state the idea that it is part of a bundle of wishful thinking that can and does distract people from being right here, right now. I don't recommend it. It justifies violence and ignorance. That is not helpful to ANYone's spiritual value, regardless of whether they think they'll live another 20 times, or another 20 minutes.

The original statement was addressed to a young man (teen) who was disturbed about a situation between others. I had originally written
this:

Consider ideas. If something makes sense, good. Use the idea. Remember where you got it. Be honest. Live your life in such a way that you're not ashamed if someone quotes what you said, or tells something you did.

(Note to a young friend yesterday, but it seemed potentially useful to others.)

Don't know how long it will work, this link, but it's here: http://www.facebook.com/SandraDoddABQ/posts/193160007377934

Same and Different: easy answers and second looks

2010-07-18T08:37:00.002-06:00

For young children, this might seem obvious. It's not about color, so that might be another way to look at what youngest children look at first.

The video is new at youtube, and the comments there include "the converse has laces and the rest of them don't!"

Many answers that seemed obvious to us in childhood look different in the light of years and experience. The uniqueness of any object, person, idea, plant or animal can be discussed, as can similarities to other things.

All of that reminded me of the game "SET." It's a game that seems easier for younger children than adults. When I play it, I think in words. Maybe people who are more visual will find it simpler.

In everyday comparison and contrast, there are many other factors past verbal, logical, size or color. Which of those shoes were made in the U.S.? Which fit? Which are stylish? How hot is it outside? Ah. but the question isn't about which shoes someone might want to wear. Shoe stores are about which shoes people want to wear!

The video is a good example of multiple choice questions, and a good toy for playing with how we sort and choose, how we name things, and how we interpret what we see. And the song is nice. It reminds me of when Kirby was little, and he'll be 24 later this month.

Much of the comparison/contrast that comes up naturally at our house is about musical styles and forms and versions.

Holly and I saw a quilt at an antiques mall, and I said "Stained glass window!" but I was pointing at the glass case it was in, so Holly thought I was talking about the glass (which was clear).

Patterns, patterns, patterns...

Old Age

2010-07-08T10:00:00.005-06:00

"Kama Chinen, from Japan, was born in 1895 and incredibly lived through three different centuries.
She was born on May 10, 1895 — the same year as King George VI.

"France's Eugenie Blanchard now holds the crown of the globe's oldest person, aged 114." http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2958511/Worlds-oldest-woman-has-died.html

My favorite thing in that article is the United Nations prediction that by 2050 there will be nearly one million people in Japan over the age of 100.

The article that led me to this one was the 130th birthday of a woman in Georgia (former Soviet Georgia, not former Confederate Georgia). Her records have been long lost, so she can't win the international race, as it were... but 1880. She was born in 1880. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3046794/Oldest-woman-celebrates-130th.html

Anyway... the articles are from the racy, crazy SUN, in London, and the reason I get their e-mails is that they had an article on the letter I got from David Bowie, when Antisa Khvichava was only 87 years old. For a while there were letters in response to that, so I was checking in on occasion.

I had a grandfather born before the 1900's, but he died in the late 1970's or so. Here we are in the 1950's:

Holly and I visited my friend Beau the other day. Beau can start collecting social security when she's 62, because she was born before 1950. I'll have to wait until I'm 65, because I was born in 1953. All this information is patterns, patterns, patterns. It involves government finances, family relations, and future careers in gerontological fields.

Save the Date - Careers in Aging Week 2011
April 10-16, 2011

Optimism and Gratitude (KIND of...)

2010-06-25T14:59:00.004-06:00

Below is a song from a musical that was never successful, but the song is good! Carol Burnett sang it originally, and if anyone knows where there's a recording online of her doing it, or a video, please leave a link to it! Thanks.

Claire Spencer, a friend of ours, sang it to us many years ago, and repeated it a couple of times just because we asked. She had it on an LP from her childhood. Unfortunately, I don't have a recording of Claire doing it, either.

This is Buddy Rich, a famous drummer, on the Muppet Show, not drumming. 1981:

Here's one of him drumming, same program, no drums:

The Muppet Show - Backstage with Buddy Rich

Nerd Pride Day (Día del Orgullo Friki)

2010-05-25T10:51:00.006-06:00

Rocco Stanzione:

How did I not know about this holiday? I'm gonna write a nerd poem for my wife...

Señor Buebo, organizador del Día del Friki. (Foto: Antonio Heredia)
Roses are red, violets are blue
All my base are belong to you

Marilyn Olowe:

LOL, Rocco. How about this:
Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base
Are belong to you ♥

Tracing back from that, I found this by Erin Rose O'Brien:

While rummaging across the internet for wacky holidays, I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd_Pride_Day

Apparently, it originated in Spain. You go Spanish nerds. In addition, it falls on the anniversary of the original Star Wars film.

In 2008, Geek Pride Day came to America and in 2009, Canada. So let's rock our nerdiness. Let's get a large number of people to party it up with us.

Irreverent Haiku

Meanwhile, for the past several days, other nerds have been writing other poems, on a Facebook page created by Jeff Sabo. As those who don't have a part-time home on facebook won't be able to see it, I've brought some of my own, and the promise that there are many more and better there.

People are playing with long words. This is my 5-7-5:

Procrastination's
counterintuitively
inspirational.

And before that,

Why do we think it?
That big thoughts will not fit in
Small words of one sound.

and what started me with the five-syllable situation:

In Beowulf's age
Haiku all angled to be
Alliterative

One of my favorite geek-poetry things of all is the error message haiku which have been going around for years. There's no one definitive set, I don't think, as they're passed around as office humor, but here's one site with a collection:
http://www.strangeplaces.net/weirdthings/haiku.html

testing, dancing, Muybridge, physicality

2010-05-10T11:08:00.003-06:00

http://sandradodd.com/physicality

Edith Cavell, long division and other trivia

2010-05-09T18:22:00.007-06:00

Because of watching this: As Time Goes By...

...I read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell. There was just a passing mention of Edith Cavell, in the sixth episode of the third season, and I wanted to understand the joke.

And so I learned a fair amount about WWI that I hadn't known, and how people were being recruited with a story that turned out to have much exaggeration and some denial. But still it was heroism, and had I know this before I was in Norfolk last summer I would have wanted to see this monument. I might have passed right by it, but didn't know the story.

There are roads, schools, hospitals, buildings, people, a pub, a mountain, a bridge, a rose, a radio station, a YWCA camp, and a hill or something on Jupiter named after Edith Cavell, in the U.K., Belgium, France, Portugal, South Africa, Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Australia. And Jupiter. Okay, well not all those named things are in all those places. One in each, at least.

If considering the difference between knowledge and trivia, consider this, by Ronnie Maier.

Wrapping the point in silk
Each of us is born with a crazy passion to learn.
Each of us craves knowledge of our world and our place within it.
We learn because we want to learn, because it’s important to us, because it’s natural,
and because it’s impossible to live in the world and not learn.
Then along comes school to mess up a beautiful thing.
~ Peggy Pirro, 101 Reasons Why I'm An Unschooler

MJ helped one of my nieces with her long division homework the other day. Hearing that she had done this got me thinking again about what a waste of time and brain cells it is to learn long division.

#1 - As Pam Sorooshian pointed out in her math talk at Good Vibrations last year, the precision of long division is just not what we need out in the real world. Think about when you use division in real life: calculating the best value at the grocery store, figuring gas mileage, seeing how many of something you can use in a given time period or distribute to each person, and so on. And how do you do it? In your head, using estimates. "258 miles on 7.8 gallons, um, that's a little better than 30 mph." Done. Typically, we don't need to know that it was 33.07692 mph. And if we do...

#2 -Most of us carry calculators with us all day every day. We have calculators on our computers, in our phones, in our PDAs, in our watches, magnetized to our dashboards, clipped to our grocery carts, whatever. With a little practice, we can use these faster than we can estimate in our heads.

So, why are they still teaching long division in schools???? It is but one example of how schools have failed to adapt.

Once upon a time, it was vital for a certain group of people to know that wearing a silk shirt under armor might save your life, since the silk makes it easier to remove an arrow if you get shot. Somebody figured this out, and the word spread, and it became part of the standard warrior curriculum. Back then, knowing this technique was a matter of life and death. Nowadays, it's a quaint little factoid.

I'd rather have my kids learning about that than long division. Long division is a dead end, an exercise in tedium, a compelling bit of evidence that "math is hard" (not to mention unpleasant), or worse, that "I am stupid."

That little silk tidbit, though... Now that's interesting. I don't remember where I learned it—probably in a romance novel—but I looked it up on the Internet. It led me to Mongols and absorbency and sutures and animal rights for worms. And it led me to wonder: Who figured this out and how? Can you imagine the circumstances...? Chloe and I laughed together as we talked about it.

In other words, that little tidbit is fun. It opens doors. It engages my brain and reminds me that the world is full of things to discover.

That is what learning should be. I wonder why our schools haven't figured that out.

When little kids aren't afraid of Shakespeare

2010-04-18T10:24:00.004-06:00

And Some Have Greatness Thrust Upon Them
Shakespeare Through an Unschooling Lens
by Karen Ridd

This is from Life Learning Magazine, March/April 2010. I don't know whether you'll be able to read it without subscribing, but you might want to subscribe, perhaps. Next month there will be an article by me.

A quote from Karen Ridd's article:

There’s a lot of giggling going on in the back seat of the car. We’re on our way home from the prestigious Golden Boy indoor soccer tournament. My eleven-year-old son Daniel has a gold medal around his neck after a hard-played final. He also has a book in his hand – not exactly standard “Grade Six” reading fare. It’s Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare – and he and his eight-year-old brother are quizzing each other on the lines that they are memorizing. And giggling.… They are giggling at how funny these lines are. I, on the other hand, have tears in my eyes, a smile that reaches to Pittsburgh, and a heart overflowing with gratitude that we are able to learn without school.

This year they'll both be in a production of Twelfth Night. Last year Ben, the younger, was in The Tempest, but I don't want to give away the good parts of the story.

The image is a reminder for Sam Rockwell fans (and everyone else!) to watch A Midsummer Night's Dream and was lifted from an older post on this blog.

Sam Rockwell and Kevin Klein as Pyramus and Thisbe (Bill Irwin as "Wall," who is also Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street)

On my own pages there are Tales from Unschooling Lives Involving Shakespeare:
http://sandradodd.com/strew/shakespeare
http://sandradodd.com/shakespeare/

Pam Larrichia wrote "Shakespeare is fun!"
http://livingjoyfully.blogspot.com/2005/03/shakespeare-is-fun.html

Songs about singing, Art about art, and mirrors

2010-03-30T21:41:00.003-06:00

This was a Lyrics Game entry in 2007, for the word "mirror," and I wanted to bring it here as it's being retired there.

I've made a songlist for Songs about Singing.

Here are two other links people here might like: Polyphony and Horses, or Art about Art

After that date, I started a page called Reflections on Mirrors.

Anniversary of the death of the first Queen Elizabeth

2010-03-25T10:04:00.003-06:00

Mar 24, 1603 Queen Elizabeth I died. She as nearly 70, and had been queen of England since she was 25.

From the Death of Queen Elizabeth I:

In March 1603 Queen Elizabeth was clearly unwell and seemed depressed. She retired to one of her favourite homes - Richmond Palace. Stubborn as ever she refused to allow her doctors to examine her. She also refused to rest in bed - she stood for hours on end, occasionally just sitting in a chair. Her condition became worse and her ladies-in-waiting spread cushions across the floor. Queen Elizabeth eventually lay down on the cushions. She lay on the floor for nearly four days - mostly in complete silence. She eventually grew so weak that when her servants insisted on making her more comfortable in her bed she was unable to argue with them. The end was clearly near for the great old Queen. Her Councillors gathered around her. Soft music was played to soothe her. She had still not named James as her successor but she made a sign to Robert Cecil and it was interpreted that this was her wish.
(More details)

The funeral wasn't until April 28. The body was in a lead coffin, which I guess can keep Superman safe from kryptonite, and England safe from a month-old body.

In the middle of the site linked above are advertisements for wrongful death claims (just in case anyone wants to sue, about Elizabeth's death, I guess. As she was childless, though, and others benefitted from the death, I don't guess there needs to be a claim.

If she WAS childless, that is...
There are hints and suggestions that she had a son, and a very bright one, too. Sir Francis Bacon.

There's a recent book out (2001-recent), not so much serious history, claiming that the plays of Shakespeare were written by a son of Elizabeth, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. That he wrote the plays, and William Shakespeare was used as a cover, kind of the opposite of ghost writing. A scholar wrote of the believers of that theory: “Oxfordians are the sub-literary equivalent of the sub-religious Scientologists. You don’t want to argue with them, as they are dogmatic and abusive.”

But women aren't having children as they're dying, though they might be thinking of their children. If they had any.

The images above and many others, including the funeral procession, effigy and tomb (though those weren't until 407 years and some weeks later) are here: http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Documents/queen_elizabeth_gallery.htm

So what's the big connection?

Besides just everything in the 16th and early 17th century? Shakespeare? (Even way apart from the odd theory that the they might be related indirectly by contract.) Francis Bacon? (Even if they weren't related, they did correspond in a very intimate tone, and he was some kind of genius.) Exploration of the New World and victory over the Spanish Armada?

Elizabeth I reigned for 44 years 4 months and 5 days. Five other monarchs have ruled longer. Henry III in the 13th century, Edward III in the fourteenth (and so she died with the third longest reign) and since then, George III (160-1820), Victoria in the 19th Century, and Queen Elizabeth II, 1952 to still-counting. If Elizabeth II passes George III and Queen Victoria, she will be #1, but Elizabeth I will be #6 in any case.

[Elizabeth II] will have to reign until 2012 to reign longer than George III, 59 years from 1760-1820, and until 9th Sept 2015 when she will be 89 years old to better Victoria's record and become the longest reigning monarch.

History found in playing cards

2010-02-13T08:01:00.002-07:00

A brief look at the symbolism behind a deck of playing cards by 16th C. German artist Jost Amman.

Posted to the medieval trivia list at yahoo (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MedievalTrivia/)

I recently found an interesting article about the symbolism on early
German playing cards, so I put together a little video about a deck we
have by the German artist Jost Amman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTBUygN8fOk

Chas
--
MacGregor Historic Games
http://historicgames.com

The "card spots" common in one place might not be the same as in another! In the U.S. I grew up with spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds. In Spain their club is an actual wooden club, and they have gold, cups and swords. Their playing card art can look like our tarot card art.

I don't know which kind they use in Mexico; anyone know?

The illustration of the Spanish cards from wikipedia:

Deaf Unschooling Comic Strip

2010-01-11T08:06:00.003-07:00

These are by Adrean Clark and are on her Deviant Art page.

Comixpedia.org says:

Adrean Clark is a deaf cartoonist currently based in St. Paul, MN. Former comics/webcomics she authored are My Hands Full, The Significance of Reality, and The Dark Side of the Moon.

As a strong advocate of American Sign Language, she often deals with signing community themes in her work. Her work has appeared in publications such as SIGNews and Deaf Rochester News.

Clark is the Visual Editor of Clerc Scar, where her current comic work appears.

As Adreanaline, Adrean posts on unschooling discussions sometimes, and is in the Monday and Friday unschooling chats when she's not too busy. Adrean created an image of clear singing, following one of the discussions. It is here: SandraDodd.com/clarity

Her husband is John Lee Clark, the editor of Deaf American Poetry.

They're unschoolers.

Metals

2009-12-12T09:30:00.002-07:00

Hema Bharadwaj wrote on her blog

Raghu asked me to open a packet of salted peanuts which led to him requesting some salted, roasted cashews and then he started to say something about airplanes (which is where the salted peanut packet came from).. which then led to this question: "amma, which is heavier... metal or aluminium?" I replied that metal is like fish... a group word... so aluminum, iron, steel etc are metals... i was unable to remember more metals and he added tin and steel. then he said tin is lighter than iron... and that he got that observation from Iron Man... which led to a discussion of the suit the guy built for himself in the movie etc.

This entire conversation must have lasted about 10 minutes. It was so satisfying and amusing and interesting to see the connections, path of conversation topics etc. This morning i'm able to write it out... but these conversations happen often and by the time i get to write at the comp... i've forgotten the exact thread/topics and connections.

I added:

Those burst-of-learning sessions are my favorite things!

If it comes up again, tell him some metals are elements and some are alloys (combos) and that the U.S. coin "a nickel" is named because of what the coin is made of. And they use nickel in stainless steel.

Maybe someday "bronze age" and "iron age" will come up and that could be a part of that discussion too!

Cravings

2009-10-26T10:42:00.004-06:00

What's known of cravings? Pregnant women have them (I did), but what's the current belief of people who are scientific? What are some of the folk beliefs about cravings?

The reason I ask is that I'm making pork for the third time in one week. Never in my life have I had a pork craving, but it seems I'm having one now. Could be coincidence, but I thought someone might come by here with some knowledge or theories or humorous speculations.

Once when Kirby was feverishly delirious, and was three or four, he kept saying he wanted "red food." We tried, guessed, asked, called friends he had visited to see if they'd fed him something red. When he was well he couldn't remember.

With the slightest little google search I found this:

Explains what food cravings mean and how to curb cravings naturally...

Should food cravings be curbed rather than indulged? Should people listen to their bodies just enough to say "no"?

Pork is a weird one for me. It's browned and in the crock pot with green chile and tomatoes, and it smells like cumin, which I love.

Same but different

2009-10-17T16:48:00.004-06:00

Except that I scooted the top leaf over a bit, the only difference in these scans is that for the first one I put a solid cardboard box over the top of the scanner table, and for the other one I put the scanner lid down, "the right way."

These are from the fruitless mulberry tree right out my back door, the same tree from which this odd leaf came a few years ago:

I like scanner art. I have other things in a couple of places. Click for more:

Battleaxe or a Pike?

2009-09-04T15:21:00.006-06:00

I've had a note in my desk for years that says "Find that battleaxe thing."

Today I found it. What "it" is is a post from 1998, on a forum that doesn't exist, but I printed it out then, so I'm transcribing it here.

Subject: Re: Calling Sandra Dodd...
Date: Tue, Sep 29, 1998
From SandraDodd

<<Oliver is looking over my shoulder, and he needs clarity on the difference between a battleaxe and a pike.>>

A battleaxe is a cranky old woman and a pike is a fish.

A pike is longer and has to have a pokey thing on the end (speartip). An axehead is optional.

A battleaxe is heavier, shorter, and the pokey thing is optional.

I'm saying this without looking in a book or calling my many knowledgeable friends. BRB. (Did you know I was gone?)

I would ask my husband but he's off buying a caster for my kick stool (because I'm short), which brings up the question what is the difference between a caster (or is it castor? they do make that oil...[just joking]) and a wheel?

Okay. I called my friend Jeff [a.k.a. Duke Artan MacAilin in the SCA]. He's a word-freak and medieval combat practitioner. I read him my definitions and he said "that's it."

I wanted to say something about knowing everything. I had a family visit my house last weekend. It was like an unschooling factory tour. I was showing them toys and telling stories about how if kids have played with all kinds of things and thereby gotten scientific principles down in a sensory and intellectual kind of way, after they're older all that's left is the vocabulary, the terminology.

I bought a dictionary with my own money at the age of nine. I've been accused of being a know-it-all my whole life, but what I mostly know is words. If you know the name for an alternator, if you know the difference between an alternator and a generator by definitions, it will seem you know about the electrical systems of cars, and you WILL know more than if you didn't know that.

So because I've read about the Middle Ages for fun all my life and then hung around guys who talk about and make and use weapons, I just know. Same way people can tell a poodle from a greyhound (terminology) people gradually add to the details of their knowledge every day that they live.

That's why unschooling works. That's HOW unschooling works. Because someone cares about the difference between a pike (the word "pike") and a battleaxe (the word and the parameters of its meaning).

Definitions. Look at the word itself, "definitions."

OKAY! If you read this post carefully you've just done more than many college courses in philosophy do in an hour. Congratulations, you unschooler!

pants, bum

2009-07-22T03:57:00.002-06:00

I had chosen words for The Lyrics Game two months in advance, but the images weren't in them all. So I was in the U.K. when I searched google image for "bum," and turns out I got no photos of scraggly old homeless guys, but many female rumps. That made me more aware of words we use all the time in the U.S. that I don't even notice.

Then this ad from the Duluth Trading Company came, and I saw it in its way-too-American light. "Pants" and "bum" both in one place, with a free pocketknife.

Variations on English

2009-06-12T21:09:00.003-06:00

English in different parts of the world... Links and comments are welcome! Because I'm going to England in a month and a few days, I'm reviewing how I could get myself in trouble or seem rude and tacky. This is one of my favorite sites about that:

The Septic's Companion: A British Slang Dictionary—A dictionary of British slang, written by a Scotsman living in America

It's been linked on my English Oddities page for a long time, and I was one of the contributors before it was a book, so cool! It's more fun that some of the other dictionaries I've seen, though I just love dictionaries and I love stories of words.

Hema Bharadwaj wrote recently that her son, Raghu, is having a hard time in India because the English is so different from what he learned in the U.S. My favorite part of watching "Slumdog Millionaire" was hearing the game show host's English.

I had lunch with my friend Charles Thursday. He's English, and told of a road trip to the Midwest last year or so, and of being in a restaurant with three friends of ours who grew up in New Mexico (one in Texas and New Mexico) who all ordered water and that was fine, but when he tried to order water, the waitress couldn't understand what he wanted at all, no matter how much he repeated it. That's because the main sound in the word "water" in that part of the U.S. is a heavy "r" and Charles has no "r" at all. Plus he pronounced the "t" in the middle of "water" as though it were, well... a "t."

Once I sang in a folk club in England. Maybe at St. Neot's, in a pub. Maybe in a different folk club meeting in a different pub. It was the late 1970's. I sang The Titanic, and showed them the singalong parts, and when they got to their part I laughed because I was used to "...to the bottom of the the sea" sounding like a southwestern U.S. "boddum" and got that very hard "t" from a group of Brits!

Getting jokes

2009-06-10T09:32:00.002-06:00

Fractalpus

That's from Neopets.
It's not important.
If one gets the joke, it's like "passing a test," but if one doesn't get the joke life can still continue, the sun will shine, people will play and eat...

It did remind me of "...To Get More Jokes," though and I should link that with it. Here's a quote about an epiphany-esque moment when I was teaching:

I would be asked "Why do we have to learn this?" Sometimes I gave a serious answer, and sometimes a philosophical answer. Sometimes I made light of it. Sometimes the honest answer was "You don't have to learn this, but I have to try to teach it so I can get paid." Or "Only some of you will need to know it, but they don't know which ones yet, so I have to say it to everybody."

Then one day, the question came phrased a new and better way: "What is this GOOD for?" The answer I gave then changed my life and thinking. I said quickly "So you can get more jokes." I think we were reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet at the time. I could've gone into literature and history and fine arts, but the truth is that the best and most immediate use of most random learning is that it illuminates the world. The more we know, the more jokes we will get.

http://sandradodd.com/connections/jokes

Google maps views of medieval castles

2009-05-24T10:56:00.003-06:00

Google Maps of Castles, Cathedrals and Abbeys

Imagine all the people in the past who would have been thrilled with this technology. It's pretty thrilling now, but think back to all the scholars, geographers, historians, kings and generals whose lives would have been different had such images existed in past centuries.

Alphabetical Food

2009-05-23T11:39:00.003-06:00

Apple, Banana, Cookies, Dumplings, Eggs, Fish, Goat cheese, Hummus, Ice cream, Jelly, Ketchup..... but not like that, like this!

I got it here: Crooked Brains, and they got it here: Gugazine (or maybe here: Doise Dois). It's by Luiza Prado, an artist in Brazil, and is called "Eatphabet."

On her page you can see closeups of the various letters, too!

It certainly does remind me of Monkey Platters, which reminds me that this fall (maybe in November, date to be announced when I know it) there will be a three day happening for unschoolers with young children in Albuquerque (local/regional, not "big conference" at all) called The Monkeyplatter Festival.

And that reminds me of the January symposium in Santa Fe called SUSS.

Websites that are like Museums

2009-05-16T19:48:00.002-06:00

More at lileks.com

I love these public collections! Please leave links to your favorites in the comments, and if you want to make them "clickable," the code is here: http://sandradodd.com/hotlink

Corn Bags and Kirschsteinkissen

2009-05-08T08:33:00.007-06:00

About fifteen years ago, our friend Bela gave us two lumpy flannel pillows. Turns out they were "corn bags." They were like big bean bags filled with seed corn (whole corn), intended for heating in the microwave and using as hand warmers or footwarmers, sitting around on a winter's evening, or putting in the bed to warm it up. When those wore out, I made more, using terrycloth from towels. They're wonderful.

These are about 10" a side, and are based on the size of the piece of terrycloth, and not being too big to hold or to put in the microwave easily. If you want to make one, buy seed corn and put in enough for it to be a solid layer of corn when the bag's on its side, and to fill the bag half or less when it's held by the corner.

This morning, Keith sent me a link to a blog entry on medieval bed-warming techniques, and one of the things was a bag of cherry pits heated in a low oven. Bed warmers puzzle & answers

That led me to an image search, because it said the cherry-pit bags are becoming popular again:

Once when we were in Minneapolis (Keith was working on a contract, and living in an apartment) Holly was cold, and we hadn't brought a corn bag. I put rice into one of Keith's white cotton socks and put an overhand knot in the top. That worked, and so Keith kept it for future visits. We still have it, somewhere. Corn stays warm longer, though, and when the corn is new there's humidity with it too. I suppose cherry pits were good because the heat would last a while and heat up without destroying the seed (in those pre-microwave days of yore).

The blog is worth saving and exploring.
Old & Interesting, history of domestic paraphernalia, household antiques in use.

Antique household equipment, furnishings, utensils - housekeeping as part of social history. Domestic life, household management - how people organised their homes and did the daily chores. Yesterday's everyday objects are today's antiques or museum pieces, and we may view them with nostalgia or curiosity about past ways of life. Old & Interesting takes a look at how these everyday things were actually used, how people managed their home life - and more. Alongside articles illustrated by excerpts from advice manuals, period novels and other literature, this page is updated every couple of weeks. RSS feed or email will let you know about new articles.

Building a 19th Century Computer

2009-04-22T17:07:00.004-06:00

An English mathematician named Charles Babbage conceived and designed a mechanical calculator in the 1820s and halfway through the production of the parts, a disagreement halted the project.

From the article at Smithsonian.com:

The plans looked good on paper, but Babbage was never able to build his machine. More than a century after his death in 1871, computer historians blew the dust off his 5,000 pages of notes and drawings and wondered if his ideas could work. In 1991, on the bicentennial of Babbage’s birth, the Science Museum in London unveiled his Difference Engine No. 2, a fully functioning calculating machine, built to the specs of the inventor’s drawings. A full-scale clone of that machine is now on display in Mountain View, California, at the Computer History Museum through December 2009.

There's a video there you can watch. Very interesting.
(Smithsonian article)
There's one in London, and the one in California, and I think those are the only two.

The Science Museum in London says this on their site:

Difference Engine No 2 designed from 1847-1849 by British computing pioneer Charles Babbage (1791-1871), which excludes printing mechanism. Size 2.1m high, 3.4m long, 0.5m wide. The engine was built by the Science Museum and the main part was completed in June 1991 for the bicentennial year of Babbage's birth. The printing mechanism was completed in 2000. Doron Swade, senior curator of computing and IT, oversaw its construction. Babbage conceived the engine to calculate a series of numerical values and automatically print the results. Difference Engine No 2 was never constructed in his lifetime.

The history of computers is fresh in my mind because of the local display at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. It's called StartUp: Albuquerque and the Personal Computer Revolution

Babbage's machine would've belonged to England, or something, if it had been finished, so I'm not suggesting it's "a personal computer," though if you read those articles, it seems that one of the two is owned by an individual.

Horses, houses with names, connections

2009-04-21T11:36:00.002-06:00

This photo arrived yesterday in part of an illustration of why a certain home/property in England is called "Longfields." When Cathy, in Hampshire, ordered a copy of Moving a Puddle and some Thinking Sticks, I included a comment that I loved the name of her house and so she sent photos of the fields, and the five horses they have.

The day this arrived, the Lyrics Game word was horse. I had fully planned to add this image there then, but the day overwhelmed me and I didn't get to it. I wanted to make a bigger deal of the fact that the day after I had done an image search for good horse photos, this came and it's better than all of them. And these horses are owned by a family which now has a set of Thinking Sticks. I'm going to England this summer. I'm half thinking of asking for an invitation to visit, and half afraid if I add more visits I'll just never come home.

Longfields, named because, well... the fields stretch out a long way behind the house.

Tiny Houses

2009-04-19T14:00:00.004-06:00

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/
http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/testimonials/

Snap, Crackle, Pop

2009-03-01T15:14:00.005-07:00

Snap, what a happy sound
Snap is the happiest sound I've found
You may clap, rap, tap, slap,
but Snap makes the world go round
Snap, crackle, pop – Rice Krispies!

I say it's Crackle, the crispy sound
You gotta have Crackle or the clock's not wound
Geese cackle, feathers tickle, belts buckle, beets pickle,
but Crackle makes the world go round
Snap, crackle, pop – Rice Krispies!

I insist that Pop's the sound
The best is missed unless Pop's around
You can't stop hoppin' when the cereal's poppin'
Pop makes the world go round
Snap, crackle, pop – Rice Krispies!

Tools

2009-02-25T09:21:00.008-07:00

this came around by e-mail, from the best man at our wedding nearly 25 years ago, to Keith, to me.Wait... the e-mail didn't come 25 years ago; the wedding did. The e-mail came recently.

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, denting the freshly-painted project which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to it.

WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, 'Oh sh -- '

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

SKILL SAW: A portable cutting tool used to make studs too short.

PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads. Sometimes used in the creation of blood-blisters.

BELT SANDER: An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.

HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VISE-GRIPS: Generally used after pliers to completely round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub out of which you want to remove a bearing race.

TABLE SAW: A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity.

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new brake shoes, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

BAND SAW: A large stationary power saw primarily used by most shops to cut good aluminum sheet into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the trash can after you cut on the inside of the line instead of the outside edge.

TWO-TON ENGINE HOIST: A tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of everything you forgot to disconnect.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids or for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out Phillips screw heads.

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws and butchering your palms.

PRY BAR: A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50 cent part.

HOSE CUTTER: A tool used to make hoses too short.

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the object we are trying to hit.

UTILITY KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on contents such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts. Especially useful for slicing work clothes, but only while in use.

DAMM-IT TOOL: Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling 'DAMM-IT' at the top of your lungs. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will need.

Keith bought a new hand axe lately. An Estwing hatchet. It has a leather-wrapped handle. It's heavier than the one he bought me twelve years ago, when we moved into this house. Mine has some kind of soft plastic over the handle, but the steel is all one piece, on both cases. A few years ago for Christmas I got him an Estwing 3/4 axe. We use these tools quite a bit, splitting wood for the fireplace and hot tub, cleaning little branches off of wood we want to use, or stripping the giant reed grass that grows in our yard so we can use the lengths of it as poles for various things.

Here's a professional artist's portrait of the model Keith just bought:

We used to have a poster of these concepts up on the wall when Kirby was little:

Lever
Wheel and axle
Pulley
Inclined plane
Wedge
Screw

When I tried to look up the list, I couldn't find it. I was looking for Greek and tool, but if I'd looked for Renaissance and machine I would have found them.

I called Keith to see if he could help. I was saying "incline, wedge, lever," and I said "I think there are six of them."

Keith said "screw," and I said a screw was an inclined plane in a spiral, but he said no, it was separate. So I believed him, kind of, and he told me about an article he had just read about the way the thinking and skills of younger people (tech natives) has changed. We talked about that a while, and then got off the phone.

I googled a bit more and then thought IF I were going to actually get up and look, I wouldn't look for that poster. I don't remember if it was rolled or folded or one of the heavy flat ones from Colborn's, a long-out-of-business educational supply house from which we used to get things like tempera, games, Dover coloring books, and single crayons. So I thought the place to look, in our fairly-vast home library would be an older encyclopedia. Yes! So I went to Wikipedia and found this, as a link from tool: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machine

So those are not about tools, but about "machines." Yet an axe is a wedge, used all of a sudden.

This is all plenty exciting to me, because I'm easily amused and I love these little hunts and connections, but honestly, the definition of "tool" and the concept has expanded since I was a kid and was told to memorize what a tool was. When I was a kid, humans used tools and that made us human, but that's no longer "the truth." Chimpanzees can use a leaf as a sponge to gather water out of a hole. They will lick a stick and put it down a hole to collect insects (termites? ants? I don't know what). They will move things to climb up on to get something they can't reach.

Marty says he thinks maybe elephants will pick up a stick to knock something down that's higher than their trunks. If they haven't, they should.

So what, these days, are "tools"? My computer? Google? Wikipedia? Blogger.com? My new glasses? That electric teakettle I'm about to go and heat water with?

We talk about parenting tools, and people adding to their toolboxes, and those are all in the realm of thought (and action proceeding from thought, but without physical tools).

I'll add pictures of my own little hatchet/handaxe...

Those are the two places it lives, by the fireplace or near the woodpile for the hot tub. I've had it for twelve years now.

UPDATE, May 7, 2009:
Click the image to see an article Deb Cunefare sent on designer axes:

People Collect Things

2009-02-11T07:20:00.002-07:00

Barf Bags, for one thing. http://fly.to/barfbag
And they have links to many other barf bag collectors. There are stories there. Don't read them if thinking "barf" would be inconvenient for you at this time. (Thank you, Robin Bentley, for that link!)

There's a link there to a collection of images from emergency preparedness materials, with captions that made me laugh aloud while people are trying to sleep, so I closed this link: http://www.airtoons.com/ (Some are unsuitable for young children, but would be hiLARious for young teen boys.)

So what other things do people collect and share online? Jello advertisements.

Send others and I"ll add the links!

Playing Card Animation

2009-01-27T06:33:00.004-07:00

Read this first:
Click on the link below and a playing card will appear on your screen...wait a few moments for it to load, then scroll down below the card and you will see a line that has a little red slider bar in it. Move the slider gradually to the right and stop and watch the show take place, then move it a little more to the right and stop and another show will take place and keep doing this till you are to the end.
The marvels of technology.

http://www.adobecards.com

It's an wordless advertisement for Adobe Creative Suite 3.
The artistry, engineering and programming are wonderful, and there's music.

The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters

2009-01-04T23:18:00.002-07:00

"If people can't stand cartoons about religion, they've got a problem." —Frank Miller, author of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns; Daredevil; Sin City; etc." (28 February 2006)

This was a fun find. Some seem fairly obvious (Thor, Superman), but there are twists and turns and real evidence. It's very interesting.

http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/comic_book_religion.html

"We want this page to be as accurate as possible, backed up by objective, published information and not based on conjecture. We do not want this listing to be slanted toward any particular denominational or religious viewpoint. It is intended to accurately report the composition of comic book character religiosity. If you have corrections, suggestions, additional information, etc., or would like to post an alternative viewpoint, please write to us at webmaster@adherents.com. (Nothing you send to us or say via email will be added to our website without your express permission.) "

Although that page says there is no alphabetical listing, there's this:
http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/

Alistair Cooke on American TV, 1951

2008-12-30T14:54:00.003-07:00

I guess I meant to say "Alistair Cooke, from 1951, speaking of American TV in those days":

Alistair Cooke might be best known to Americans as the longtime host of Masterpiece Theatre, on PBS. In England, he was a radio journalist for over sixty years.

When he died in 2004, BBC News began re-running his earlier talks. What was once news is now fascinating history.

Letter from America, Early days of Television. Alistair describes the TV programmes that were available in 1950s America. This Letter was originally heard on the BBC Home Service in January, 1951, and rebroadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Friday, 9 April, 2004.

You can read it or hear it (audio link just to the right, on that page), or both.

The description of the weather program is especially interesting, for such things having been new and also for the size of the U.S. to be so exotic to listeners in the U.K.

Here's a quote from the section about the possible effects on children:

I know what's educational but I don't think that's necessarily the same thing as what is good or bad.

There are links to others of the shows there. Thank you, Schuyler Waynforth, for this item.

Roller coasters and that

2008-12-20T18:52:00.001-07:00

Where is this?

It was one of several aerial photos here at Crooked Brains.

Name that Tune: Michael Finnigan, Ten Little Indians

2008-11-25T08:36:00.002-07:00

There once was a man named Michael Finnigan
He grew whiskers on his chinnigan
The wind came along and blew them in again
Poor old Michael Finnigan, begin again.

What is that tune!?

It's the same tune at the start of "Way Down Yonder in the Paw-Paw Patch" which I realize many people won't know (and which has a fancier fourth line, musically).

And Raffi sings "Bumpin' up and down in my little red wagon" to that tune with an ending kind of like Michael Finnigan's, without the endless repeats.

And "one little, two little, three little Indians" which isn't politically correct (and has yet a different little end tune).

Some fiddler or concertina player might know the generic tune-name, or older songs with that tune. I might know older songs but it's so common it's in my little-kid brain, not my adult musician brain, like the tune to the ABCs and Twinkle, twinkle little star, which many people don't realize are the same tune for years (and some will realize it when they read this). Baa baa black sheep.

Sunshine and Small Words

2008-10-13T23:26:00.008-06:00

I'm interested in lyrics and poems that use all "original English" words--Germanic/Anglo-Saxon words. Without looking deeply into this, it seems to be one. On one pass, I think maybe "pay" and "turn" are from French, but they're from French a thousand years ago, so that's not bad.

Similarly small-word songs are here:
SandraDodd.com/smallwords

"The morning sun is shining like a red rubber ball."

and many more

Sunshine go away today
I don't feel much like dancin'
Some man's gone he's tried to run my life
He don't know what he's askin'
When he tells me I better get in line
I can't hear what he's sayin'
When I grow up, I'm gonna make it mine
These ain't dues I been payin'

How much does it cost
I'll buy it
The time is all we've lost
I'll try it
If he can't even run his own life
I'll be damned if he'll run mine
Sunshine

Sunshine, go away today
I don't feel much like dancin'
Some man's gone he's tried to run my life
He don't know what he's askin'
Working starts to make me wonder where
Fruits of what I do are goin'
When he says in love and war all is fair
He's got cards he ain't showin'

How much does it cost
I'll buy it
The time is all we've lost
I'll try it
If he can't even run his own life
I'll be damned if he'll run mine
Sunshine

Sunshine, come on back another day
I promise you I'll be singin'
This old world, she's gonna turn around
Brand new bells will be ringin'

hand pumps, siphons, water containers

2008-10-04T06:48:00.007-06:00

One image I have in my head of how this kind of parenting works is like a hand pump. Some of you might never have used a hand pump on a well, but if it's been sitting a while or the well is deep you might pump this big long handle down and up several times, and nothing happens, but finally you hear the water and then it floods out, more water than you needed. Then the next pump can be controlled because there's water in the pipe already, and it takes just the lightest touch.

Or similarly, siphoning liquid with a short hose, where the beginning is scary and creepy and doesn't seem at all like it would work, but once it's flowing, you don't have to do anything except make sure the end of the hose is below the level of the weight of the water or whatever it is.

Learning and growth are like a limitless reservoir, but we have factors in our culture that limit our access or control or faith that it could even work, or our feeling of ownership of knowledge of growth and learning. Experts. Timetables and charts.

Just in case it would help anyone else to think of it as the flow of water but siphons and hand pumps are unfamiliar, here are some pictures (and they're just interesting anyway):

The one on the left is from Bison Pumps (in Maine). It's a modern version of the cast iron pumps I knew from the mid-20th century (center photo). On the right is a pump from Finland. They're manufacturing pumps in Ghana and Tanzania too.

This one is very interesting, and leads on to another connection: The water container is plastic, but it's a traditional pottery design. In the U.S. we have plastic water buckets, but they're a traditional metal bucket design. (Thanks to Hema Bharadwaj for the link to photos of the non-plastic water containers in use in India.)

added in March 2009, another photo of those water jugs from India. Click it to go to its source (other photos of India):

Thinking about this, though, our current plastic gallon "milk jugs" are based on pottery or glass bottles, only made squarish so they can be packed in safely and tightly for transport. Here's a combo, then: older pump on a forest service site, and people filling up modern "milk jugs" (in New Mexico or Colorado, early 21st century):

Siphoning used to be common for moving gasoline. Gross. I've seen my dad do it many times. In the 70's when gasoline prices went up, people would steal gasoline from cars. Before that, I never saw a locking gas cap. They sold metal springs (like a funnel of coiled wire) to mount inside gas tanks so a siphon hose couldn't be inserted, too.

I never thought of siphoning gasoline again until this week. We have a conversion van we've used for out of town trips. I went with Keith to Costco, the least expensive gasoline in town, and we put $102 worth of gasoline in there. Then a few days later, it wouldn't start and it's in the shop. I'm thinking "We need to get that gasoline back out of there!"

If we were to decide to do that, though, I would try to rig something with the shop vac. (Ah... there are all kinds of hand-squeeze and small-pump plastic siphons for doing this now.)

Fairy Tales

2008-09-23T20:30:00.003-06:00

I've always really liked fairy tales, and when I found out there were psychologists and philosophers who saw serious depth and history in them, I was thrilled.

The topic came up on the AlwaysLearning list, and this and that was said, some of which is worth putting here for further thought and discovery.

I'm grateful to those in that discussion who had the time and knowledge to find these quotes:

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.
If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."
~Albert Einstein~ Scientist (1879-1955)

More Quotes Tomorrow I'm going to bed soon.

Some of the most commonly available fairy tales are

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Cinderella
Rapunzel
Hansel and Gretel
Rumplestiltskin
Red Riding Hood

Many of them exist in several versions, and the main collections were in Germany and France. Some are related to traditional ballads.

Some stories are generally considered "fairy tales" but they're not of that traditional, passed-down-from folklore genre. The Little Mermaid is a literary story. Hans Christian Andersen wrote short stories, he didn't collect folklore.

I was going to explain more, but I found this and it's pretty good for anyone who cares about the technicalities and terminology:

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/boardarchives/2001/may2001/definefairytale.html

Here's another recent article on fairy tales.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/09/21/fear_of_fairy_tales/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed6, in the Boston Globe. Fear of fairy tales, by Joanna Weiss
September 21, 2008

Natural Learning--The UnSchool

2008-08-20T10:22:00.008-06:00

This is where the word "unschooling" came from:

At YouTube it says this is from the 80's and while it might still have been on in those days, it was first on in the early to mid 1970's. There really were glasses like that available, too!

John Holt said that's where he got the idea. And for years people have said, "There was this 7-Up commercial...." but there it is!

I love the internet.

Eye contact and ancient instinctive behaviors

2008-07-13T10:16:00.003-06:00

In a discussion on the Always Learning list I came to a pocket of ideas too big for that list. It might be to big for this blog, but at least it can sit here and collect clues and links over the years. Bob Collier wrote the first part. He has an evergrowing set of links and commentary with some really great stuff, and I'll put that link and the link to the discussion from which this came below.

Bob:

It's interesting that maintaining eye contact is so often promoted as
the 'right' way to interact with another person. It clearly in my
experience doesn't produce rapport as effectively as interacting in
whatever way the other person is comfortable with even if that means
no eye contact at all.

Sandra:

I imagine there is something subtle going on as to primacy, something instinctive and inavoidable. Our culture has taught us (and our grandparents for a thousand years or more) that instinct is bad--ignore it. Strive to overcome it. Work through faith in juju, or logic as laid out by philosophers, or doing what your relatives tell you. Always let your culture be your guide—unlike that crazy Jiminy Cricket talking about thinking for yourself, only he WAS talking "conscience" and not instinct. Conscience is the collection of rules and messages and warnings we carry around to hold our problems up to (if we're lucky). Fetal alcohol syndrome can prevent that from happening. Some people harden early and have emotional scars where they should've been building a conscience.

So if "make eye contact" become part of our conscience—one of the things on the checklist to do to be a right and good person—that's not bad. If "be sensitive to others" follows pretty quickly, we'll probably all survive. I can be sensitive to others who would prefer less eye contact. They could be sensitive to me by at least looking at my ear or my hair a few times so I don't feel totally ignored. If that's harder for them than my part is for me I'm sorry, but the whole culture can't sway to accommodate people with problems making eye contact or shaking hands.

If gaze is part of the animal behavior we've been called on to ignore (but we can't, really, we can just be ashamed of it or accept it), then there's something to it that words and wishes can't take away. If I can make contact and someone else can't, then I'm alpha in that second, or I'm being challenging. It's the way bullies intimidate people. It's the way CEOs get ignored. It's why some adults let their mothers push them around.

It was my mention of handshakes that caused me to want to leave it alone or make it bigger.

So for people who come by here, what do you think about eye contact? What have you been told, or read?

What about cultures where people bow? Isn't gaze part of the formality there too, so it's taught?

There will surely be more written in that topic here (starting with July 12):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlwaysLearning/message/36354 (I think you have to join that list to see the topics.)

Bob Collier's site is http://www.parental-intelligence.com/ (You'll probably be there a while.)

Dragonflies and Snake Doctors

2008-06-25T07:44:00.002-06:00

In my yard this morning I have some little bugs that move like dragonflies but they're maybe half an inch long, if that, and if they're colorful it's not apparent. They look like one little straight piece of bug with a blur of wings around it.

When I was little, in Texas, we lived by Benbrook lake. There were lots of snake doctors everywhere. Then we moved to northern New Mexico, where there weren't any around our house or the river. Later I learned the word "dragonfly," probably out of a book.

Are all snake doctors dragonflies? And why are there ANY "snake doctors"?
What are those bugs in my yard?

If readers send me photos of any such flying creatures from their own yards and what they're called where you live, I'd be glad to put them in here. Or if you've blogged about them, please leave a blogpost link!

I know I could google, but I didn't know how far the term "snake doctor" goes and I figure some people have never heard it.

The Churches of Book Worship, and other fantastic realities

2008-05-30T07:58:00.005-06:00

A while back I brought pictures and a link to some REAL libraries, dreamscapes from the real world.

These appear to be similarly wonderful, only if you take a charge card or a sack of cash, they'll let you take a bunch of books home! Most Interesting Bookstores of the World

That site on which that bookstore collection resides is crookedbrains.net, and when you get there you will see a list of other topics such as chromed bikes, monowheels (those are somewhat related, as range goes), creativity with marbles, homemade submarine, alternate uses for containers... (I keep trying to make a list but I get all involved in another page.)

And there are links to other sites that will make it seem like no time passed at all until you realize you're hungry and need the bathroom and haven't turned the water off in your yard and... (ooops. brb)

There's an example of something I ~~wasted~~ spent several moments on and it's kinda sickmaking (once you click and go to its animated mama), but there's worse there for sure.

So back to uplifting...

Some artistic recycling of computer parts:

There's plenty of exploring to provide connections to last you a while! Thinking sticks. You'll never forget all of it (though you might forget some).

Mystery Art

2008-05-02T15:02:00.003-06:00

Identify this if you can.

A clue, and a link to more photos (and a link to the answer, in the words of the artist): Mystery Art #3

If you're feeling sad that you might've missed Mystery Art numbers 1 and 2, here. I did the first two, but not this third one.

Numerals and Counting

2008-04-22T15:45:00.004-06:00

At Always Learning some people talked about having had a pattern on numerals on which they did calculations in school because teachers wouldn't let them count on their fingers, and there was a request to bring that here. Can anyone who had a personal system like that describe it?

There was also discussion there of the history of numerals. An earlier post on this blog dealt with ancient counting (aloud, names of numbers: Score! and counting sheep in prehistoric languages) but now the question is about writing numbers down.

A link was brought to this explanation. Some of us were skeptical, and someone's looking into it:

Fun With Numbers (and an illustration from that page):
Pam Sorooshian found this: http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals/Talk

Google will turn up tons of cool stories. Here are portals to a few:
If you have any theories or favorite stories on numerals, or sites about their history, or personal stories, please deposit those below!

Food, History, Fun!

2008-04-20T07:43:00.007-06:00

Connecting food to history, art, music, geography and all that good stuff.

If you don't understand The Great Depression very well, here's an aid:

Follow the links—every page is wonderful.

This one is about the art of the paintings of Jello.

That Jello tour of The Great Depression is from The Gallery of Regrettable Food

Click the airplane for Sunbeam Bread's 1949 pro-bread propaganda pamphlet aimed at children, and some 21st century commentary by James Lilek. I advise you not to read it while you're eating bread or drinking any liquid.

Below is the creation of an unschooled girl named Hannah who was free to watch TV. She saw a cooking show and created this meal. I'm glad to have the photos and her mom's account! Click the photos to read.

Songs about food and about candy

But what really started me on this post was the books post before this. I had a link to a site with cakes made to look like medieval books, and it was on a quiet, still little page here. I'll leave the quote I started the post off with, and when/if I find where those photos went, I'll bring them. My cake-as-sacrifice link is still good, though.

I have a page on cake, and worshipful ceremonies related to cakes,
and this page on cakes made to look like medieval books ties those two together!

REAL libraries, and crows with coins

2008-04-18T09:11:00.002-06:00

Keith, my husband, sent me this link: Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut. Yeah, baby. For lovers of books or Europe or the Middle Ages or any two of those, these photos are HOT. Holy cow. I want to be there, I want to DO that.
Samples:

Not being able to poke around the libraries, I poked around the blog, and found Crows and Coins, photo-commentary (with captions upon commentary) of crows with coins, and what they must (or might possibly, but probably not) be thinking!

And that's all commentary on this:

The Goal

The goal of this project is to create a device that will autonomously train crows. So far we've trained captive crows to deposit dropped coins they find on the ground in exchange for peanuts. The next step is to see how quickly we can get wild crows to learn the system, and then how quickly they can learn it from each other.

Once we've got system down for teaching coin collection we'll move to seeing how flexibly they can learn *other* tasks, like collecting garbage, sorting through discarded electronics, or maybe even search and rescue. The crows continue to amaze us with their abilities, so who knows?

In the meantime, the idea of mutually beneficial synanthropy is gaining ground. That's the concept that we can have mutually beneficial relationships with animals adapted to human ecologies. We're doing some consulting with companies that have animal-related problems to find animal-related solutions - instead of just bombing, shooting, or poisoning them.

Comments on comments on connections on connections!

New Way to Walk

2008-04-02T12:15:00.005-06:00

Here's a little article on The Pointer Sisters and their connection with Sesame Street. I had always thought that "New Way to Walk" must be a direct parody of a Pointer Sisters' song, but I guess it's just a style parody. I started wondering...

Years later Destiny's Child performed it with muppets:

1993 version between those, made of clips from guest stars from the year or so before. (I remember when they did a similar thing with "Put Down the Duckie.") According to the Sesame Street Wiki *, this clip includes Savion Glover (famous before he was a regular on Sesame Street), Bill Irwin (Mr. Noodle, who played the uncle at Thanksgiving in "Across the Universe"), David shiner, Maya Angelou, Garth Brooks, Ruth Buzzi, Michael Chang, John Goodman, Kevin Kline, Cheech Marin, The Neville Brothers, Rosie O'Donnell and Sally Jesse Raphael.

New Way to Walk

Music by Joe Raposo
Lyrics by Mark Saltzman

I was feeling low, I was kinda blue
But that's all gone since I got something new

I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
And my new walk suits me fine

I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
And it makes my spirit shine

It's a little bit of strut and a lot of smooth
And a little bit of bouncing fine
My chin is up, my feet don't stall
When I walk my walk, I walk real tall

I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
And it shows how good I feel

This little piggy went to the market
This little piggy stayed home
This little piggy got a whole new walk
And look at these pig feet take me home

I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
And it shows I've got some sense

I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
(Walk, walk)
I got a new way to walk
And I walk with confidence

Russian Nesting Dolls

2008-03-08T08:17:00.011-07:00

We had nesting Santa dolls for years, and just this year I burned the chipped up unbroken few left. The wood had dried and cracked. They were inexpensive, though, from a cheap catalog that sells bulk imports.

There was a Flight of the Conchords mention of Russian dolls. And so with it already in my head, I came across a page called History of Russian nesting dolls. The translation is rough and interesting, and here are a few quotes:
"In 1918 the unique Museum of Russian and Foreign Toys was opened in Sergiev Posad. The first Russian matryoshka by S. Maliutin is a part of its exhibition."

The life and death of nesting dolls: "Private making of matryoshkas and production of other hand crafted things was forbidden in the USSR – craftsmen had to work at the factories where was no possibility neither to earn enough money for their labor (rates were quite low as at other state enterprises) nor to show their art abilities (goods had to be simple enough for mass production)."

Present time

Now Semionovo matryoshka has not the best time. The complex economic situation in Russia mirrors at these crafts too: it's harder to buy raw materials, fuel and electricity became more expensive. In these condition it hard to create something new, people instead of wage in money get just ready goods: matryoshkas, wooden spoons, wooden tableware. It press people to leave a factory and to work separately at home. Maybe it is hard in the beginning but in such conditions can be born new ideas, types, goods - there are more to room for creative activity.

We sincerely hope that Semionovo matryoshka will blossom soon and will expose us new unusual things. (From Russian-crafts.com.)

I didn't know the Soviet Union forbade home crafts. Way to kill a culture.

Above, 1970's stop-action animation from Sesame Street.
Below, Flight of the Conchords use Russian Dolls in a philosophical analogy.

For sale on e-Bay 4/6:

Added July 2008:

Photography: What about it?

2008-02-28T23:44:00.002-07:00

What are your thoughts about photographs? How have they changed life, or how has life changed them?
At your house, what's the difference between the oldest photos you own and the newest?
What are photos good for? Bad for?

Daguerreotypes
"Welcome to the Mirror Image Gallery, the place on internet for all interested in photos and history."

I like that the description said "photos and history," because photos become history. The buildings and cars behind people in documentaries become records. The surroundings of movies shot on location become history. New Orleans shows in Easy Rider is a distorted but 1960s way, and in A Love Song for Bobby Long, one neighborhood is shown in a very casual, leisurely way. It might not be there anymore, but with the passage of time it wouldn't be there any more in the way it was during the filming anyway.

"Is it a picture or a painting?" "There is recent speculation that 17th century artist Johannes Vermeer used a precurser to the camera, the Camera Obscura, to create his incredibly detailed paintings. The result is an interesting blurring between artistic and scientific mediums...." (blog post with responses and many links)

Mirrors in images, and mirror images

Miraculous Photographs

Don't Believe Everything you Hear...

2008-02-21T10:01:00.006-07:00

I have a page called Myths too many parents believe. Someone wrote and asked me to add my opinion on why they were myths on the last four there (about writing, bedtime/jobs, self-regulation having to be taught, and not swimming right after eating), so while working on that I figured I might as well branch out and get some assistance!

I'm going to list a few things that have changed in my lifetime or not so long ago, or "truths" that turn out not to be true, and I invite you to add others. Google away, if you want to. Directions for making a clickable link in a comment field are in the sidebar, but if that's confusing to you just leave the URL and I'll come and enliven a link for you. Comments can be as long and as frequent as you want. Have fun!

Don't Believe Everything you Hear... from doctors.

"Nursing mothers have to drink lots of milk so they can make milk." Cows don't drink milk. People don't need to drink milk to create milk. It's nuts. Most adult humans are lactose intolerant anyway, but it hasn't kept schools and hospitals from giving milk out like crazy, and sometimes insisting that it be finished off.

"Four out of five doctors prefer Camels." (Magazine ads in the 1960's, which also explained how soothing to the throat smoking was, and helpful to the nerves.)

Dr. Dio Lewis, a prominent late-19th Century doctor, was sure that the northern U.S. created strong, wise men. The Carolinas had a climate that emasculated the settlers, and Southern California caused deterioration, loss of learning and of interest in ideas, and people who live in southern climates fall into gossiping. The exact quote is here.

Don't Believe Everything you Hear... from teachers.
"Your permanent record will follow you forever."

When I went to teach in the school district I had attended for ten years, I asked to see my permanent record. It was legal to make the request, and if it was going to follow me everywhere, why couldn't it be produced for a few minutes for a school employee to see? Uh.... "They're in storage and it would take a while to find it." I was like 22 years old and it had already quit following me!? I just laughed; I didn't press it. I'm just as glad not to know what insipid things were in there. The principal had written on my teacher review that I had "a good rapore with students."

"Brush your teeth up and down," which was replaced in a few years by "Brush down on the top teeth, and up on the bottom teeth," which was replaced within about a year by "Make the toothbrush go in circles." That might could go under don't believe everything you hear from doctors, but I learned it from teachers in health classes, telling us what the dental profession had learned to be crucial, tooth-saving Truth.

A friend of ours is an EMT and says mouth-to-mouth resusitation is not considered a good thing now. Lots of us who had red-cross cards over the years were told otherwise. Advice has changed on treatment of burns and on tourniquets, too. I put that under teachers instead of doctors because I learned first aid in school at in Girl Scouts. Here's one article on the changing stance, and many more can be found with a web search.

Don't Believe Everything you Hear... from parents.

"If you stick your tongue out your face will freeze like that."

Existing collection about parenting: "If I let him, he would..."

"Masturbation will [do various specific and unfounded things to] you." [Because of masturbation, "People would lose flesh, they would get weak, they would cough, and they would end up with tuberculosis, which of course he called consumption. " Read more about that here, including the original purpose of Kellogg's cornflakes. Eeyew. (And this, too, could've gone under the doctors' list but most people heard it from their parents and this might help explain why.)

"If kids play with guns they'll become violent." SandraDodd.com/peace/guns

Some of the best links and examples left in comments below might be added above. Expect the main entry to change, is what I mean to say. —Sandra

Drapetomania, School Refusal and Hikikomori

2008-02-16T10:09:00.002-07:00

I learned a lot of things in one day, and got up this morning to read something I was just too tired to finish reading last night.

When I read I don't mutter, so when I gasped aloud I knew I had read something worth quoting somewhere, to someone:

The hikikomori studied and interviewed for Zielenziger's book were not autistic, but bright intelligent people who have discovered independent thinking and a sense of self that the current Japanese environment cannot accommodate.

I'll get to links and references in a minute. An unschooling mom (Meghan, in California) sent me a copy of a movie, a faux documentary, that was on TV I don't get. I didn't watch it when I first got it, but yesterday I watched This is Spinal Tap and started thinking about the value of documentary-for-fun. So I pulled out that tape of "The Confederate States of America." It's a fake documentary done by a fake British Broadcasting system with a fake Canadian historian adding lots of commentary. It's all part of the one big fiction. There are commercials, because it's done as a TV documentary that breaks for commercials, but the commercials are part of the false over-all.

In the program and one of its commercials, they talked about a disease called "drapetomania," and I looked it up, figuring Wikipedia might say it was created for that documentary. No, it was, in the 19th century, a real, medical "mental illness." Drapetomania caused slaves to flee captivity.

So I thought I would look up "school refusal," which I thought would lead to a Japanese term and phenomenon. A few years ago, I spent some time with a Japanese unschooling mom who translated some of my writing (and prefers anonymity) and she said that in Japan they lock kids up in mental hospitals for "school refusal." But it turns out School Refusal was a European disease that spread to the U.S. Somewhere in there as I read, though, I came upon "Hikikomori," which can cause school refusal in Japan.

I'm just pointing out the tip of an iceberg. I don't intend to examine, map or calculate the size and weight of this iceberg. The fact that it exists is plenty for me.

During the slave period in the U.S., it was considered a mental illness to want to escape. Today, 150 years later, there are diseases to describe school children who wish they weren't required by the government to be in school, and it's a disease not to want to leave your house to go out and mingle with the culture at large.

If you don't want to read any more, I don't blame you.
If you do want to read more, I'll make it easy:

C.S.A. the Movie
School Refusal in Children and Adolescents, in The American Family Physician.
School Refusal on wikipedia, which led me to their entry on Hikikomori
which led to
Japan's nervous breakdown, by Michael Zielenziger, excerpts from his book Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created its own Lost Generation. One quote:

Unable to work, attend school, or interact with outsiders, they cannot latch onto the well-oiled conveyor belt that carries young boys from preschool through college, then deposits them directly into the workplace-a system that makes Japan seem orderly and purposeful to outsiders, even as it has begun to break down.

Unschoolers, I hope it will lead you to spend extra time with your children today, in peace and joy.

Score! and counting sheep in prehistoric languages

2008-01-30T07:32:00.003-07:00

This first is a quote from the e-mail calendar I get, which is Page-a-Day's "Schott's Almanac" calendar.

COUNTING SHEEP
In addition to inducing somnolence, sheep are counted by shepherds to audit their flocks. Traditionally, special counting terms were used which varied across Britain and within regions. Below is one of the many (now archaic) versions:

Isle of Man Sheep

1....................Yan
2....................Tan
3..................Tether
4.................Mether
5.....................Pit
6..................Tayter
7..................Layter
8..................Overa
9.................Covera
10..................Dicks
11............Yan-a-Dicks
12............Tan-a-Dicks
13.........Tether-a-Dicks
14........Mether-a-Dicks
15................Bumfit
16..........Yan-a-Bumfit
17..........Tan-a-Bumfit
18........Tether-a-Bumfit
19.......Mether-a-Bumfit
20..................Jiggit
20 sheep are a ‘score

Other thoughts on this, and other lists:

THE SHEEP-COUNTING SCORE
By WALTER SKEAT, 1910

http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/sheep.htm

I will now take as an example one of the new sets of the score, which still " holds " with some of the old shepherds of Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire Sheep

1. Yan.  
2. Tan. 
3. Tethera.
 4. Pethera.  
5. Pimp.
 6. Sethera.
 7. Lethera.  
8. Hovera.  
9. Covera.  
10. Dik.
 11. Yan-a-dik.  
12. Tan-a-dik.  
13. Tethera-dik.  
14. Pethera-dik.  
15. Bumpit. 
16. Yan-a-bumpit.  
17. Tan-a-bumpit.  
18. Tethera-bumpit.  
19. Pethera-bumpit.  
20. Figgit (sic, ?Jiggit).

Now this is Sandra again. I've heard often that "eeny, meenie, miney, mo" is from some forgotten counting system of ancient days. Why not? Makes sense.

But reading at the link above, there was mention of those numbers being used also by older women to count their rows of knitting and to amuse children. Because of that I propose an idea (and if anyone knows of documentation that I'm right, woohoo!): I think the "counting sheep" tradition is probably from this, and further I'm going to venture to guess that there was a tune or chanting rhythm that went with that counting and that parents or grandparents "counted sheep" until a child fell asleep, like a lullabye, and that children could do it too.

Counting sheep with regular numbers seems goofy, and few people know much about sheep anyway. But in sheep-raising areas, with traditional counting schemes, starting over every time you get to 20, it could be very lulling and comforting (and boring, and possibly musical).

As to "score," it's known that there were accounting sticks, "tally sticks," and I'm figuring "score" was to make a mark (representing 20) with a knife, or a rock on a stick, or another stick on the stick.... a literal score: a shallow cut.

No doubt a score or more of anthro- archeo- and historologists have all thought of these things, but it was fun to think of them myself, based on the randomish trivia I ordered up and the hundred-year-old account I googled up to go with it.

Tally stick images, some fancy ones and some plainer ones (photos are links):

And simple everyday tally sticks used to be marked like this sometimes:

Here's one for noting gold exchange: The marks were made on a whole stick, and then the stick was split so each in the transaction had a copy.

No image, but an article here talks about cricket scores being kept on tally sticks in the late 19th century.

Some sheep-counting sticks:
(you might need to click on the tally link there)
"In the Lake district the shepherds may still be heard counting sheep with the following words, some of which are like Welsh numbers: "Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Pimp, Sethera, Lehtera, Hovera, Dovera, Dick, Yan-a-Dik, Tan-a-Dick, Tethera-a-Dick, Methera-a-Dick, Bumfit, Yan-a-Bumfit,Tethera-a-Bumfit, Methera-a-Bumfit, Giggot."

Culture

2008-01-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

This can go serious or silly or both, but I want to look at "Culture"—what it is and how people deal with it. Subcultures. Foreign cultures. Predominant Western cultural expectations.

What do anthropologists say is involved in culture?

How does a person learn the expectations of a subculture?

What does this have to do with yogurt and pearls?

Talk amongst yourselves here in public.

In finding the images and links, I did find that the motto of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority is “By culture and merit.” I'm curious. Click the toga-thing for more on fraternity and sorority culture.

AHA!! I was waiting for someone to write something like this:

I know there are a lot of teens out there that don't want to interact with their parents, because they can't have an honest relationship with them. I believe our culture encourages the great divide between kids and their parents mainly by encouraging an authoritarian parenting/family style which pervades every segment of society. By this I mean, the schools, the workplace and social situations.
I think a lot of homeschoolers, especially unschoolers, have a culture unto themselves. It's a culture of mutual respect, communication, understanding, and cooperation. Sadly, I believe there are many, many kids out there who never get a chance to experience this culture in their lives and they will go on perpetuating the division between the ages.

The emphasis was added. The writing is by Meghan Anderson-Coates on the Always Learning list.

We're discussing this article
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/01/23/technological.turfwar.ap/index.html which says kids don't want adults on MySpace of Facebook. That's here for those who are on Always Learning or might want to join to read the archives.

I let posts through from a guy running a wilderness camp who's pushing their encouragement of a culture of children. Here was his explanation, but nobody got back to him about it yet, I don't think. I've been merrily distracted with lots of fun stuff, myself.

By "children's culture" I mean a group of children with their own
culture. This happens wherever there are groups of children - they
have their own games, language, conflict-resolution techniques, ect.
We are intentionally trying to foster this, and the difference
between saying "we just want more kids" is that we know it's what
our children need. In school and in sports they are clustered into
peer groups where they learn they need to compete for
attention/acceptance. But humans weren't evolved to learn this way.
In the small clans where we evolved our natural learning styles
children would spend their days with those older and younger than
them, following in the example of the older and providing a bridge
for the younger.

What about the kids just being a part of the real culture? But I think at that camp even the adults don't want to be a part of regular culture. They're making their own too, but for some reason not all-in-one with the kids. teachingdrum.org

Walls

2008-01-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

A request for topic from Deb Cunefare: walls (because I've "run into" many recently)

What kinds of walls? Between fields? Of houses? Hadrian and China? Metaphorical or figurative? Fabled?

If this is making you think of songs about walls, go and play!
Also there are links from those four photos there, to the wall in York, Great Wall of China, stone walls in Ireland and a recycled concrete wall in Albuquerque.

The Great Wall of Target

Live links from comments (you can see commentary and intros below).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line

http://www.normandiememoire.com/NM60Anglais/~~2_histo4/histo4_p06_gb.htm~~ (that address was outdated but I think I have the link working anyway)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgerow

http://www.amazon.com/War-Intimate-History-1941-1945/dp/0307262839/ref=tag_stp_st_edpp_url

Everyday Art

2007-12-22T20:41:00.001-07:00

DESIGN
houses
bowls
spoons
glasses
lamps
fixtures
ornaments
giftwrap
cards
wreaths
cookies
food presentation
bags
boxes
cars
bikes
mailboxes
gates
doors
doorknobs
hinges
appliances
gadgets
books
paper
pens
posters
frames
fabric
games
tools
hats
shoes
chairs
kitchen sink

Things all around you were designed by artists, from tissue boxes to trash cans to hairbrushes to soap. If you google "award winning designs," you'll get lots more ideas.

On the "Good Design" pages you can view severalcategories: automotive/transportation, electronics, kitchen/bath, furniture, fabric/textiles, lighting, household products, household appliances, tabletop, children's products, medical equipment, personal care, office products, hardware/tools, sorts, urban furniture/architecture, graphic and packaging design, and industrial equipment.

The earliest year for which they have a site is 1996:
http://www.chi-athenaeum.org/gdesign/winners96.htm
and the newest is 2005:
http://www.chi-athenaeum.org/gdesign/winners05.htm and you can see the years in beween by replacing that number with another year. This is an international competition, and the site lists the winners (though not always photos) in all those categories. The designs in the changing .gif are from 1996. The John Deere 544J 4WD Wheel Loader won in 2004.

Maybe you'll find your keyboard, or your mouse, or your monitor, in the award winning designs. Is there a certain spoon or knife or mug that people in your family especially like because it feels good in your hand, has a good balance, or something? What about favorite towels or sheets? Pillows? Maybe discuss where these things came from, who made what kinds of decisions about them, and how rich the world is in design artistry of all sorts.

The comments on this blog won't accept photos, but I can put photos on a webpage linked here, and links and stories galore, if you have any thoughts to share. Some art is seasonal and fleeting—does someone in your family wrap gifts beautifully? Make beautiful cookies? Elegant punchbowls? This is the week to catch those images before they're gone!

Wood

2007-12-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping this can be a kind of show-and-tell about wood. Please feel free to comment with stories, links, photos (or send me the photos and I can add them to the main post) or questions. We can spend a week sharing bits and pieces of woodlore or news.

Bryan Anderson made this, in Colorado Keith found the article.
(There are four other photos there at the original article, too.)

Keith has lately made a Viking game. It was a prize for a Toys for Tots tournament. More photos are here, and another couple of things Keith also no longer owns are documented somewhat on this knotwork page.

Woodgrain sample pages:

Light Woods Red Woods
Brown Woods Dark Woods

If you click the title it will lead to a page that will eventually be much bigger than this blog section, because I can keep adding photos and links as they come in later. I'd like to have a list there, too, of things people do with wood, so contributions to that list are welcome! Maybe brainstorm with your kids, if they're interested. My initial thoughts are: pallets, fuel, musical instruments

Fairness

2007-12-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

It's not fair that homeschoolers win spelling bees; they had too much time to study spelling.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200106/CUL20010606a.html
(That article includes geography bees too.)

It's not fair that homeschoolers involve their kids in politics.
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071209/NEWS09/712090333/-1/caucus
(I'm not advocating this kind of politics at *all,* just mentioning it as another "unfair" charge.)

It's not fair that boy scouts who are home schooled have more time to work on badges.
http://homeschooling.families.com/blog/homeschooling-and-scouting-an-unfair-advantage

One of those articles begins:

From principals to teachers to superintendents, the reaction was unanimous and undiluted: "Your kids will fail."

That was 20 years ago.

All that time, the unschoolers have been hearing the same sorts of dire predictions (more like hopeful curses) from structured school-at-homers. And we hear "It's not fair your kids get to have freedoms," or "...be on the computer for hours," or "...not have to do chores." It's not fair when some kids don't have to take tests.

So what IS "fair"? Who's responsible for making life fair? Where and when has life been fair, and can we produce that condition again?

Parents try to be fair with their children, and sometimes do it by counting and measuring the time and money they put toward one child and another, but is it "fair" to give an introverted child who isn't needy the same amount of attention one might give an unsettled, hyper, talkative kid with the urge to collect something that costs money?

Zoom back out to the really big picture. Is it fair that in some countries education is freely available? Is it fair, in those countries, when private school is an option? Parochial school? Is it fair, within a district, that some kids get to go to cool charter schools and others don't? Is it fair that some kids don't go to school at all but get to sleep late and play on the computer?

What is "fair," and how can we answer these things (at least to ourselves and each other)?

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a story over 45 years ago called Harrison Bergeron. It's very short, and the text is here: http://www.stanford.edu/~guptaak/articles/harrison.html

It begins thus:

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Is this what we should be seeking?

"Fair" is a very old word, meaning pleasant. Life isn't pleasant for everyone equally sometimes. Is the solution to "make it fair" by making everyone equally unhappy?

It's not an easy question. What should unschoolers do when it occurs to them? How can we couch our lives comfortably in terms of the world around us?

The images are from Equality Texas, which has an article on school bullying, and the Psychology Key Studies Website.

Is it fair that some kids are not exposed to school bullies and others are? And look at that grass. The ground looks NOTHING like the land around me, and neither do the sheep. Is it fair that some sheep have grass like that and some are eating desert grasses?

Topics, Ideas

2007-12-08T14:51:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking about "topic chats" again for a while, and this might work. I'm thinking of having one topic per week, and anyone can come by and add links, suggestions, trivia or personal stories.

The ideas I have so far are

fairness [using, in part, "Harrison Bergeron" (a short story)]
wood
bass lines (in music—instrumental, vocal—bass guitar discussion?)

Marty suggested we could use thinking sticks sometimes—throw two topics and run connections. I think we might try to connect everything to whatever item, movie, story, or concept that's used. I couldn't get the blog names that would make the simplest sense, so I went with "thinking sticks." There will be links to this on my unschooling page and my blog, in case you can't remember where it is.

Respond to this post with suggestions for topics.