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.

"Laugh and the world laughs with you..."

One more word on photos -- this time humor: check out the Cathy strips for about August 10-19 for a hilarious look at digital photography and how we deal with it (or don't!)

Getting Organized

It's Saturday afternoon. I spent the morning on errands, a little work, and visiting, plus a few minutes on library browsing (one of my favorite distractions), so now I'm just about to start in on getting ready for next week. Another favorite distraction -- reading blogs -- kicked in when I sat down at the computer, and I found the article linked above. I sooo need to organize and clean up my desk!!! So that goes on the list, after I prepare the lesson for my Tuesday class, and get some other urgent work out of the way. When prioritizing, I try to think about what tasks, if not moved to the top of the list, will worry me most later, and there are a few of those. So I'm off to get started... will try to post more later, but in the meantime, check out the desk organizing article, and let me know if you have other tips to add or links that relate to this topic. I'm open to suggestions -- especially time and space organizing ideas for people who work at home!!

Prayer

Just gotta make this quick -- I've got packages to mail, copies to make, and the ever-present piles of STUFF to chip away at. Oh, and I think I'm ready to make a trip to the recycling place -- the car is full up. Meanwhile...phone rings... I'll finish this later...

...well, I didn't get to the recycling center, but I am sort of ready to teach my class *today*. Meanwhile I can't seem to get to sleep...

I had hoped to put something interesting up on my blog, but haven't had any ideas about that. So at least I can alert my readers to an nifty gadget to enhance the capabilities of a digital camera, allowing it to do time-lapse photography. (I've always been fascinated with time-lapse photgraphy.) The gadget is described here, in the August 22 post. The author includes a little demo. Check it out!

oooh, here's another little link*, this time to humor... hmmm, does this mean the blocks I have been saving for grandchildren will be obsolete?

*make sure you link to the 8/22/06 comic

The wedding

I know I still haven't written much about the wedding, but it isn't because it wasn't a terrific day or lots to write about... I just haven't figured out how to write about it yet, or whether to. It would take a long time!!! Meanwhile, here is one of the few photos I took that day.

still weeding out

Well, I couldn't sleep last night, so I went back to going through boxes of stuff. I found a pile of magazines, some of them about math, from the mid-90's; a few books that I bought on impulse, mostly from the library (very cheap!); some old issues of Liguorian and St. Anthony Messenger, also mid-90's, a fairy tale book from my childhood, inscribed, as most my old books are, with "Reading Room, MHL"; a pile of La Leche League magazines and my long-lost '83 edition of The Womanly Art, and a few New Yorkers from last year and the year before. Hardly worth going through, though I saved the LLL stuff and a few other things, and several articles to read later. (Like I need more reading material!)

The weather here has been very pleasant the past few days, really fall weather. It can't last, but while it's here I have the windows open and fans going (and a/c off -- yay!!) It's almost like being in Burlingame, except that there isn't an ocean 20 minutes away... and a few other differences.

I was thinking some more about the book I posted about a few days ago, The Summer of Ordinary Ways. The way it is written is unusual: it is written ostensibly from the child's point of view, but also is tinged with an understanding of why-things-happened-the-way-they-did that can only come from long years of experience. In the end, it is clear that the author has made an effort to understand her parents, to get her mind around who they were and what they were dealing with in her growing up years. I have done that, too, so this book resonated with me in a deep way. This book also made me realize in a new way how my own children must have experienced the intermittent craziness that would overtake me -- how scary it must have been for them at times, and how confusing. I know I've thought about all that before, but I've never read an account that so clearly illustrates it. The author is one of six siblings, all female (a totally foreign experience for me, having had all brothers) and they all took such different paths, in a sociological sense (at least the ones who were adults at the time the book was written.) That sort of thing is always interesting to me, how people who grow up in the same family can end up with such very different lifestyles and ways of dealing with the world. I know it is really normal for that to happen, and I know about a lot of the reasons why -- how a person is hard-wired, birth order, experiences and influences outside the family and so on -- but it is still amazing. I think there are some families where the children grow up with more similar interests and lifestyles, but I don't see that so often.

blogging again

I feel like I'm talking to myself here...but that's what I get for not blogging for a few months, and not being so frequent even before the hiatus. Oh, well.

It's taking awhile to get myself back in gear after the busy-ness of the past couple months. But work is starting to pick up, so I'm being forced to think about math, tutoring, teaching... and in the meantime I'm also trying to sort through years and years of stuff, hoping to get rid of a whole big huge lot of it. The sheer mass of papers, books, cards, photos, bookmarks (it seems I have a collection of bookmarks) and other paraphernalia and memorabilia is just getting to be too much. The little flood that occurred while I was away this summer convinced me that I really don't need to keep all this STUFF so this time it will go. If any of my readers want any of it (or don't!), please let me know. Hopefully my work won't pick up totally until I have done with this latest round of purgation....

In the meantime I'm going to distract myself with blogging, hopefully on a more regular basis than before. I thought I'd turn over a new leaf, and write a little about what I've been reading lately.
**I read a whole book (albeit not a long one) last night and this morning: The Summer of Ordinary Ways, by Nicole Lea Helget. It was a very interesting book for me -- it's a memoir, and the author grew up on a farm in Minnesota, my home state. This is not a book for the faint of heart -- some of the things that the author experienced were pretty crazy and brutal -- but it gave me a lot to think about, and there were a lot of ways I connected with the author.
**Politics Lost, by Joe Klein, which I have just started. I'm still on the Prologue, which is rather long, but I think it will be a good book.
**I've also started Anne Tyler's A Patchwork Planet, which I think is a re-read, but I can't remember it at all. If you haven't read anything by Anne Tyler, I highly recommend her books. They are lots of fun, very interesting & unpredictable. She is great at thinking up really interesting characters.
**I'm about to start The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett, the second book in the Discworld series. I finished The Color of Magic this summer while on my trip, so I'm looking forward to continuing the journey. I'm going to try to read this one faster, so it might make more sense than the last one. (I kept losing the thread of the story in the first book when there would be weeks between the times I would have time to read during this past spring.)
I also picked up a few books at Mathfest last week, so there are a few waiting in the wings...not to mention a few books on tape and CD from the library, including The Game by Laurie R. King. I think I need to stay out of the library for awhile!!

cool blog

Sometimes upon leaving my site I get caught up in looking at the names of other blogs scroll by, and this one caught my eye...check out the entry for August 13 titled Someone Has Talent -- it's pretty amazing! I'm thinking of trying out some of these moves next time I go to the YWCA :-)

Ideastorming while eating well...

One of the things I thought about while on the Mathfest trip was about restaurants -- how much fun it would be to have my own or work in one (which is something I've never done.) This idea probably falls into the realm of pipe-dreams, I'm afraid, but it gave me something new to think about and explore. On the way home from Knoxville last night, my friend Anne T. and I stopped at a tiny restaurant in Black Mountain, Cafe Bijan, which had wonderful food and eclectic, rustic decor. We split the Fish Tacos (four small handmade tortillas with tilapia, mango chutney, pineapple, etc.) and Montreat Salad (delicious fresh salad greens with herb-crusted goat cheese, walnuts, dried cranberries, and other goodies with I think a homemade raspberry viniagrette dressing) and cheesecake with caramel sauce and blueberries for dessert. All of it was scrumptious, but I especially loved the goat cheese/salad combination. The owner would love to have a partner or some real help -- she does all the cooking and waits tables besides -- so if you are looking for this sort of a work experience, or know someone who is, get in touch with Michelle. (I have her phone number if you need it -- I don't know if the one at the Cafe Bijan link above is good, but she gave me another.) Another great restaurant from the trip was Tomato Head which is located at Market Square in downtown Knoxville. It's a very busy place, with sturdy utilitarian oak tables and chairs, college student waiters with no-nonsense attitudes and white aprons tied around their jeans, and decor that seems almost an afterthought. The food was great, with so many interesting choices we regretted not being able to try more of them. We ate there twice, and sampled such things as the Kepner Melt (a vegetarian sandwich), Salad with Tuna, and Bean Quesadilla (with spinach - very tasty - check the Tomato Head link above for more descriptions, as well as some very cool graphics.) A carnivorous colleague enjoyed the Pizza Number 3, which was piled with lamb sausage, capers, black olives, and herbed tomatoes. This restaurant reminded me of one I frequented in St. Louis in my brief college stint there. I think it was called "Grandma's" and served mostly soup and bread, and had the same kind of atmosphere as Tomato Head, though a little less refined :-)

Back from Mathfest!

Well, I'm back from what I think will be my last "major" trip for awhile (it was real short in comparison to the one to CA...) Mathfest was a lot of fun, and I got some new ideas to use in my teaching this year, as well as a boost to the breadth and depth of my understanding of mathematics...and a healthy dose of humility-restoring experiences (as if the CA trip didn't have enough of those!) One of the most interesting sessions I went to was about a really strange kind of multiplication that had results like 4 x 3 = 18 and 5^2 = 100. It made sense once I got used to it, though it took a few minutes since I missed the first bit. Other good sessions addressed issues around teaching proof to high school and college students (several different sessions), continuity and differentiability of functions in two variables (with some really great graphics!) as applied to teaching beginning calculus, the inquiry method of teaching, and math anxiety. I reconnected with some friends there whom I don't get to see very often -- that's one of the best things for me about going to these meetings, the other best thing is just being around a whole lot of people who enjoy math as much as I do! (A couple of the friends I ran into were Pat Kenschaft and her husband Fred. Pat is the author of Math Power, and she has a new book out which looks to be an excellent read, Change is Possible: Stories of Women and Minorities in Mathematics.) I also found some new and interesting resources in the exhibit area, some of which I brought back with me.

One of the things I thought about while on this trip was about restaurants -- how much fun it would be to have my own or work in one (which is something I've never done.) This idea falls into the realm of pipe-dreams, I'm afraid, but it gave me something new to think about and explore. On the way home from Knoxville last night, my friend Anne T. and I stopped at a restaurant in Black Mountain, Cafe Bijan, which had wonderful food. We split the Fish Tacos (four small handmade tortillas with tilapia, mango chutney, pineapple, etc.) and Montreat Salad (delicious fresh salad greens with herb-crusted goat cheese, walnuts, dried cranberries, and other goodies with I think a homemade raspberry viniagrette dressing) and cheesecake with caramel sauce and blueberries for dessert. All of it was scrumptious, but I especially loved the goat cheese/salad combination. The owner would love to have a partner or some real help -- she does all the cooking and waits tables besides -- so if you are looking for this sort of a work experience, or know someone who is, get in touch with Michelle. (I have her phone number if you need it -- I don't know if the one at the link above is good, but she gave me another.) Another great restaurant from the trip was Tomato Head which is located at Market Square in downtown Knoxville. We ate there twice, and sampled such things as the "Kepner Melt" (a vegetarian sandwich), Salad with Tuna, and Bean Quesadilla. A friend tried the pizza (Number 3, which had lamb sausage and various other stuff) and enjoyed it. This restaurant reminded me of one I frequented in St. Louis in my brief college stint there. I think it was called "Grandma's" and served mostly soup and bread, and had the same kind of atmosphere as Tomato Head, though a little less refined.

Well, that's about all for now -- I've got to get to work on decluttering this apartment after a summer of neglect!!

back to "normal"...

Well, it's been a busy summer so far! Lots of events (one in particular), lots of visits with a whole lot of people, and a bit of sightseeing thrown in.... it's good to be home, and I need some quiet time now to process it all. I'll try to get a few photos up on this blog when I can, along with some stories, but in the meantime hit the link above to see a few photos from the wedding.

Note -- 8/13/06 -- If the link above doesn't work (the one for wedding photos) go to the Threads of Possibility link at right for some more up-to-date wedding links.