I have officially become a Volvo Driving Soccer Mom. I already had the Volvo, now I have the soccer player. T2 told us he wanted to learn the game so he could keep up with his friends on the playground who all play that, or basketball. So I've joined that happy demographic of soccer mom. I haven't yet put the soccer magnet on the back of my car, and I probably won't. He had his first game last Saturday and scored two goals, which we thought was pretty good considering he had only one practice before the first game.
I haven't yet put a magnetic soccer ball on my tailgate, and I don't think I will. And for you younger campers out there, yes, I have been made aware that there is an Everclear song about me and my type. I don't exactly fit that description though...I certainly don't vote Republican.
Meanwhile, The Reenactor and I are going to become soccer hooligans...wave big flags, throw our shirts on the field, scream obscenities at the refs, etc.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
baby in a planter
I saw this today at Jason's cousin's house. It just amused me, so I decided to post it.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Electric shopping carts and math
This post is all over the place. I don't have the inspiration to write on one specific topic, so I'll just free-associate for a while.
First of all, excessive numbers of people who can't make their way around a big box store without the assistance of an electric shopping cart. Is it a peculiarity of the state I live in (Commonwealth, if you're being picky), and the tendency toward obesity, and diseases caused by smoking that lead to poor circulation, or is this rampant everywhere?
The last time three times I've been in the big WM I've nearly been outnumbered by the herds of people driving those little electric carts around. I'm not exaggerating when I report to you that one morning last week, I encountered at least one person in each aisle (not the same person...a different person/cart per aisle) for the entire length of the grocery area. And in many cases they were traveling in pairs...husband and wife teams.
I'm truly not expressing an intolerance for the obvious need for these carts, but just am curious at what appears to be an epidemic of walking difficulties in people who are not elderly, and seemingly able to at least get themselves in the door of WM to begin with in order to gain access to the cart. What do they do at the mall? At church? At sporting events? Do they have these walking problems at stores without the carts? Do they sometimes take a wheelchair with them, just in case?
I am also concerned about the inability of many of these people to safely use the carts. I was getting some coffee and was nearly run over in a tragic backing up incident in which a woman in a cart five feet away from me hit the reverse with great dispatch, and in her unexpected trip backwards lost control, and nearly flattened me before I could jump out of her way. She bleated a horrified "sorry" and I assured her I wasn't hurt, but what if a child had been in her path?
On to my next subject...math. I'm not good at math. Let me clarify...I'm not good at math above the basics of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. I'm a whiz at those. But a kind professor at college saw my struggle in a "math for idiots" class, and recognized that I would surely never actually need to use math in my career since political science rarely requires a quick answer to an algebra problem. His solution in his pity for me was to pass me at an acceptable grade and end both his misery and mine. My inaptitude for math was the sorrow of my father, who while no math genius himself, at least "got it" enough to become an engineer, and actually had a useful purpose for it when brandishing his slide rule and jotting all sorts of interesting numbers and equations down in pencil on a legal pad in his office. I used to look at those scribblings and wonder what they meant. I still would have no idea. Math to me is just a foreign language that I have no hope of ever understanding. It is like trying to teach a cat to read.
So here comes my seven-year-old son who seems to have found some isolated math gene in his DNA, and is doing somewhat complicated multiplication problems in his head while we go for walks. He started asking me last week to give him some multiplication problems, and I started with 2 x 3. Too easy, he said...harder! 5 x 11. 55 he said without hesitation. How about 9 x 8? 72, he said. How about 4 x 32? He gave me the correct answer, but what was especially impressive to me was how he solved the problem. It is more complicated than I can write out, and it wasn't the way a teacher would have him do it, but it made perfect sense, and ultimately the correct answer. The next evening he did a problem for The Reenactor that left him stunned at the methodology T2 used to reach the answer. They have not been studying anything above basic addition problems in his class, yet he wrote out an entire page of addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems on his own, just because he wanted to. I admire the heck out of it, and while I know this is not entirely unusual for a child to be interested in and curious about working problems like this, I'm just amazed that MY child can do it! Granted, The Reenactor has way better skills at this than I do, so I guess I have to give him genetic credit, but just like watching my own father work a problem, I now get to watch my son work them as well.
Cool.
And finally, I took a one-day course last weekend at our church on the topic of understanding the Bible in its literary form. It was fascinating, and the instructor, a woman who has written a book on the subject, was very interesting, and kept us focused throughout a five-hour lecture and discussion. Even though I've understood this concept for a long time, it was still eye-opening to have a person who is an expert in literary form and style present some of the passages of the Scriptures as they were actually intended as written word, rather than through the religious goggles we usually wear when we read them. It doesn't challenge my beliefs, but rather made me curious to read, and re-read parts of the Bible with a whole new appreciation for truly understanding the context of the story, rather than pulling out individual chapters or verses and considering them complete stories. The Reenactor is reading the Bible, cover-to-cover, and has been on the OT for a while after finishing the NT. I kid him that he wanted to see how it ended, so he read the last chapters first. He just came out to inform me while I was writing this that the people Moses led out of Egypt were a bunch of whiners and complainers, and didn't pay a lick of attention to what God was telling them point-blank to do. His interpretation is always interesting.
That's it for now.
First of all, excessive numbers of people who can't make their way around a big box store without the assistance of an electric shopping cart. Is it a peculiarity of the state I live in (Commonwealth, if you're being picky), and the tendency toward obesity, and diseases caused by smoking that lead to poor circulation, or is this rampant everywhere?
The last time three times I've been in the big WM I've nearly been outnumbered by the herds of people driving those little electric carts around. I'm not exaggerating when I report to you that one morning last week, I encountered at least one person in each aisle (not the same person...a different person/cart per aisle) for the entire length of the grocery area. And in many cases they were traveling in pairs...husband and wife teams.
I'm truly not expressing an intolerance for the obvious need for these carts, but just am curious at what appears to be an epidemic of walking difficulties in people who are not elderly, and seemingly able to at least get themselves in the door of WM to begin with in order to gain access to the cart. What do they do at the mall? At church? At sporting events? Do they have these walking problems at stores without the carts? Do they sometimes take a wheelchair with them, just in case?
I am also concerned about the inability of many of these people to safely use the carts. I was getting some coffee and was nearly run over in a tragic backing up incident in which a woman in a cart five feet away from me hit the reverse with great dispatch, and in her unexpected trip backwards lost control, and nearly flattened me before I could jump out of her way. She bleated a horrified "sorry" and I assured her I wasn't hurt, but what if a child had been in her path?
On to my next subject...math. I'm not good at math. Let me clarify...I'm not good at math above the basics of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. I'm a whiz at those. But a kind professor at college saw my struggle in a "math for idiots" class, and recognized that I would surely never actually need to use math in my career since political science rarely requires a quick answer to an algebra problem. His solution in his pity for me was to pass me at an acceptable grade and end both his misery and mine. My inaptitude for math was the sorrow of my father, who while no math genius himself, at least "got it" enough to become an engineer, and actually had a useful purpose for it when brandishing his slide rule and jotting all sorts of interesting numbers and equations down in pencil on a legal pad in his office. I used to look at those scribblings and wonder what they meant. I still would have no idea. Math to me is just a foreign language that I have no hope of ever understanding. It is like trying to teach a cat to read.
So here comes my seven-year-old son who seems to have found some isolated math gene in his DNA, and is doing somewhat complicated multiplication problems in his head while we go for walks. He started asking me last week to give him some multiplication problems, and I started with 2 x 3. Too easy, he said...harder! 5 x 11. 55 he said without hesitation. How about 9 x 8? 72, he said. How about 4 x 32? He gave me the correct answer, but what was especially impressive to me was how he solved the problem. It is more complicated than I can write out, and it wasn't the way a teacher would have him do it, but it made perfect sense, and ultimately the correct answer. The next evening he did a problem for The Reenactor that left him stunned at the methodology T2 used to reach the answer. They have not been studying anything above basic addition problems in his class, yet he wrote out an entire page of addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems on his own, just because he wanted to. I admire the heck out of it, and while I know this is not entirely unusual for a child to be interested in and curious about working problems like this, I'm just amazed that MY child can do it! Granted, The Reenactor has way better skills at this than I do, so I guess I have to give him genetic credit, but just like watching my own father work a problem, I now get to watch my son work them as well.
Cool.
And finally, I took a one-day course last weekend at our church on the topic of understanding the Bible in its literary form. It was fascinating, and the instructor, a woman who has written a book on the subject, was very interesting, and kept us focused throughout a five-hour lecture and discussion. Even though I've understood this concept for a long time, it was still eye-opening to have a person who is an expert in literary form and style present some of the passages of the Scriptures as they were actually intended as written word, rather than through the religious goggles we usually wear when we read them. It doesn't challenge my beliefs, but rather made me curious to read, and re-read parts of the Bible with a whole new appreciation for truly understanding the context of the story, rather than pulling out individual chapters or verses and considering them complete stories. The Reenactor is reading the Bible, cover-to-cover, and has been on the OT for a while after finishing the NT. I kid him that he wanted to see how it ended, so he read the last chapters first. He just came out to inform me while I was writing this that the people Moses led out of Egypt were a bunch of whiners and complainers, and didn't pay a lick of attention to what God was telling them point-blank to do. His interpretation is always interesting.
That's it for now.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
A Lecture on Lint
Sent to me by my brother:
Prof. Fillmer enters the classroom:
"Ahem...let me begin the lecture, if you please. Today we ponder the question, if you were to collect all the lint in the lint trap of a dryer that dried socks until they disappeared, would you have enough collected lint to weave the socks again?
Physicists know that matter cannot be destroyed, it simple changes to another form. Water becomes invisible as water vapor, or as you know it in KY 'humidity'. It's all there but in a different form.
Likewise, your well washed socks disappear in many ways. Bits of their fiber fall off in your shoes, as you walk around with socking feet, and as they are tumbled around in the dryer. What's collected in the lint trap is only part of their disintegration, but very visible to you since it's all in one place. But the fabric in the socks is also changing to other invisible forms as you wear them and as they go through the washer and dryer. Molecules of the various compounds and chemicals that make the socks may be changing to gas because of heat, water, or even the perspiration on your footsies.
So, in summary, yes one would have almost enough lint to almost equal the socks if you collected all the dryer lint, but much of the socks disappear into the atmosphere, the carpet, the sock drawer, and your shoe crevices.
And a few socks sacrifice themselves to the Great Single Sock Void never again to pair up with the partner they were created with in the sock factory of their origin. Test next Tuesday"
This concludes Prof. Fillmer's lecture on the Lenten Season Lint Mystery of the Socks.
Bell rings, class shuffles out, leaving countless bits of their socks on the floor to be swept up by the custodial who pays no tribute to the lint left behind.
Prof. Fillmer enters the classroom:
"Ahem...let me begin the lecture, if you please. Today we ponder the question, if you were to collect all the lint in the lint trap of a dryer that dried socks until they disappeared, would you have enough collected lint to weave the socks again?
Physicists know that matter cannot be destroyed, it simple changes to another form. Water becomes invisible as water vapor, or as you know it in KY 'humidity'. It's all there but in a different form.
Likewise, your well washed socks disappear in many ways. Bits of their fiber fall off in your shoes, as you walk around with socking feet, and as they are tumbled around in the dryer. What's collected in the lint trap is only part of their disintegration, but very visible to you since it's all in one place. But the fabric in the socks is also changing to other invisible forms as you wear them and as they go through the washer and dryer. Molecules of the various compounds and chemicals that make the socks may be changing to gas because of heat, water, or even the perspiration on your footsies.
So, in summary, yes one would have almost enough lint to almost equal the socks if you collected all the dryer lint, but much of the socks disappear into the atmosphere, the carpet, the sock drawer, and your shoe crevices.
And a few socks sacrifice themselves to the Great Single Sock Void never again to pair up with the partner they were created with in the sock factory of their origin. Test next Tuesday"
This concludes Prof. Fillmer's lecture on the Lenten Season Lint Mystery of the Socks.
Bell rings, class shuffles out, leaving countless bits of their socks on the floor to be swept up by the custodial who pays no tribute to the lint left behind.
Monday, March 16, 2009
lint
I realize it is Lent, so I guess that is why this Lint question is bugging me. If I were to wash and dry the same article of clothing....say a pair of socks....over and over and over again, would they eventually disappear and I would only be left with enough lint collected from the dryer lint screen to equal the socks that are now disintegrated?
Your thoughts and observations appreciated.
Your thoughts and observations appreciated.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 5
Final chapter in this epic five-part blog...this one is titled, "The Circus in Our Yard."
About a week after we got power back some friends in town were having a huge, mature pine tree removed from a rather tight location next to their house. The tree had been severely damaged by the ice, and was in pieces all over their front yard and roof. As happens after storms like this there were tree removal people arriving in town offering services--some intent on scams, others were legit. A company from Tennessee stopped at our friend's house to see if they could remove that pine tree. They had bonafide credentials (at least what she could check on the internet) so they took it out. I was so impressed with their work I asked for their phone number, and the company came to give us an estimate on getting our hackberry tree completely removed (it was one of the three large pre-existing trees on our property) and the limbs in the sycamore cleaned up so it can hopefully survive and thrive. The Reenactor and I were both satisfied with the price they gave us so we hired them. The reality was that in spite of purchasing a swell new 20" bar Stehl chainsaw these trees were beyond the height and surgical abilities of The Reenactor.
So the next day these guys showed up. I didn't fully appreciate what they did until I stood in my front yard and watched them. Half the price I paid them was for the entertainment factor of watching the company owner dangle from tree limbs 100 feet off the ground, wielding his chainsaw like an electric knife through butter. It was just as if the circus had come to town and the high-wire acrobats were in our trees.
When they finished a couple of hours later I asked him if his mother knew what he did for a living...it looks incredibly dangerous, and I certainly wouldn't want to know if T1 or T2 were up to shenanigans like that. He and his crew all do competitive rappelling and are completely comfortable climbing straight up the side of a mature tree, tethered only by a single rope they loop over one of the higher branches. Add in a chainsaw dangling from your utility belt, and you've got a great afternoon.
Very, very impressive. Far more impressive than someone with a bucket truck would have been. If an ice storm or squall line messes up your trees this is truly the way to go.
Now to the final notes. One month post-storm and I'm really ready to move on. I've stopped being "wow-ed" by the mountains of limbs and debris that still line our highways and city streets. The sight of a convoy of bucket trucks heading out to a job no longer makes me want to weep in gratitude (although I still appreciate every last one of you guys!) and with the sight of a few buds of green bursting out on our willow today I'm hoping that spring, and all the lovely renewal of life it brings, is just around the corner.
The best way to sum all this up is to say that I DO appreciate the things that need electricity in my house. I am really grateful that I live in a time where a light can illuminate a room with just one flick of a switch. In a time where I can sit and channel surf for an hour when I just really have lost the motivation to do anything else. In a time where I can communicate with my extended family who are scattered to the four corners of our country, and to a friend in Europe, as well as friends in a dozen other states, just by typing out a few words on a keyboard. But, I also appreciate that this is all a luxury. We are wallowing in luxury these days, and we don't even know it. But take away our kilowatts for a couple of weeks and we are humbled.
And to quote a very dear friend who went without power for at least two full weeks (maybe longer?) and additionally hosted another friend who was without power even longer....
"If [the Weather Channel's] Jim Cantore comes to your town, get the hell out of dodge. It’s not going to be pretty."
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 4
Lessons:
When I was working as a writer in the public relations office at Drury a zillion years ago they had an awareness week for their budding architecture students about how to design for people with disabilities. I'll never forget that the theme of the program was "TAB" --which stood for "Temporarily Able Bodied." The idea was that eventually we all are handicapped in some way. Most college students are Temporarily Able Bodied in that they have good vision, decent hearing, and can walk, run, jump and go anywhere they have a mind to go. But as architects they needed to be able to envision where someone without the blessings of good health, youth and vitality, might find fault with their design. The students were required to take on a handicap each day of the week for a few hours. They went to class in wheelchairs rather than walking; they wore nearly black sunglasses to eliminate their ability to see clearly; they wore sound-reduction earphones to simulate deafness. All of this was to teach them the lesson of not taking for granted what they were able to do without any difficulty. Obviously the lesson stayed with me as well.
During the ice storm I realized that even though I consider myself a person with fairly low technological expectations (no Wii, no TiVo, or iPhone) the massive, regional loss of power rendered me completely cutoff from everything that made me feel safe. Without electricity to run my computer I couldn't instantaneously check on local weather, road, or emergency conditions. And, I couldn't email friends or family to check on their status, or find ways to improve ours. Without cell phone service we were truly cut off from anyone outside our immediate neighborhood. It was all a huge, tangled Catch-22. If we DID decide to venture out in our car, where could we safely drive? There was no way to know based on our one source of information--the crank radio. If we did get into town the stores were all closed, and besides, what did we need to buy, other than a generator? If we could only call someone outside the area they could look on the internet about options for places we could evacuate to, but we couldn't even make a cell phone call. Our house phone relied on electricity, but even after borrowing our neighbor's regular phone we still couldn't get a call to go through because phone lines were out. And even if we DID get a call to go through I found out days later that the information on the internet about what was going on in this area was sketchy at best.
So I'm initiating the idea that as far as our reliance on modern devices we should all consider ourselves Temporarily Able Bodied. A massive earthquake, another ice storm, or some other disaster--nature made or man-made--could easily leave us in this situation again.
I have already purchased a line-only phone, which came in handy one of the days we had a prolonged power blip. The Reenactor and I have already decided that any home we own in the future will have at the very least a gas-log fireplace, and at the very most, a wood-burning fireplace or stove as well. I am glad we have a propane cook stove, but want to make sure we always have on hand a good supply of the fuel for it. Ditto with C and D batteries. A few more camping lanterns would also be a good thing to store up on, and maybe keep an extra propane cylinder for our outdoor grill. We could do a LOT of cooking on that! Additionally, I realized that as good as my food supply was, it could be improved on. Keeping more rice and beans and canned goods like tomatoes would make it easier to stretch food a lot longer if necessary.
And I pray it won't be necessary.
I have heard many in the local media (and all you regular readers know how much I love the local media) compare this event to Hurricane Katrina. Sorry you idiots, but this is not like Katrina. First of all, thousands of people didn't drown in the ice. Sadly, some 30 or people have died as a result of this storm in this state, but that isn't comparable to what happened in New Orleans. We lost trees, and in a few cases homes have been damaged by falling limbs, but entire neighborhoods have not been destroyed by this. There is certainly a lot of cleanup work left to be done, and this area will look damaged for a couple of years from the effects of the ice to the trees, but we don't have huge blooms of mold climbing up our living room walls. And even though communications were difficult for a few days there aren't families having to try to locate one another through the Red Cross because of this.
As of the Friday morning that I'm writing this there are still hundreds of people without power...three full weeks later. This isn't the fault of the hundreds of linemen working around the clock. It is just simple logistics. There are areas where getting a line up on the poles again requires that a special machine be brought in to cut through an entire woods' worth of tangled limbs. It looks like a giant weed wacker attached to a cherry picker arm on a large tractor. The fact that our neighborhood got re-electrified so early was incredible. The two subdivisions immediately to our north didn't have power for two full weeks because they were on a different central line than we were. In town there were many instances where one side of a street had power restored within a couple of days..the other side waited weeks. To restate something I wrote in the first post about this, the electric grid took 70 years to build, and just hours to destroy. People can't expect it to be completely rebuilt in a few weeks.
But the lack of power doesn't equate to the aftereffects of a Cat 4 hurricane. It also doesn't equate to the towns in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri that have been completely wiped out by tornadoes in recent years. When put into perspective this ice storm was a nuisance, and a huge inconvenience for most of us, and ultimately will be an expensive thing to clean up from, both for the city and county, and for individuals. But it wasn't a crisis on the scale of Katrina.
The happier lesson of all this is that we truly are a community. Three different families living in our subdivision offered us shelter in their gas-log-warmed homes. Another neighbor offered us the use of his kitchen, and any food he had in it when he left town. Two friends risked injury driving ten miles out to our house in the dark on the third night to let us know we could go to a house with heat and light. Our friends who left for vacation in New York were amazing in their generosity to open their home to people without power. Within our church community we began calling on one another as soon as we had phone service, and in many cases drove by the homes of elderly or ill church members to personally check on them. And as you drive around this area some three weeks later the amazing thing is that even though there are homes with significant tree damage still in their front yards, MOST homes have been picked up...at least to the point that volunteers and neighbors can do it. The Reenactor and I have been part of that volunteer work, but the fact is apparent that many, many, many people have been out helping their neighbors and strangers. The lesson learned in the aftermath of Katrina is that the government is not our savior after an event like this...we must rely on each other in our community to restore and rebuild. FEMA might take care of a few of the big things (debris removal?) but we must first get it to the curb.
The other happy lesson is that we came through all this with stories. Our kids will remember the Big Ice Storm. They will remember eating by candlelight, steam rising into the cold kitchen air above their bowls of hot pasta and fish stew. They will remember sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in fleece hats, gloves, and coats playing endless rounds of Monopoly (the kid version, not the grownup!), Sorry!, and Go Fish. They will remember using every blanket we had in the house to create warm cocoons to sleep in, and using camping lanterns to read their books before bedtime. They'll remember helping us listen to the radio by cranking the handle on the side. They'll remember the sounds of the trees breaking and crashing. And they'll remember the lovely warmth and comfort of the Price Ice Rescue House.
The Reenactor and I both felt confident from the beginning that with our camping gear and hillbilly common sense we could make it through this event. And ultimately we did. We came through it with a greater appreciation for daily luxuries...like CNN at the flick of a button on the remote. Like picking up a little plastic box smaller than a deck of cards and making a call to let the other know we're running late. Like being warm..right now....just by pressing a button on the wall. The reality is as human beings we don't actually NEED any of those things to survive....our great grandfathers did fine without any of it. They are luxuries, and at any given moment they are temporarily here. I think our lesson is to be better prepared for when they are temporarily not here from now on.
One more installment to come...
When I was working as a writer in the public relations office at Drury a zillion years ago they had an awareness week for their budding architecture students about how to design for people with disabilities. I'll never forget that the theme of the program was "TAB" --which stood for "Temporarily Able Bodied." The idea was that eventually we all are handicapped in some way. Most college students are Temporarily Able Bodied in that they have good vision, decent hearing, and can walk, run, jump and go anywhere they have a mind to go. But as architects they needed to be able to envision where someone without the blessings of good health, youth and vitality, might find fault with their design. The students were required to take on a handicap each day of the week for a few hours. They went to class in wheelchairs rather than walking; they wore nearly black sunglasses to eliminate their ability to see clearly; they wore sound-reduction earphones to simulate deafness. All of this was to teach them the lesson of not taking for granted what they were able to do without any difficulty. Obviously the lesson stayed with me as well.
During the ice storm I realized that even though I consider myself a person with fairly low technological expectations (no Wii, no TiVo, or iPhone) the massive, regional loss of power rendered me completely cutoff from everything that made me feel safe. Without electricity to run my computer I couldn't instantaneously check on local weather, road, or emergency conditions. And, I couldn't email friends or family to check on their status, or find ways to improve ours. Without cell phone service we were truly cut off from anyone outside our immediate neighborhood. It was all a huge, tangled Catch-22. If we DID decide to venture out in our car, where could we safely drive? There was no way to know based on our one source of information--the crank radio. If we did get into town the stores were all closed, and besides, what did we need to buy, other than a generator? If we could only call someone outside the area they could look on the internet about options for places we could evacuate to, but we couldn't even make a cell phone call. Our house phone relied on electricity, but even after borrowing our neighbor's regular phone we still couldn't get a call to go through because phone lines were out. And even if we DID get a call to go through I found out days later that the information on the internet about what was going on in this area was sketchy at best.
So I'm initiating the idea that as far as our reliance on modern devices we should all consider ourselves Temporarily Able Bodied. A massive earthquake, another ice storm, or some other disaster--nature made or man-made--could easily leave us in this situation again.
I have already purchased a line-only phone, which came in handy one of the days we had a prolonged power blip. The Reenactor and I have already decided that any home we own in the future will have at the very least a gas-log fireplace, and at the very most, a wood-burning fireplace or stove as well. I am glad we have a propane cook stove, but want to make sure we always have on hand a good supply of the fuel for it. Ditto with C and D batteries. A few more camping lanterns would also be a good thing to store up on, and maybe keep an extra propane cylinder for our outdoor grill. We could do a LOT of cooking on that! Additionally, I realized that as good as my food supply was, it could be improved on. Keeping more rice and beans and canned goods like tomatoes would make it easier to stretch food a lot longer if necessary.
And I pray it won't be necessary.
I have heard many in the local media (and all you regular readers know how much I love the local media) compare this event to Hurricane Katrina. Sorry you idiots, but this is not like Katrina. First of all, thousands of people didn't drown in the ice. Sadly, some 30 or people have died as a result of this storm in this state, but that isn't comparable to what happened in New Orleans. We lost trees, and in a few cases homes have been damaged by falling limbs, but entire neighborhoods have not been destroyed by this. There is certainly a lot of cleanup work left to be done, and this area will look damaged for a couple of years from the effects of the ice to the trees, but we don't have huge blooms of mold climbing up our living room walls. And even though communications were difficult for a few days there aren't families having to try to locate one another through the Red Cross because of this.
As of the Friday morning that I'm writing this there are still hundreds of people without power...three full weeks later. This isn't the fault of the hundreds of linemen working around the clock. It is just simple logistics. There are areas where getting a line up on the poles again requires that a special machine be brought in to cut through an entire woods' worth of tangled limbs. It looks like a giant weed wacker attached to a cherry picker arm on a large tractor. The fact that our neighborhood got re-electrified so early was incredible. The two subdivisions immediately to our north didn't have power for two full weeks because they were on a different central line than we were. In town there were many instances where one side of a street had power restored within a couple of days..the other side waited weeks. To restate something I wrote in the first post about this, the electric grid took 70 years to build, and just hours to destroy. People can't expect it to be completely rebuilt in a few weeks.
But the lack of power doesn't equate to the aftereffects of a Cat 4 hurricane. It also doesn't equate to the towns in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri that have been completely wiped out by tornadoes in recent years. When put into perspective this ice storm was a nuisance, and a huge inconvenience for most of us, and ultimately will be an expensive thing to clean up from, both for the city and county, and for individuals. But it wasn't a crisis on the scale of Katrina.
The happier lesson of all this is that we truly are a community. Three different families living in our subdivision offered us shelter in their gas-log-warmed homes. Another neighbor offered us the use of his kitchen, and any food he had in it when he left town. Two friends risked injury driving ten miles out to our house in the dark on the third night to let us know we could go to a house with heat and light. Our friends who left for vacation in New York were amazing in their generosity to open their home to people without power. Within our church community we began calling on one another as soon as we had phone service, and in many cases drove by the homes of elderly or ill church members to personally check on them. And as you drive around this area some three weeks later the amazing thing is that even though there are homes with significant tree damage still in their front yards, MOST homes have been picked up...at least to the point that volunteers and neighbors can do it. The Reenactor and I have been part of that volunteer work, but the fact is apparent that many, many, many people have been out helping their neighbors and strangers. The lesson learned in the aftermath of Katrina is that the government is not our savior after an event like this...we must rely on each other in our community to restore and rebuild. FEMA might take care of a few of the big things (debris removal?) but we must first get it to the curb.
The other happy lesson is that we came through all this with stories. Our kids will remember the Big Ice Storm. They will remember eating by candlelight, steam rising into the cold kitchen air above their bowls of hot pasta and fish stew. They will remember sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in fleece hats, gloves, and coats playing endless rounds of Monopoly (the kid version, not the grownup!), Sorry!, and Go Fish. They will remember using every blanket we had in the house to create warm cocoons to sleep in, and using camping lanterns to read their books before bedtime. They'll remember helping us listen to the radio by cranking the handle on the side. They'll remember the sounds of the trees breaking and crashing. And they'll remember the lovely warmth and comfort of the Price Ice Rescue House.
The Reenactor and I both felt confident from the beginning that with our camping gear and hillbilly common sense we could make it through this event. And ultimately we did. We came through it with a greater appreciation for daily luxuries...like CNN at the flick of a button on the remote. Like picking up a little plastic box smaller than a deck of cards and making a call to let the other know we're running late. Like being warm..right now....just by pressing a button on the wall. The reality is as human beings we don't actually NEED any of those things to survive....our great grandfathers did fine without any of it. They are luxuries, and at any given moment they are temporarily here. I think our lesson is to be better prepared for when they are temporarily not here from now on.
One more installment to come...
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 3
This one is titled "Rescue Me" because that is the Aretha Franklin song I kept hearing in my head last night after I finished writing part 2.
So The Reenactor goes to check out the mystery Jeep in our driveway. I was only mildly concerned about who might come calling in the middle of a blackout, and the random thought of looters briefly crossed my mind. We obviously hadn't left candles burning in the house, so the house was completely dark, so it might be attractive to someone bent on breaking in. No, I was too busy happily chatting with our neighbor's grandfather in their 80-degree oven-like living room.
A few moments later The Reenactor appeared at the front door again, and asked me to step outside. When I did, there were two friends of ours grinning on the sidewalk, their faces lit up by flashlights. They had driven all the way out to our house, on roads only marginally passable, and still dangerous with dangling limbs, to give us the good news that we had a powered-up sanctuary to evacuate to.
Turns out another family we are friends with had left that afternoon for a planned vacation in New York, and just as they left town their power was restored to their mid-town home. In a last minute gesture of incredible hospitality they invited two other families to come stay at their house in their absence. Once those two families had settled in they realized there was still plenty of room for a few more, so they set out to find us.
We threw a change of clothes and some sleeping bags in the Volvo and set out at 9 o'clock on the darkest night I've ever seen. No street lights, overcast, so no stars or moon...only our headlights showed us the destruction on the roads into town. It was a matter of going quite slowly around downed limbs, electric poles, and piles of twigs and bark on the road. And the road was still icy in patches, adding an extra bit of treachery to the adventure.
Driving into town we were amazed at the little oasis' of lights that occasionally glimmered to our left or right. Mostly though, it was dark.
After we got to the house we shared a cold beverage with our fellow refuges, then went to bed. We slept in a second floor bedroom and occasionally through the night limbs from a mature oak next to the house would crash and fall, startling me awake again. But that house was warm, and I felt safe.
The next day the sun came out and started melting ice off the lines and trees. The four kids staying in the house were thrilled to have company with each other and spent the day running up and down stairs, and watching DVDs on the working television in the 3rd floor playroom. The adults hovered near the radio, and made phone calls to people in our church to check on their status...to see if they needed anything. A few brief trips were made to visit others to make sure they had some form of heat and food.
The Reenactor and I drove back to our house to get a turkey that was half-thawed in our freezer and take it back to town. That turkey was the nemesis for a wonderful "thanksgiving" meal that night. Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, someone's Granny's frozen cooked apples, and really incredible Wisconsin cheese from a home where lack of rrefrigeration was going to quickly doom it inedible. Add in generous amounts of wine and beer, and it a feast I'll never forget. We invited a few other people who of course were also without power, and while our gracious absent hosts were enjoying themselves in the Big Apple, we had a great time cooking and eating in their house in the Commonwealth.
I was also able to finally use my cell phone again (all five bars showed up!) and I called family in southwest Missouri who again urged us to come stay with them a while. Then, about 8:30 that night one of our neighbors called me to tell us that power had been restored to our neighborhood. We were stunned...it had been understood that it would be at least a week before the REA worked it's way to us. But, we certainly weren't going to argue with progress. We decided to spend another night at the Price Ice Rescue House because we weren't excited about driving those roads again after dark, plus our house would be so cold and take so long to warm up. So we stayed again with our friends. There was a quieter mood that night...maybe it was the turkey, maybe it was the notion that things were turning around, finally. Another family had power restored, and had left, and we had the house to share with another couple who were on their fifth night of gypsy living.
The next morning we returned to our house. I was nervous to go there again, and the kids hadn't seen the incredible sight of the effects of the storm in daylight yet...other than what they saw in our own neighborhood the first couple of days. They were quiet driving home, and I think they just couldn't absorb what they saw.
When we got to the house it was good to hear the hum of the refrigerator as it kicked back on, and to be able to see the curtains gently blowing over the heat registers. The house was a mess of gloves, socks, knit hats, blankets, candles, camping lights, dish towels, books, games and toys. But gradually, ever so gradually, it was warming up. We didn't have pipe damage, and in spite of being without power for four days, and below freezing temperatures, the house was still right at 40 degrees inside.
Our cat was pissed that we had left her to fend for herself. We figured her fur coat was sufficient to keep her warm, and I'm sure in our absence she had managed to curl up in a blanket somewhere in the warmth of a sunbeam. But it was apparent that all of this had thrown her out of her routine, and she was a bit high maintenance for a while.
We didn't have internet or cable tv, but those seemed like great luxuries to us now. We had electricity, thank God.
More to come....
Monday, February 16, 2009
Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 2
If you haven't read the previous day's blog (from the 15th) go back and read it. Otherwise, I am continuing the ice storm saga in this post.
So by day two our neighbors had started to venture out to talk to one another. Unfortunately for the kids, it was too dangerous to actually enjoy the snow and ice with sledding, and the added risk of them getting wet and cold without having a way to warm up in our house. But it felt good to at least talk to other people and get news and information they had gathered. One neighbor, hearing that he could at least get to the interstate in his car, decided to pack up his dog and head for the electric vibe of a friend's house in Nashville. In ditching his house to the elements he left us with two valuable commodities. First, he has a gas stovetop which was working fine. Second, he had a phone that only needed to be plugged into a phone jack to work (ours all required electricity). And because I frequently walk his dog for him when he's out of town on business, I had a key to his house, and his blessing to raid it.
Ironically, I had to loan him $40 to have on hand in case he needed it before reaching N'ville, as the ATMs were all non-functional in our town. This man always has a huge supply of cash, but he didn't at the one time he truly needed it.
We muddled through another day of board games and cards at the kitchen table, interrupted only with intense sessions of listening to the local NBC affiliate on the crank radio. They were finally broadcasting again, and they realized that they needed to preempt regular programming to just inform this end of the state with news and updates about electric service, where gas was available (which was rare); where a pallet of generators had just been delivered for sale; which stores were open, and for how long, and what restrictions were on them (eg: Wally World was open to cash customers only; 25 at a time in the store, and a spending limit of $25). I realized that the more I listened to the news the more anxious I became about what was going on outside our own neighborhood. It was frightening to hear that the local hospitals were running on generators only, and that all available personnel were required to be there to help. It was scary when the main source of news...the NBC affiliate...went off the air because their generators ran out of fuel and they had to get more. It made me nervous to hear that local communities were out of running water because pumping stations had shut down for lack of power. It was terrifying to realize just how primitive our lives had become. And the more we listened, the more we knew that we just had to make it until we could do something different. We inventoried our food again, and knew that we were in good shape. We added more vessels of drinking water to our already large supply. We put blankets and towels around spaces where cold air could leak in. And we tried to remain calm and optimistic in front of the kids.
At dinner that night we all said what we were grateful for...we reminded ourselves that many people were in much, much more difficult situations than we were. And when we went to bed that night we no longer heard the crashing of trees. We managed to stay warm in our blankets and layers of clothing, and we slept.
The next morning it truly was cold in our house. Two different neighbors came by within minutes of each other to offer the warmth of their gas log fireplaces. One neighbor had a working cell phone and I jumped at his offer to use it for a moment. I called my brother in Missouri to reassure him that we were okay, but I had to make the call short because the phone had another call beeping in. We decided to take up the offer of one of the neighbors to enjoy their fireplace while they were at work all day (they both work at hospitals, and they took their daughters with them to be in a warm place that day). We packed up some games and snacks and our radio and headed across the street. I'll admit it really was nice to sit in a room and not shiver. Their fireplace kept us comfortable for a few hours. We played with their dog, and ate sandwiches for lunch huddled next to the fireplace. As we occasionally listened to our radio we began hearing reports of how long it would take to restore power in the different REAs and power companies around the area. When we heard that our REA might take as long as two weeks to get back online I began to cry. When I next heard that there were several hundred linemen from other companies either in route, or already working in our area, I cried again.
I decided in the early afternoon that I would go commandeer our other neighbor's jack-only phone. I returned with it to our house to begin the process of trying to reach the outside world. For the first 20 minutes that I tried I got a constant busy signal, or a recorded message that service was not available. Again, I started to despair about my inability to communicate. I just needed to find out IF we could get somewhere...how far would we have to drive before we could readily find gasoline? How bad were roads between us and destinations where we had family?
We got the kids to hit the "redial" button on the phone so we could do other stuff. I had The Reenactor's parents' phone number in the redial. We had decided that since they lived just an hour away, and on the side of storm that might not have had as much damage, we would attempt to reach them to see if we could go there to stay for a couple of days. Finally the kids yelled that the line had gone to something other than the recording. Mother-in-law answered the phone and initially said that they had power. I asked if we could come stay with them, but as we talked I realized that they DIDN'T have power..she had misunderstood me. They didn't even have a way to cook because they have an electric stove and oven. They were keeping warm by the gas log fireplace, though, and eating lots of peanut butter and crackers. A generator was going to be hooked up in the next day, and we were encouraged to come over, but after The Reenactor and I discussed it, the destination wasn't worth the journey. We still felt the need to stay home and keep an eye on our own house, and short of a close-by promise of the utopia of electricity and heat, we weren't moving.
The national weather service called for temps to drop into the teens that night, as it had been the night before. We worried about our plumbing, and left the faucets dripping, and so far they hadn't frozen.
For dinner I took some fish and shrimp I had thawed out from our now-warm freezer, and drove it to the neighbor's house who had left town for N'ville. There I used his gas range to make a huge steaming pot of fish stew, and another pot of rice. I helped myself to his beer cooler while I was cooking and that, plus having just a half-hour of quiet to myself, helped considerably. I returned to our house with the steaming food, and we ate a wonderful hot meal. But each day the temperature inside the house had dropped by about 10 degrees, and it was definitely getting cold inside.
We decided to take up yet another neighbor's offer of a warm gas log fireplace and ventured there to sit for an hour and get toasty warm before returning to our own house to sleep. They had offered to let us sleep at their house, but we were fine once we got in bed with all our covers, so we just asked if we could sit with them for a while.
Their living room was 80 degrees if it was anything, and it felt like heaven to me. A half-hour after arriving The Reenactor noticed that a Jeep had pulled into our driveway across the street. We didn't know who it was, so he left to go check it out.
More to come....
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Being grateful for what I take for granted, part 1
I've finally found after nearly three weeks the mental energy to blog again. I have wanted to sit down and write out my thoughts many, many times in the last 20 days, but just couldn't summon up the will to commit all the many notions, ideas and observations I've had to my blog.
That, and our electricity and/or internet access wasn't working.
For those of you who know me who but are living in an alternate universe somewhere, my family was one of thousands who were part of the massive ice storm that hit the middle of the country on January 26. The county I live in, as well as six or seven counties immediately around us, seemed to suffer the worst of the storm. NOAA now reports that from 1 1/2" to 2" inches of ice coated the trees and power lines here. Within twelve hours of the storm's arrival in our area we lost power. We were fortunate...in our particular subdivision we remained without power for four days. Two sudivisions immediately to our north, but on a different line were without power nearly two weeks. As of today, there are still thousands of people in our part of the state who do not have power restored to their homes.
Additionally, we were unable to make cell phone calls for nearly three days because our cell provider (begins with an "A" and ends with a "T") had apparently leased their good towers to a rival company (begins with a V and ends with an "N") and were using towers leased to them by a company with inferior equipment. This is what I was told by a friend who has inside information. The good cell towers (used by the competitor) maintained decent service throughout the storm. Our cell company's leased towers failed, and we were unable to communicate with the outside world. In addition, land line phones were either overloaded with people trying to make calls, or seriously affected as well by the storm (and resulting massive power loss in the area) and making a call that way was almost impossible as well.
I've got lots to say about all this. As of this writing, tonight, it is just about my initial observation of the storm itself.
First, being the daughter of an electrical engineer who worked for a power company I have always had a huge appreciation for electricity, and the people who make it magically appear in our lives. I don't understand how it works, and much to my father's disappointment will probably never grasp the concept, but I know that it is dangerous work for those who actually work near the stuff (can't see it, can't smell it, can't hear it, but it's lethal if you touch it).
I know that on the heels of many a thunderstorm or ice storm my dad was out the door to see about repairing whatever damage had occurred to his lines. Many times he and his crews were away from their homes for days making sure everyone had power restored. Your average homeowner probably has no real grasp of just how complicated that maze of lines connecting a home to a transformer somewhere to line, to a substation, or wherever the heck it goes...ultimately going all the way to the coal-fired power plant, or hydroelectric facility that generates it all to begin with. Those wires don't just have electricity coursing through them all by themselves, and they all have to be connected together in one big spider web. And, as I was reminded this week by someone who works for an REA, it took 70 years to build a system like this, and just hours for a storm of this magnitude to render huge chunks of it useless. Poles were snapped like toothpicks, tree limbs inches in diameter fell across and broke lines, leaving them curled on the road like a summer's worth of snakes. Transformers (or hopalongs as my mom used to call them) lay on the ground in snarls of limbs and tree trunks.
My dad would have been mighty impressed with just how much damage was done here.
So on that first morning, when the power blipped once, twice, three times, then finally a minute later shut down with a finality that I knew meant it was going to be out for a while we all rallied to the idea that we would get by for a day or two with candles, flashlights, our trusty camping stove (used in the ventilated garage, thank you, Jenny!) and layering clothing. It was camping inside! It would be an adventure! the kids were onboard, and we set about the task of making sure our ducks were in a row. We put all the items to illuminate with in one specific location, so we could find them in the dark if need be; we set up the campstove in the garage ready for that first meal while we still had daylight (via the open garage door) to see what we were doing. We got out our tote boxes of camping gear with our wool blankets and sleeping bags. We filled up the bathtub and extra containers (five gallon water can) etc. with water in case the need arose to use them to flush the toilets (or to drink). We inventoried our food supply and decided which foods to eat first...the ones most likely to expire in limited refrigeration. And we listed the resources we still had working for us. Namely, we had a gas water heater that thankfully supplied us throughout the power outage with lovely hot water. We had a crank weather/AM/FM/TV radio that we could listen to just by several turns of a handle. We also weren't terribly cold that first day because our house retained much of the heat that had been in it before the storm hit. And we had lots of jackets, sweaters, coats, hats, and warm socks to keep us comfortable.
We spent that first day playing board games with the kids. Again, it was fun. It was a lark...something for them to remember in the future.
Then, as the ice got thicker, the trees began to scream.
The first notice we had of this was that we heard a loud wooooooosh right in front of our house. We rushed to the front door and T1 immediately started crying hysterically. Our bradford pear tree...the one T1 and T2 love to climb...had split open and was laying in a huge fan across our front sidewalk and driveway. T1 was devastated. Suddenly this wasn't fun anymore. And suddenly I became really worried about our other trees. I stood outside on the front porch for a while and heard the crashes of limbs in the woods around us. I watched as the drizzle that was falling continued to coat everything above ground with a glaze of ice thicker than my finger.
That night we ate by candlelight. We had a yummy hot meal, and did a family cleanup job with our hot water and plenty of dish towels. We decided to have the kids sleep in our room...the farthest room in the house from the fall line of our biggest trees, and with the idea that by shutting the doors of our room we were creating a warmer, cozier space for all of us. I found that I couldn't sleep...the forecast had been for an additional coating of two to four inches of wet snow on top of the ice, and the dire prediction was that this would cause even further damage.
The weather service was right.
Starting about 9 o'clock that night I heard nothing but crashes. Huge, heavy thuds that were tree trunks or major limbs falling to the ground. The chandelier-crashing sound of limbs coated with ice falling to the ground. And the worst was when it was close to our house. I was convinced that a huge sycamore tree we have in our yard was going to end up on our roof. I kept an ongoing vigil by the front door that night. At the sound of each major crash I got up and went to the door to sweep the lawn outside with the beam of my flashlight. It went on all night. Every ten seconds on average I heard a crash. It was like listening to a war of sorts. I was in terror of what the ice might bring down on our house, yet helpless to do anything but watch in horror through the windows, or lie in bed cringing with each crash.
At morning's light we saw the damage. The snow had indeed fallen and with it, had brought down many of the trees in the yards and woods surrounding our subdivision. We lost a mature hackberry tree...which was split in half about six feet up from the ground. We lost nearly half the limbs on the sycamore, but thanks to an arborist who has already been here to clean up our property, we think it is saved. We lost the bradford pear, which was the hardest emotionally for us. But we were fortunate that is all we lost.
More to come.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Yes, we did
I had the honor of getting to watch the inauguration with some of my dear friends this morning, and all I can say is "wow." History is made.
Here's my ongoing list of surreal moments from the day:
1) That the Supreme Court Chief Justice screwed up the words to the oath of office. Helluva job, there Roberts.
2) Aretha Franklin's hat. Somewhere, Eleanor Roosevelt or Queen Elizabeth are missing a chapeau.
3) The benediction closing lines of ...Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around -- (laughter) -- when yellow will be mellow -- (laughter) -- when the red man can get ahead, man -- (laughter) -- and when white will embrace what is right.
Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.
4) Cheney in a wheelchair. The resemblance to mean Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" was extra surreal.
5) The amazing view of the crowds who braved subzero weather to stretch out of sight to be witness to this.
6) Senators Byrd and Kennedy collapsing at the lunch afterwards. We can't lose any more Democrats in the Senate folks!!! We need a majority!
7) The camera shots of Bill Clinton checking out Michelle, and later the Bush twins. He had dirty thoughts in his mind...all you had to do was look at the expression on his face.
8) Malia taking her own snapshots of the occasion. Like the concert on Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial, this morning she had out her little digital camera and was recording the moment for herself. I would love it if someone would publish her "view" of the events. She even asked Joe Biden to take a photo for her at one point.
9) Obama's address...not surreal, but incredible. Even though I heard it this morning, I just went online to read it, and it is even more powerful the second time.
10) That the companies advertising on CNN today are all employing a theme of change and hopefulness. Pepsi has apparently hijacked the Obama campaign logo to be the new Pepsi logo, and their commercials are blatant in their message of change, and the words Yes We Can.
That's it for now....I'm sure I'll add more later. Meanwhile, share your inaugural moments with me!
Here's my ongoing list of surreal moments from the day:
1) That the Supreme Court Chief Justice screwed up the words to the oath of office. Helluva job, there Roberts.
2) Aretha Franklin's hat. Somewhere, Eleanor Roosevelt or Queen Elizabeth are missing a chapeau.
3) The benediction closing lines of ...Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around -- (laughter) -- when yellow will be mellow -- (laughter) -- when the red man can get ahead, man -- (laughter) -- and when white will embrace what is right.
Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.
4) Cheney in a wheelchair. The resemblance to mean Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" was extra surreal.
5) The amazing view of the crowds who braved subzero weather to stretch out of sight to be witness to this.
6) Senators Byrd and Kennedy collapsing at the lunch afterwards. We can't lose any more Democrats in the Senate folks!!! We need a majority!
7) The camera shots of Bill Clinton checking out Michelle, and later the Bush twins. He had dirty thoughts in his mind...all you had to do was look at the expression on his face.
8) Malia taking her own snapshots of the occasion. Like the concert on Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial, this morning she had out her little digital camera and was recording the moment for herself. I would love it if someone would publish her "view" of the events. She even asked Joe Biden to take a photo for her at one point.
9) Obama's address...not surreal, but incredible. Even though I heard it this morning, I just went online to read it, and it is even more powerful the second time.
10) That the companies advertising on CNN today are all employing a theme of change and hopefulness. Pepsi has apparently hijacked the Obama campaign logo to be the new Pepsi logo, and their commercials are blatant in their message of change, and the words Yes We Can.
That's it for now....I'm sure I'll add more later. Meanwhile, share your inaugural moments with me!
Monday, January 12, 2009
is this the way she sees us?
For the last few days T1 has been getting a lot of--well lets say "unhappy" --feedback from The Reenactor and me. Part of it has stemmed from our trying to get her to take responsibility for the unbelievable amount of stuff she has in her room, and making choices to get rid of a huge chunk of it. She's sentimental and reluctant to part with a lot of things, and that means her room is overflowing with dozens of stuffed animals, piles of parts to horse and doll sets, and books, journals, and now CDs. In the past the only way I could deep-clean her room was if she went to visit her grandparents for a couple of days, during which time I would go in with trash bags and boxes to put stuff to donate, and I always got rid of a LOT of stuff, none of which she reported missing when she returned. But she's old enough now to do this herself, and at times is remarkably good about sorting and choosing what to keep and what to get rid of. But at times it is like watching molasses pour in January to get her to go through just one box of mismatched toys.
Anyway...last night as I was working in her room with her I noticed that her dollhouse had the dolls set up in groupings in the different rooms. At the front of the kitchen she had this group...a Mom and Dad doll (no comment on the fact that the Mom is actually labeled as a "grandmother" on the package and is sporting gray hair!) clearly having a conversation with their pony-tailed daughter. I started laughing when I saw it, but the more I looked at it, the more I wondered if that is how she feels right now...Mom and Dad standing on either side of her, hands on hips in frustration.
If you playing with this group of dolls right now, what would your dialog be for them?
Thursday, January 8, 2009
just another reason to rant
I have noticed an interesting trend in the last couple of weeks: drive-through conveniences are being geared toward people driving large SUVs. My bank has a new facility drive-through lane that has two heights for the box to come that you place your checks or whatever into. The top height is clearly convenient if you are in a full size truck or SUV. The lower height is for regular passenger cars. The problem is, if you pull up after someone who was in a larger vehicle the box has been left at the "upper" position, and I haven't found a way to get it to lower to the passenger car position. If I press the only button available other than "call" it goes to the teller. So to get the box I have to unbuckle, open the door, and half climb out of my car to reach it.
And today I was mailing some letters at a mid-town post office drive-up box, which has been replaced in the last year or so from the two "local" and "other" mailboxes into one large box. Again, I had to put my car in park, unbuckle, get out and mail the letters because the friggin' opening is set a good two feet above my reach.
I understand in the big picture this is truly a minor inconvenience. BUT, I'm irritated that apparently SUVs at one point became so popular in our culture that institutions like banks and the Post Office decided to cater specifically to those drivers.
Has anyone else noticed another place where things have been placed higher?
And today I was mailing some letters at a mid-town post office drive-up box, which has been replaced in the last year or so from the two "local" and "other" mailboxes into one large box. Again, I had to put my car in park, unbuckle, get out and mail the letters because the friggin' opening is set a good two feet above my reach.
I understand in the big picture this is truly a minor inconvenience. BUT, I'm irritated that apparently SUVs at one point became so popular in our culture that institutions like banks and the Post Office decided to cater specifically to those drivers.
Has anyone else noticed another place where things have been placed higher?
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Gettin' over my own stupid self
Hey Campers, it's a new year, and I'm 50! Wow! I don't feel a week over 49!
My last post was a practice in wallowing in my own holiday blues. I apologize for how selfishly worded it was. I still maintain that there are too many things standing in the way of Christmas to actually enjoy Christmas, and we all need to return to a simpler holiday that is shorter in duration (not the month-long marathon starting at Thanksgiving) yet more meaningful in quality. It is interesting that a comment from my niece 'Shley mentioned the 12 days of Christmas and how we ought to start having fun on the 25th and just enjoy the next two weeks. That was the same message our minister had at the Christmas Eve service and I think it is a great idea. I have definitely had a better time after Christmas than before.
With one notable exception.
After three weeks of on-again, off-again tummy ache, complete with a spectacular case of sickness into a plastic shopping bag somewhere near Rogersville, Missouri the day after Christmas, we took T2 to the doc last Wed. just to rule out something bigger than garden variety stomach bug. Turns out that he had an inflamed appendix, and while it wasn't serious, or even close to it, a CT scan and review by two radiologists and a surgeon determined that he was going to need it taken out. He is home now, and other than some tenderness that causes him to walk around stooped like a little old man, he seems on the mend.
So since I wasn't in the mood to be grateful to anyone, or for anything before Christmas, this is my newly revised view of the world.
First, to Mariann who magically appeared in the ER just as the doc was recommending to me that T2 have immediate surgery, and helped me with him while I tried to tell the admitting folks all his pertinent details. You can't imagine who grateful I was just for her calm presence while I was trying to sort everything out and keep him from being too upset. She is a blessing to our family, and to our church family for her generous spirit and constant kindness and faith.
Second, to our friend John for giving The Reenactor a ride to the hospital that was described to me as "efficient" but nonetheless got him there before T2 was actually wheeled into the operating room. If any of you know how to bypass having an extra Volvo key made without having to go to an actual Volvo dealership, please let me know. We discovered that day that just one key on my keyring isn't an option any more.
Third, to our friends Hannah and Julie who both showed up in the waiting room while T2 was in the operating room just to keep us company and to help keep T1 distracted. T1 was very worried about her little brother, and all of you helped keep her attitude positive. Special thanks also to Julie for the delicious Taco Soup she delivered to our house the night T2 got home from the hospital. The Reenactor has declared her a Domestic Goddess for that crock full of soup.
Next, to our friend Erin who consulted with us multiple times via cell phone while on her own vacation about T2's condition, and gave us comfort and information. I'm sorry you were having to talk loudly about spastic colons and inflamed appendix in public places, but your advice was unbelievably helpful.
And finally, to all the docs, nurses, and OR people who took care of my sick and very, very scared little boy. I don't know your names, but I'm grateful that you were so kind to him.
Next up...my own take on turning 50. It's a real page-turner!
My last post was a practice in wallowing in my own holiday blues. I apologize for how selfishly worded it was. I still maintain that there are too many things standing in the way of Christmas to actually enjoy Christmas, and we all need to return to a simpler holiday that is shorter in duration (not the month-long marathon starting at Thanksgiving) yet more meaningful in quality. It is interesting that a comment from my niece 'Shley mentioned the 12 days of Christmas and how we ought to start having fun on the 25th and just enjoy the next two weeks. That was the same message our minister had at the Christmas Eve service and I think it is a great idea. I have definitely had a better time after Christmas than before.
With one notable exception.
After three weeks of on-again, off-again tummy ache, complete with a spectacular case of sickness into a plastic shopping bag somewhere near Rogersville, Missouri the day after Christmas, we took T2 to the doc last Wed. just to rule out something bigger than garden variety stomach bug. Turns out that he had an inflamed appendix, and while it wasn't serious, or even close to it, a CT scan and review by two radiologists and a surgeon determined that he was going to need it taken out. He is home now, and other than some tenderness that causes him to walk around stooped like a little old man, he seems on the mend.
So since I wasn't in the mood to be grateful to anyone, or for anything before Christmas, this is my newly revised view of the world.
First, to Mariann who magically appeared in the ER just as the doc was recommending to me that T2 have immediate surgery, and helped me with him while I tried to tell the admitting folks all his pertinent details. You can't imagine who grateful I was just for her calm presence while I was trying to sort everything out and keep him from being too upset. She is a blessing to our family, and to our church family for her generous spirit and constant kindness and faith.
Second, to our friend John for giving The Reenactor a ride to the hospital that was described to me as "efficient" but nonetheless got him there before T2 was actually wheeled into the operating room. If any of you know how to bypass having an extra Volvo key made without having to go to an actual Volvo dealership, please let me know. We discovered that day that just one key on my keyring isn't an option any more.
Third, to our friends Hannah and Julie who both showed up in the waiting room while T2 was in the operating room just to keep us company and to help keep T1 distracted. T1 was very worried about her little brother, and all of you helped keep her attitude positive. Special thanks also to Julie for the delicious Taco Soup she delivered to our house the night T2 got home from the hospital. The Reenactor has declared her a Domestic Goddess for that crock full of soup.
Next, to our friend Erin who consulted with us multiple times via cell phone while on her own vacation about T2's condition, and gave us comfort and information. I'm sorry you were having to talk loudly about spastic colons and inflamed appendix in public places, but your advice was unbelievably helpful.
And finally, to all the docs, nurses, and OR people who took care of my sick and very, very scared little boy. I don't know your names, but I'm grateful that you were so kind to him.
Next up...my own take on turning 50. It's a real page-turner!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
trying to be happy
I was in Wally World a couple of nights ago. Yes, the whole raison d'etre of this blog originally was to protest WM's corporatization of America. Well that was then, and this is now. I was far to emotionally and financially stretched that night to wander around at five different stores looking for the handful of items I needed. And I was in no mood to deal with what passes as driving skills in the commercial areas of our town. No indeed.
Anyway, I was in the grocery section and ran into a woman I know only casually--I've talked to her at several events I've been to recently. Honestly, I don't even know her name, but we recognize each other. I greeted her with "How are you?" and her response was, "Trying to find a reason to be happy." I laughed, because she said it in a sarcastic sort of way, but my retort back to her was to tell her how damn grumpy I felt just walking into the store, and that I had realized as I walked through the parking lot that I must look like hell on wheels, because I didn't want to be there, but it was the most efficient place to go to get the things I needed. The woman, and her husband, both laughed at this and said that just walking INTO WM can make the happiest of people grumpy.
But I knew the point of our conversation wasn't WM -- although it is a miserable place on a Saturday night in mid-December. The point was unspoken. The point was that we were both fed up with the holidays. There is so much emphasis each year on making a perfect holiday for your family. To have the perfectly decorated tree, and most welcoming house in the neighborhood. To find the perfect gift for your children's schoolteacher, piano teacher, and dance teacher. To attend all the holiday events at your children's school, and after-school activities...and yet still have time to wrap your presents in a way that implies creativity and a great deal of thoughtfulness. Those of us who cannot wrangle a length of 1 1/2" wired ribbon into the perfect huge bow for our presents are clearly not trying hard enough, and if you resort to using pre-made bows, well, you don't care WHAT people think, do you?
Now on top of all this you are supposed to have a stocked refrigerator and pantry in the event that friends stop by for holiday cheer. Great idea, but no one does that anymore because everyone is too damn busy out buying food to stock their pantries for unexpected guests and wrestling with wired ribbon to have time to just casually drop by a friend's house.
So yes, I am grumpy, and I am just looking for a reason to try to be happy. It is hard to see the forest for the pine trees this time of year, and even though I am so unbelievably blessed with family, friends, and just having food on the table (remember that overstocked pantry?) I am constantly reminded that I'm not measuring up.
Gifts purchased? Mostly.
Gifts wrapped? No.
Gifts wrapped with beautiful bows or creative and elegant touches? Not even.
Cookies made? Yes, but everyone I know other than my children are on diets, so why did I make these things?
Tree decorated? It's a work in progress.
Carols sung?
Bells on bobtail rung?
Snow dashed through?
Halls decked?
Is my holly jolly?
And lastly, have I had myself a merry little Christmas now? No.
With three days to go I'm officially signing off of the holiday merry-go-round. I've ignored my children trying to make a perfect Christmas for them. I've gotten mad that they were out of school this week for an ice storm because it put me three days behind in my preparations, rather than relishing the extra time with them that I crave so much. I have been pissed off at the world, and literally trying to find a reason to be happy in a W.M. on a Saturday night. And apparently I'm not the only one, if my friend is any measure.
There is a reason we celebrate Christmas, and short of talk show hosts arguing over whether we should say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" in the advertising for big box stores, the point of the holiday is just missing now. We can't love one another with presents. We can't buy happiness...not even at a W.M. Supercenter.
So starting tomorrow night I'm going to read the real Christmas story to my children. Not the ones with Dasher and Dancer, not the one with the huge freakish snowman, and glowing reindeer noses. Not the one with a Grinch. I'll read them the one about love, and the greatest gift of all. And that's where I'll find happiness.
Anyway, I was in the grocery section and ran into a woman I know only casually--I've talked to her at several events I've been to recently. Honestly, I don't even know her name, but we recognize each other. I greeted her with "How are you?" and her response was, "Trying to find a reason to be happy." I laughed, because she said it in a sarcastic sort of way, but my retort back to her was to tell her how damn grumpy I felt just walking into the store, and that I had realized as I walked through the parking lot that I must look like hell on wheels, because I didn't want to be there, but it was the most efficient place to go to get the things I needed. The woman, and her husband, both laughed at this and said that just walking INTO WM can make the happiest of people grumpy.
But I knew the point of our conversation wasn't WM -- although it is a miserable place on a Saturday night in mid-December. The point was unspoken. The point was that we were both fed up with the holidays. There is so much emphasis each year on making a perfect holiday for your family. To have the perfectly decorated tree, and most welcoming house in the neighborhood. To find the perfect gift for your children's schoolteacher, piano teacher, and dance teacher. To attend all the holiday events at your children's school, and after-school activities...and yet still have time to wrap your presents in a way that implies creativity and a great deal of thoughtfulness. Those of us who cannot wrangle a length of 1 1/2" wired ribbon into the perfect huge bow for our presents are clearly not trying hard enough, and if you resort to using pre-made bows, well, you don't care WHAT people think, do you?
Now on top of all this you are supposed to have a stocked refrigerator and pantry in the event that friends stop by for holiday cheer. Great idea, but no one does that anymore because everyone is too damn busy out buying food to stock their pantries for unexpected guests and wrestling with wired ribbon to have time to just casually drop by a friend's house.
So yes, I am grumpy, and I am just looking for a reason to try to be happy. It is hard to see the forest for the pine trees this time of year, and even though I am so unbelievably blessed with family, friends, and just having food on the table (remember that overstocked pantry?) I am constantly reminded that I'm not measuring up.
Gifts purchased? Mostly.
Gifts wrapped? No.
Gifts wrapped with beautiful bows or creative and elegant touches? Not even.
Cookies made? Yes, but everyone I know other than my children are on diets, so why did I make these things?
Tree decorated? It's a work in progress.
Carols sung?
Bells on bobtail rung?
Snow dashed through?
Halls decked?
Is my holly jolly?
And lastly, have I had myself a merry little Christmas now? No.
With three days to go I'm officially signing off of the holiday merry-go-round. I've ignored my children trying to make a perfect Christmas for them. I've gotten mad that they were out of school this week for an ice storm because it put me three days behind in my preparations, rather than relishing the extra time with them that I crave so much. I have been pissed off at the world, and literally trying to find a reason to be happy in a W.M. on a Saturday night. And apparently I'm not the only one, if my friend is any measure.
There is a reason we celebrate Christmas, and short of talk show hosts arguing over whether we should say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" in the advertising for big box stores, the point of the holiday is just missing now. We can't love one another with presents. We can't buy happiness...not even at a W.M. Supercenter.
So starting tomorrow night I'm going to read the real Christmas story to my children. Not the ones with Dasher and Dancer, not the one with the huge freakish snowman, and glowing reindeer noses. Not the one with a Grinch. I'll read them the one about love, and the greatest gift of all. And that's where I'll find happiness.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
icy fun before breakfast
Nothin' says hillbilly like running out in your pajamas to go sledding on thin ice.
a winter's day
Grandpa Ed clearing the sidewalk after a beautiful Ozarks snowstorm. The photo is marked with the caption "Taken Jan. 8, 1944, at 4 o'clock."
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Requiem for a magazine
At the end of this month the magazine that I helped start 18 years ago will cease publication. It has been a slow death--the magazine has been on life support for months as the publisher tried to transition from a print and web-based publication, to web only.
I helped create this magazine in my Rolla, Missouri days when my friend Wayne decided to continue to publish a newsletter to the fans of his public radio bluegrass program. The local public radio affiliate had decided that they didn't want the expense of sending out a monthly newsletter to the faithful listeners of "Bluegrass for a Saturday Night," so Wayne took the mailing list, and on his own dime began publishing a newsletter. At first it was just that...a locally-driven eight-page newsletter about upcoming concerts and festivals, with a "top 20" list of most requested songs from his show, and a couple of brief articles about bluegrass artists. I did the layout for free for him because I was using a university-owned computer and didn't feel right about charging him for a couple hours of my time every month.
Soon though, Wayne realized there was a market out there for 'grassers who wanted news in a magazine format. So a magazine was born. It took a while to get traction, but as it did it became more and more fun to design. Even though bluegrass music has a very specific fan base--and a lot of people react with actual revulsion at the thought of having to listen to a bluegrass song--it was something I personally enjoyed, so getting to read the articles, and design around some of the artists I had heard was a nice diversion for me to other design work I was doing at the time.
A few short years after we kicked it off, we had a simple monthly magazine with an average of 48 pages, a color cover, and a partial color layout inside. And the feedback we were getting from the 'grass world was positive. At the time there was only one other major publication devoted to bluegrass music, and it had stagnated in its design...locked into a grid they had designed in the early 80s and hadn't veered off of since. Fans began to notice that our magazine had a newer look...a fresher approach. We began to feel our oats about where this could go.
In the next few years both Wayne and I went through divorces from our first spouses, married new spouses, and I moved away from Rolla, so the production of the magazine became a long-distance project. But as email and the internet had become something you could have in your home, and not just in a university or corporate setting, and with the help of FedEx, we made it work. As time went by, and web speed became much faster we were eventually able to even drop the FedEx part of it and do the entire thing entirely by email and internet. At one point Wayne and his new bride, Deb, who also was heavily involved in the magazine, got the idea to produce a magazine-sponsored awards show in Nashville. We only had one, but that one was a blast. We had it at the Ryman, and some of the top names in bluegrass, including Ricky Skaggs, were there.
The magazine continued to improve from a design standpoint, with more advertising revenue making it possible to do more color sections, and the overall product was much improved from our early days. We heard rumors that the other 'grass magazine was trying to copy our format to keep up with us.
But the very thing that made our long-distance production possible was also the thing that ultimately contributed to the demise of the magazine...the internet. As more and more people began using the internet it became possible to access the same information our subscribers were getting in each issue--information about festivals, new CD releases, etc--with just a few clicks on the computer. Also, each band now has their own website, and each record company has plenty of information about their star performers, including concert schedules, upcoming releases, and biographical background to satisfy the heartiest of bluegrass fans. And, as napster and itunes became common ways to download music, record companies had to revise how they advertised their products and artists, and that ultimately altered the ad revenue our magazine could count on.
And the last year of economic downturn was the final blow. If there were an autopsy performed it would indicate that the magazine died from a poor economy, and a changing world of publishing. The high cost of paper (printing paper); a reduction of advertising budget for many festivals, string and instrument companies, and the blossoming of the downloaded music industry all were part of the demise. In spite of the hundreds of specialty magazines you see on shelves at bookstores and newsstands, it is hard to get a magazine started, and maintain it's subscription base. Advertisers want to see how many people are actually reading a publication before they commit ad dollars to it, and if you can't maintain a high enough subscription base you can't get ads. In a poor economy it is especially difficult to get that ad revenue.
There was a brief attempt at resurrecting the magazine as an "e-zine" online, but because none of us actually knew much about production in the virtual world (we are all old printing press veterans) our enthusiasm for it dwindled.
But I am proud that we made it what it was, and kept it going for as long as we did. We published this thing through divorce, marriage, the births of my children, and their grandchildren, through a parade of associate writers and editors, and through the good graces of the bluegrass community.
I helped create this magazine in my Rolla, Missouri days when my friend Wayne decided to continue to publish a newsletter to the fans of his public radio bluegrass program. The local public radio affiliate had decided that they didn't want the expense of sending out a monthly newsletter to the faithful listeners of "Bluegrass for a Saturday Night," so Wayne took the mailing list, and on his own dime began publishing a newsletter. At first it was just that...a locally-driven eight-page newsletter about upcoming concerts and festivals, with a "top 20" list of most requested songs from his show, and a couple of brief articles about bluegrass artists. I did the layout for free for him because I was using a university-owned computer and didn't feel right about charging him for a couple hours of my time every month.
Soon though, Wayne realized there was a market out there for 'grassers who wanted news in a magazine format. So a magazine was born. It took a while to get traction, but as it did it became more and more fun to design. Even though bluegrass music has a very specific fan base--and a lot of people react with actual revulsion at the thought of having to listen to a bluegrass song--it was something I personally enjoyed, so getting to read the articles, and design around some of the artists I had heard was a nice diversion for me to other design work I was doing at the time.
A few short years after we kicked it off, we had a simple monthly magazine with an average of 48 pages, a color cover, and a partial color layout inside. And the feedback we were getting from the 'grass world was positive. At the time there was only one other major publication devoted to bluegrass music, and it had stagnated in its design...locked into a grid they had designed in the early 80s and hadn't veered off of since. Fans began to notice that our magazine had a newer look...a fresher approach. We began to feel our oats about where this could go.
In the next few years both Wayne and I went through divorces from our first spouses, married new spouses, and I moved away from Rolla, so the production of the magazine became a long-distance project. But as email and the internet had become something you could have in your home, and not just in a university or corporate setting, and with the help of FedEx, we made it work. As time went by, and web speed became much faster we were eventually able to even drop the FedEx part of it and do the entire thing entirely by email and internet. At one point Wayne and his new bride, Deb, who also was heavily involved in the magazine, got the idea to produce a magazine-sponsored awards show in Nashville. We only had one, but that one was a blast. We had it at the Ryman, and some of the top names in bluegrass, including Ricky Skaggs, were there.
The magazine continued to improve from a design standpoint, with more advertising revenue making it possible to do more color sections, and the overall product was much improved from our early days. We heard rumors that the other 'grass magazine was trying to copy our format to keep up with us.
But the very thing that made our long-distance production possible was also the thing that ultimately contributed to the demise of the magazine...the internet. As more and more people began using the internet it became possible to access the same information our subscribers were getting in each issue--information about festivals, new CD releases, etc--with just a few clicks on the computer. Also, each band now has their own website, and each record company has plenty of information about their star performers, including concert schedules, upcoming releases, and biographical background to satisfy the heartiest of bluegrass fans. And, as napster and itunes became common ways to download music, record companies had to revise how they advertised their products and artists, and that ultimately altered the ad revenue our magazine could count on.
And the last year of economic downturn was the final blow. If there were an autopsy performed it would indicate that the magazine died from a poor economy, and a changing world of publishing. The high cost of paper (printing paper); a reduction of advertising budget for many festivals, string and instrument companies, and the blossoming of the downloaded music industry all were part of the demise. In spite of the hundreds of specialty magazines you see on shelves at bookstores and newsstands, it is hard to get a magazine started, and maintain it's subscription base. Advertisers want to see how many people are actually reading a publication before they commit ad dollars to it, and if you can't maintain a high enough subscription base you can't get ads. In a poor economy it is especially difficult to get that ad revenue.
There was a brief attempt at resurrecting the magazine as an "e-zine" online, but because none of us actually knew much about production in the virtual world (we are all old printing press veterans) our enthusiasm for it dwindled.
But I am proud that we made it what it was, and kept it going for as long as we did. We published this thing through divorce, marriage, the births of my children, and their grandchildren, through a parade of associate writers and editors, and through the good graces of the bluegrass community.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Of Pilgrims, Christopher Columbus, and minerals
I never realized that having kids would cause me to re-learn everything I THOUGHT I knew from my own elementary school education. Now that T1 and T2 are moving into specific areas of study like science, social studies, and more complicated math than basic addition and subtraction, I am finding that I'm learning along with them.
I have been helping in their classrooms two mornings a week...one morning in each classroom. Turns out there is a universal School Scent. Every school I've ever been in smells the same. It still smells like the school I went to when I was a child. It has a strong undercurrent of cleaning supplies (which, when ordered from a catalog must say "School Smell Cleaning Supplies), a chalkiness, or maybe essence of crayons, a hint of wet construction paper, and just the most subtle nuance of pee...like someone in the room didn't quite aim accurately when they went to the bathroom and got some on their shoes or something.
But the amazing thing I am finding is how much more information they have about the subjects they are learning. T2 has in his classroom a big book about Christopher Columbus, and it has details in it I never learned as a child. Both of them are learning about the Pilgrims at a much, much more realistic level than I ever learned in the happy, fun way it was presented back in the days when I made construction paper turkeys. They are learning the true story about how these people nearly all starved, and entire families were wiped out while they tried to make it through their first few years. They are also learning about how the Native Americans were also nearly destroyed by all the new diseases the Pilgrims (and others) brought with them. And T1's class has also been learning about rocks and minerals in her science unit. She is now rattling off facts about what the earth is made of and how different rocks are made that I'm pretty sure I didn't know until high school.
The Reenactor and I have both discovered that the way T1 is learning to add two columns of numbers is very, very different than the way we both learned it. The language involved is different. You no longer "carry" a digit from the first column to the second. They are being taught to "re-group." I can tell that I'm going to be in over my head in helping them with math sooner rather than later.
The fun part of this is that subjects that I normally wouldn't bother to read or study are in front of me now, and I'm re-learning too! I can maybe take a mid-life GED one of these days and see if I pass!
So campers, what "true fact" did YOU learn in elementary school that you now know is complete nonsense? Or what did you learn that still sticks with you today as a tool you use often?
Oh, and one more note...if you ever think that teachers are overpaid, just spend two hours in a classroom. I truly don't know how they aren't all stark, raving mad at the end of the day.
I have been helping in their classrooms two mornings a week...one morning in each classroom. Turns out there is a universal School Scent. Every school I've ever been in smells the same. It still smells like the school I went to when I was a child. It has a strong undercurrent of cleaning supplies (which, when ordered from a catalog must say "School Smell Cleaning Supplies), a chalkiness, or maybe essence of crayons, a hint of wet construction paper, and just the most subtle nuance of pee...like someone in the room didn't quite aim accurately when they went to the bathroom and got some on their shoes or something.
But the amazing thing I am finding is how much more information they have about the subjects they are learning. T2 has in his classroom a big book about Christopher Columbus, and it has details in it I never learned as a child. Both of them are learning about the Pilgrims at a much, much more realistic level than I ever learned in the happy, fun way it was presented back in the days when I made construction paper turkeys. They are learning the true story about how these people nearly all starved, and entire families were wiped out while they tried to make it through their first few years. They are also learning about how the Native Americans were also nearly destroyed by all the new diseases the Pilgrims (and others) brought with them. And T1's class has also been learning about rocks and minerals in her science unit. She is now rattling off facts about what the earth is made of and how different rocks are made that I'm pretty sure I didn't know until high school.
The Reenactor and I have both discovered that the way T1 is learning to add two columns of numbers is very, very different than the way we both learned it. The language involved is different. You no longer "carry" a digit from the first column to the second. They are being taught to "re-group." I can tell that I'm going to be in over my head in helping them with math sooner rather than later.
The fun part of this is that subjects that I normally wouldn't bother to read or study are in front of me now, and I'm re-learning too! I can maybe take a mid-life GED one of these days and see if I pass!
So campers, what "true fact" did YOU learn in elementary school that you now know is complete nonsense? Or what did you learn that still sticks with you today as a tool you use often?
Oh, and one more note...if you ever think that teachers are overpaid, just spend two hours in a classroom. I truly don't know how they aren't all stark, raving mad at the end of the day.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Election Day, 2008
Notes from Nov. 4, 2008
1) I was filled with a sense of calm, and amazement after I pressed Obama's name on my voting machine. Just this sense that I had made a contribution to history.
2) The Reenactor and I were so disappointed that The Commonwealth was the first state officially called in favor of McCain. However, given the political and cultural climate of this area, it was no surprise.
3) I couldn't sit still for the first three hours of the evening. I flitted around the house in nervous spasms of attempting to clean and put things away, obsessively checking the current tallies on the computer, and watching anything BUT the results on tv. We even watched a special "presidential" edition of Dirty Jobs. The Daily Show was our election coverage up until the time that the election was called. Just because I was feeling especially goofy, I checked out Faux News momentarily. Long enough to see Karl Rove trying to logically explain why everything he has done in the last decade has been nothing short of disasterous (well...not what he was really talking about, but I was wishing it was).
4) The kids wanted to stay up until it was "over" which of course we had no idea how long that would take. We let them both lay down with pillows and blankets, and they cratered just minutes before the election was called. We tried to wake them up to watch O's acceptance speech, but they both whined and went back to sleep. I'm going to have them watch it on the internet tonight.
5) Champagne that we have been saving to celebrate the sale of our house was instead popped open to sip while McCain conceded, and during Obama's magnificent acceptance speech.
6) I probably should have put this first, but it is a stream-of-consciousness thing so bear with me. I want to put this in writing for the virtual family campfire that is my blog (and for those of my friends who humor me by reading it as well)....
My sister Alice, and her husband John have spent hours, and hours, and hours, and hours volunteering for Obama's campaign in Ohio. They have knocked on doors, made calls, canvassed, done grunt work like picking up signs to place in their county, and I don't even know what all...
Today, they are my heroes. They are two of the legions of people who made this change possible. I hope they take a well-deserved vacation or rest now, and bask in the glow of the triumph they were so much a part of.
7) I know the world isn't going to change immediately, but for the first time in eight years, I have hope again. I remembered last night how we took T1 to the polls to vote with us when she was just 2 weeks old in 2000, and how optimistic I was that evening. I remember the feeling of dread that I had as I was up with her over that night giving her feedings and watching the fate of our nation change by the minute, and by the suspect votes of a few counties in Florida. I still believe that election was stolen, and that our world would be very different if Gore had won. So to go from that to having her curled up next to me cheering every time a state went "blue" last night was a bit of compensation for the feeling of helplessness in the last few years.
8) The power of one vote is just amazing. My homestate of Missouri was called with just something like 4000 votes difference. The senate race in Minnesota is at this moment divided by just 400 votes. The mayoral race in my town, which I think everyone assumed was a shoo-in for the incumbent, is only 50 votes different. Your vote matters, it really does.
9) I hope that this election begins a trend of eliminating the use of smear and negative campaign ads and emails, as it is very clear they didn't work this time. Case in point, the Senate race in N.C. Elizabeth Dole lost her bid for re-election in large part because of an ad she ran and approved saying that her opponent didn't believe in God. Even for the hardiest of evangelicals in her state it was a slap too many.
10) I wonder what Joe the Plumber is doing today? Maybe his job for a change? Unclogging a sewer line or something? I hope we don't hear of him again.
That's all for now. I'm happy. I feel like I'm represented again (although not at a local level).
Yes, we can!
1) I was filled with a sense of calm, and amazement after I pressed Obama's name on my voting machine. Just this sense that I had made a contribution to history.
2) The Reenactor and I were so disappointed that The Commonwealth was the first state officially called in favor of McCain. However, given the political and cultural climate of this area, it was no surprise.
3) I couldn't sit still for the first three hours of the evening. I flitted around the house in nervous spasms of attempting to clean and put things away, obsessively checking the current tallies on the computer, and watching anything BUT the results on tv. We even watched a special "presidential" edition of Dirty Jobs. The Daily Show was our election coverage up until the time that the election was called. Just because I was feeling especially goofy, I checked out Faux News momentarily. Long enough to see Karl Rove trying to logically explain why everything he has done in the last decade has been nothing short of disasterous (well...not what he was really talking about, but I was wishing it was).
4) The kids wanted to stay up until it was "over" which of course we had no idea how long that would take. We let them both lay down with pillows and blankets, and they cratered just minutes before the election was called. We tried to wake them up to watch O's acceptance speech, but they both whined and went back to sleep. I'm going to have them watch it on the internet tonight.
5) Champagne that we have been saving to celebrate the sale of our house was instead popped open to sip while McCain conceded, and during Obama's magnificent acceptance speech.
6) I probably should have put this first, but it is a stream-of-consciousness thing so bear with me. I want to put this in writing for the virtual family campfire that is my blog (and for those of my friends who humor me by reading it as well)....
My sister Alice, and her husband John have spent hours, and hours, and hours, and hours volunteering for Obama's campaign in Ohio. They have knocked on doors, made calls, canvassed, done grunt work like picking up signs to place in their county, and I don't even know what all...
Today, they are my heroes. They are two of the legions of people who made this change possible. I hope they take a well-deserved vacation or rest now, and bask in the glow of the triumph they were so much a part of.
7) I know the world isn't going to change immediately, but for the first time in eight years, I have hope again. I remembered last night how we took T1 to the polls to vote with us when she was just 2 weeks old in 2000, and how optimistic I was that evening. I remember the feeling of dread that I had as I was up with her over that night giving her feedings and watching the fate of our nation change by the minute, and by the suspect votes of a few counties in Florida. I still believe that election was stolen, and that our world would be very different if Gore had won. So to go from that to having her curled up next to me cheering every time a state went "blue" last night was a bit of compensation for the feeling of helplessness in the last few years.
8) The power of one vote is just amazing. My homestate of Missouri was called with just something like 4000 votes difference. The senate race in Minnesota is at this moment divided by just 400 votes. The mayoral race in my town, which I think everyone assumed was a shoo-in for the incumbent, is only 50 votes different. Your vote matters, it really does.
9) I hope that this election begins a trend of eliminating the use of smear and negative campaign ads and emails, as it is very clear they didn't work this time. Case in point, the Senate race in N.C. Elizabeth Dole lost her bid for re-election in large part because of an ad she ran and approved saying that her opponent didn't believe in God. Even for the hardiest of evangelicals in her state it was a slap too many.
10) I wonder what Joe the Plumber is doing today? Maybe his job for a change? Unclogging a sewer line or something? I hope we don't hear of him again.
That's all for now. I'm happy. I feel like I'm represented again (although not at a local level).
Yes, we can!
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