Thanksgiving adventures

I'm just back from visiting family and friends in Baltimore and Virginia... Great trip, I had a wonderful time! One of the things we did this weekend was eat good food at several venues.... Most outstanding, of course, was the bountiful blessing of Thanksgiving dinner with the L's! A great visit.
The link above will lead you to the delightful restaurant where Frances and I ate lunch Wednesday. They serve lots of in-season, locally grown food. The Afghani restaurant we went to last night, The Helmand, had a quite varied menu of vegetarian food, very delicious.
Aside from the food -- that's just an easy thing to put links to -- I just can't say enough about how good this weekend was, but I don't have time to go into detail now. It was great to be with the newlyweds in Baltimore; they are settling in nicely. And a special bonus: I learned some math in an area I never understood before....

Book Crossing

Another link that's been sitting around waiting for me to write something about it... I came across this site through another Charlotte Observer article recently, and was intrigued with the idea. I have a number of books that I'll probably want to get rid of soon, and I'm wondering if this might be a constructive way to do it. Anybody have any experience with this?

Raising adventurous kids...

I found this article awhile back and thought it was great. Read and enjoy!

Peanut Butter, Math Fun, and an Honorable but Humble Prof

Click here for the link to Sally Kneidel's excellent post about peanut butter. (It's dated Nov. 9, 2006.) I totally agree with everything she says about it -- I've been eating organically grown/no additives peanut butter for years and it's great. (Although now I am more likely to eat almond butter, as peanut butter makes me sleepy.)

Okay, so beyond that, other things have been going on...
Yesterday was the Math Club trip to the Duke Math Meet, which was fun for most of us. Highlights of the day were:
**the congenial and lively group of Math Club students
**lots of interesting math problems
**a visit with Anne T., who came by around lunchtime and visited with us for awhile
**reconnecting with various people from other schools around NC and beyond
**beautiful, warm fall weather all day
**a torrential downpour on the way home
**a performance of the Davidson Dance Ensemble added on at the end of the day -- absolutely wonderful! (I wish I'd been able to see the whole thing!)
...and last but not least a bit of wonderful news that I found out about yesterday -- I wish I'd known awhile ago!

e-mail and other distractions

Well, I'm not making progress too fast here, but little by little I'm chipping away at the piles by "chunking" -- trying to put the work into manageable chunks instead of getting overwhelmed by how much there is to do and leaving it until some imagined day when I have 26 hours to work with :) That really isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Thanks, Lorian, for putting such useful links on your blog! I always learn new things when I go there...
No progress yet in setting up a website for my resource list...

All the news that fits...

Well, since I promised a friend I would be napping in preparation for a night out tonight, I am going to make this very short. I have been reading the newspaper very sporadically the past week or two due to lots of other things going on, but I managed to find a few articles of interest. Two of them were on the editorial pages of today's newspaper: a refreshing perspective on the Kerry incident (sorry, I can't get a working link to it -- it's Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence, By Thomas L. Friedman, Published November 3, 2006) and a piece by an excellent local writer, Kay McSpadden, on the latest Harry Potter tempest-in-a-teapot. (Apparently the subject of the latter editorial is unaware of the writings of Connie Neal, a Christian writer who has a more balanced view of the Harry Potter books.)

Another article a few days ago gave me one of those belly laughs that are so important to good mental health.

talking about math

Okay, it's really too late for me to be posting anything here, especially since it's a Friday night with a full day ahead of me tomorrow, but... I just have to share a little of the joy of my evening. I had the wonderful opportunity to give a talk tonight on Math to a group of eleven homeschool moms and one "homeschool grandpa"! It's been about two years since I have given one of these talks, and it was nice to have a chance to do it again. I opened the talk by reading the book, Hippos Go Berserk! to the group, and I think they enjoyed the experience. Anyway, it kind of broke the ice. It was great to talk once again about homeschooling and math and little kids and how they learn and how delightful they are. My audience was very responsive; I talked until after nine and then we had a great conversation that lasted until around 10:00! I had brought piles of books and other stuff, and was able to give them a lot of good information.

I would like to be able to put my Math Resources booklet on a website, to make it more useful for people and to keep from having to make copies of it whenever I do talks like this. It's up to 12 pages now (including the title page.) I have other material to put on a website, too. Maybe that will move higher on the to-do list one of these days -- perhaps a task for the Christmas break?

Anyhow, I had forgotten how much fun it is to do these talks, and to reconnect with my homeschooling roots. I miss those homeschooling days; they were a lot of fun most of the time. Even though I got a little crazy once in awhile and threatened to send them all to school, I was grateful to have all that time with my dear kids, and I wouldn't trade those days for anything.

grocery shopping

Okay, now I'm having one of those "what next?!" feelings.... I was babysitting tonight for a family I regularly sit for, and when they got home we were talking and somehow got onto the subject of grocery shopping. It seems that Harris Teeter has a service now where people can shop online and just pick up their groceries at a scheduled time (or later) for a fee.... The mom I was talking to has been using this service so regularly that she has avoided taking her baby and toddler to the grocery store for the past 7 or 8 months! I'm trying to get my mind around this -- what would life have been like if I had not taken my kids to the grocery store, and indeed not had to do any grocery shopping in person, for all those 25 years I had kids at home? It's something to think about....

On break

Well, I am on break for a few days, but a laptop was calling my name, so.... Today was so beautiful, the leaves are at or just past their peak here, and the sky was a brilliant, crisp blue, as only fall days can be. I listened to The Kalahari Typing School for Men in the car today; it is the fourth in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, and it is just as good as the others. Then a very pleasant evening with Ron and Deborah... now I am the last one up, enjoying the fire in the fireplace and writing a little bit.

I had a bit of a shock yesterday when I noticed a story about Joan Martin in the paper. Joe Martin, her husband, is a well-known Charlottean, or was, as it seems he died while I was away over the summer. He had battled ALS for about 12 years, but was all the time active in civic affairs and made a great effort to bring people together and try to make Charlotte a better place for all its citizens. He wrote a book about his experiences, On Any Given Day, which needs to move up on my reading list. Anyway, I was sad to hear of his passing, as this is a great loss for Charlotte and I am sure he must be sorely missed by his family and friends.

A full Saturday

I am determined to keep writing even if I don't have much to say and it's almost 11 p.m. (i.e., past my bedtime...) I just got back from the monthly Saturday evening Vigil at the Oratory -- a unique liturgy with lots of silence built in and Taize music and a theme, always always good. The Oratory has become such a part of my life that I can close my eyes and imagine myself there in prayer, and it brings me into a peaceful/prayerful frame of mind. The people in this community are caring and so grounded; I love them and love spending time with them. There is often a drop-in or pot-luck before or after the liturgy at The Oratory, and tonight there was one, so that was an extra bonus, to get to be with everybody awhile longer.

That was at the end of my day. Near the beginning of my day was the monthly Math Club meeting, and that went very well. We had a small group, probably in part due to SAT's being this morning, but the ones who were there were into the math and had a lot of energy. Also today was the inaugural meeting of the Teacher's Circle, a group for teachers that Harold has started. It was much better attended than he thought it would be, so that was exciting! Another exciting thing that happened was that one of our former math clubbers came to the Teacher's Circle meeting, now a teacher in one of the local schools. I always love to see former students, but this was especially good since this person was looking so well and happy.

Meanwhile, driving to and fro, I am listening to the fourth book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, and already on the first tape I'm hooked. Tomorrow I'm going to a play and maybe a math talk. Life is good :)

Peter Pan

Last night's activity was a trip to Matthews to see Peter Pan. Especially good were the goofy pirates -- almost every time they came on stage they did one kind of dance or another at the bidding of Captain Hook. One time it was the can-can, another time it was something else...I don't know all the names of the dances. (One pirate was Matthew R. He was a tipsy fellow with a parrot on his shoulder and hat that wouldn't stay on, but despite his drunken antics he managed to never miss a beat; every movement was perfect!) Hook was played so well -- the man who played him was appropriately cowardly and comically arrogant. The children in the audience screamed with delight. Smee was terrific, very squeaky and hammy, and size-wise exactly the correct proportion to Captain Hook as he should be.... The crocodile was so wonderful, we all hooted and hollered every time it crawled across the stage, ticking menacingly. And of course, the audience clapped loudly and enthusiastically to bring Tinkerbell back to life... Of course all the rest of the cast was terrific, too, and the dancing by Indians, boys, etc. was amazing. The children really flew, thanks to generous sprinklings of pixie dust and, last but not least, the music, played by a small but very lively orchestra, was wonderful.

another late night...

A Friday, without so many students as the other days... but plenty of catching up to do... I got some of it done, but there's always more. For some reason I feel like I am in a holding pattern of some sort -- stuck at an intermission or something. Maybe it will all come clear soon.

busy-ness

It's been a very full week already. Lots of students, and still more calls every day. Every time I think my schedule is set, it changes: new people added, others moving their times because of one reason or another (all good reasons....) I'm thinking about jettisoning one or two that don't seem to appreciate the help -- ones that almost never prepare for their weekly lesson. That would open up some time for the students who desperately want help but can't fit into the schedule yet.

I've been looking at photos on the web tonight, just to unwind a little. Emily picked out some great photos for her folder on F&J's wedding photographer's site I haven't had the time or energy to do that yet, but hope to one of these days. Picking out a few to have made into prints seems like an impossible task, given the large number of photos and the generally great quality. Not to mention the ever-so-photogenic subjects :-)
(drop me a line if you don't have the password for the wedding photos website...)

back online!!

It's been a long, sloooww month (esp. w.r.t my internet connection), but in some ways it has sped by. My work has picked up almost to the point where it was last April! As usual, students have been coming and going, and my schedule is like nailing jello to a wall... That effect seems to be the result of a combination of some students trying to find the right tutor and others coming out of their "denial" (as in, "I think this year I'll be able to do the math without help even though I really didn't get math from about 6th grade on and had to have a tutor last year in geometry/algebra2/pre-calc just to keep my head above water....") Anyway, it has made for some interesting weeks for me. The ratio of new students to returnees is about 1:1. (Speaking of ratios, I have this bumper sticker [thanks, Linda and Tommy!] posted on the wall across from my tutoring set-up, right where the students can't miss seeing it, that says, "4 out of 3 people have trouble with fractions", and the students love it -- well, the ones that get it do anyhow... the rest probably think it's just another boring statistic!) Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools has helped my business a lot by going to a 4 by 4 schedule (also click here) for this year, which means that students who were having trouble with keeping up the pace of a year-long course are now taking their math courses at twice the speed, and crashing and burning in September rather than gradually falling behind and calling in late October like they did on the old schedule. I'm also teaching four classes this year (last year I had one class) and so far that's looking like a good move.

Yesterday one of my youngest students walked me through a program to multiply binomials that he wrote for his graphing calculator. I struggled to keep up with his explanation -- obviously, he is not with me for remediation! -- but it was great to be witness to such mathematical creativity. Another student required an etiquette lesson: "How to properly address adults, especially one's teachers." Spending an hour with this fellow reminded me of an observation I once made that my girls and their friends at age 13 would, in exasperation, eschew the company of their male agemates, only to sing the praises of the same guys three or four years later. It will be interesting to see how this both these 8th graders change and mature over the next few years. A few days ago a student I was working with on SAT prep had an "aha" experience that was just wonderful, giving him a renewed confidence and motivation: the joy of that moment was written all over his face, and we both cheered out loud! I'm working with a couple of homeschooled students who got behind in their math and are playing catch-up, and it has been great to see how they have picked up all sorts of new skills over the past eight months that we have worked together. Lots of other interesting things have happened recently, and others are about to happen, including Frances and Jonathan's impending move to Baltimore! More about all this in future posts. I hope to be a more regular blogger from now on.

Problems, and they aren't the mathematical sort...

I had some rather unpleasant moments late this afternoon.... For one thing, I found out that I won't be able to continue with Earthlink DSL. I am too far away (21,000 feet, to be exact.) I can't explain this, it doesn't make any sense, but there it is. The search for a new ISP begins. Your ideas and suggestions are welcome.

Also the NC dept of revenue still can't find the money that I sent them to pay my taxes last year. I don't know where it is. I sure don't have it. The back of the form they sent this time (which lets me know that in addition to the interest they charged me in the last notice, now I owe a $166 penalty and additional interest as well) advises that one of my two options is to pay the money I "owe" and then sue them to get it back. Fat chance. I'm working on my response to this latest waste of my time and the taxpayers' money...

A good friend told me that bad things come in threes. The third thing was I found out that I missed Annie Proulx, who spoke at Davidson last night. I was very sad about that -- I loved her Shipping News and would have loved to hear her speak.

The redeeming experience of the day was seeing Little Miss Sunshine tonight -- what a great movie! Some really good laughs, and the final scenes are absolutely perfect.

Click here to get an inkling of my plans for tomorrow....

more about Sister Simone

Today the Charlotte Observer published a column about Sister Simone Campbell's talk/workshop at St. Peter Catholic Church in downtown Charlotte last Saturday. (See my post entitled "Network" below, for more about Sister Simone.) This is a good author (Mary Curtis) and an informative though brief article. The link is here.

Network

Probably the most bloggable thing that I've experienced in the past few weeks was attending Sr. Simone Campbell's talk at the Oratory on Sunday. Sr. Simone is the national coordinator of Network, the national Catholic social justice lobby. She spoke about politics and contemplation and how they relate, and of course about social justice, and the themes of social justice that shape Network's vision of a just society. Sr. Simone is a terrific speaker, very engaging and down-to-earth, and she knows so much about what is going on in our country and the world. I highly recommend the Network website and the organization.

In general, my life has been rather full of activity for the past few weeks. I haven't had DSL up and running since August 27, so that's a drag, but otherwise things are going well. I'm too tired to write more right now, but hopefully tonight I'll be able to catch up on sleep a little. Blessings!

Trader Joe's

News flash: This stodgy city will be getting a Trader Joe's in the near future!!! It was announced in the business section of the Observer this morning. The article also mentions that we really are getting a Whole Foods - actually, 2 of them! - and another Earthfare. There's going to be a natural foods store glut around here, at least in the 'burbs and the Southpark area. (As usual, the people on the north, west and east sides of town are being ignored....) The Trader Joe's is going into a former Harris Teeter location at Piper Glen, which is not terribly far from where I live. The fact that it's going into an existing building is good news -- we don't have to wait for a whole new building to be built, as is the case with the other places I mentioned.

procrastination

Click on the title above for my latest [successful] attempt to find something to do that is not on my list, so as to avoid getting started on the list. I can't look at the flash part of the indicated web-page since my DSL is down and I am limping along on dial-up these days.
Sometimes I think the wrong electronic device in my house is broken -- my cell phone (and the other one, too, when I am off the computer) has been ringing off the hook (though I don't think that euphemism has any meaning w.r.t. cell phones -- it will probably got the way of the oft-used simile, "...like a broken record" one of these days.)
Anyway, rather than procrastinate any longer by writing more unnecessary drivel, I'll get back to work and leave the rest of you to continue your net-surfing.

Blessings!

memories

Mary Newsom, a columnist for the Charlotte Observer, had a column yesterday - Capturing the Elusive Milestone Moments - that got me to thinking about photography (and other types of recording of events) and memories. I enjoyed her article and her subtexts of children growing older and the passage of time surely resonate with me. But the whole photography thing has been on my mind anyway, what with there being over 1500 photos up on the web from the recent wedding, and stacks of photo albums behind me on the floor of the office waiting to have something done with them... For this reason, one thing that Mary Newsom said in her article especially struck me:

That's the thing about taking pictures. They fool us into thinking we're capturing the moment with a freeze-frame. But the real moment is 3-D. It's round. It has background noise and air currents and hearts beating and you can smell the sun on baked dirt, or maybe the cat's dusty fur or last night's fried chicken.
The photos in the albums are splotches of color on flat paper. You haven't saved the moment at all. They're like those insects that get trapped in blocks of amber. They're interesting to look at, but they're relics, not living insects.

In a sense, especially with really old photos, and ones that were taken by someone else at an event that I wasn't present for, that is true. But when I looked at the photos of the wedding, it all came back to me: the smells of flowers and food and the sounds of people and music and the heat and the flavors -- Yum! -- and especially the many and intense feelings of that day, that week... In fact, when I first started looking at photos of the wedding, the experience was almost too intense. A photo can spark so many memories.

When my children were little, I took lots of photos of them and of the places and people and events in their lives and mine. I kept albums with these pictures in chronological order so we could look back at the photos and talk about our experiences, in the hopes that this would enhance our memories of their childhood. We did spend many happy hours looking at these picture books as they were growing up. (I can remember times when I would come upon the children sitting quietly, slowly turning over the leaves of the albums and poring over the photos. I always wondered what they were thinking, and what meaning the photos had for them.) I was not very good about writing things down in those days, so I figured this, at least, would give us a record of some sort, someplace to start our remembering at. Now I wish I had written more down, but I am glad I at least have these photos.

I am in great admiration of Lorian and Brenda, who spend time and effort in making scrapbooks with the photos and write about the times they had -- in years to come, this will be a wonderful record of the past that they can enjoy and share with their children and grandchildren and other family members. My brother Dan also has been making a scrapbook over the years with the help of various family members on his visits. (This scrapbook floats around to various members of the family -- I don't know where it is at the moment!)

All this holds for other kinds of recordings, too -- audio, and even the "recording" that our other senses do. Chris Stewart, in his book The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society, talks about memory and the sense of smell (w.r.t a trip to Morocco):

The sense of smell is one of the most immediate and tactile we have -- and surely to perceive the smell of a thing we must actually ingest microscopic particles of it, whether it's the heady smell of camellias or that of a long-dead dog n a ditch. A smell revives the memory and transports you to a time and a place more powerfully than even music. If I ever need to return to Arzou, all I would have to do is mix together some mint, cedar, diesel, and a hint of drains, and take a good long sniff.

Our society currently places such a strong emphasis on the visual that we tend to minimize the importance of the other senses. Jerry Mander writes about this with respect to TV in his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. He talks about the inherent biases of the medium, especially in a section titled, The Bias away from the Sensory, noting that "Television cannot transmit information that comes in the form of smell, touch or taste...." He has a lot more to say on the topic, but I don't have room or time to quote more here, and it's a little off-topic anyhow. But I maintain that it is the same with photos, and I think this is what Mary Newsom was getting at in her commentary about our propenstiy to try to capture a very emotion-laden moment on film: there is no way we can really have a photo that is as rich as our memories of that moment. But I look at a photo as a jumping off place into the world of memory, an aid or accessory to memory, rather than as an end in itself, and there is where its worth lies.