Okay, everybody can move back to Charlotte now...

It looks like we are going to get an IKEA store here! It won't be until 2009, but that will give everybody time to find a suitable place to live...with lots of room for furniture, bookshelves, picture frames, etc. Then we can all start learning interesting Swedish words. (Well, okay, some of you already had a head start on that!) The store will be in the University City area, and it will be the only IKEA between Washington and Atlanta. (Atlanta has an IKEA?)

In other news, it is precipitating here: sleet and freezing rain, what they daintily call "a wintry mix". It doesn't matter; we all know what they mean... we can hear it falling outside. It makes a whole different sound from rain as it bounces off the trees and roads and sidewalks, kind of a clicking/shushing noise. We always hope that isn't followed by the sound of tree limbs breaking under the weight of accumulated ice, but that isn't predicted to happen...this time. I'm missing my morning walk -- don't want to break any more limbs -- but will be working my usual Thursday schedule. Schools are in session, except for a few of the private and church schools.

NEWS FLASH (7:20 a.m.) -- there's a 12-vehicle accident on the ramp from I-77 to I-485! And I think they just said Independence Blvd. is closed because of ice. Things are sounding worse.

MORE NEWS FLASH!!! History in the making: "Laundry Math" is invented in Charlotte!

Conflict resolution

Continuing the theme of this week (with the exception of the Fly Guy blip), I woke up early this morning thinking about conflict resolution, especially on an interpersonal level. This has been an interest of mine for a long time. I grew up with a not-very-healthy "non-exposure" to healthy marital conflict, and went into my marriage with the really odd idea that married couples, if the marriage is really good, don't ever fight or argue or experience any conflict. This notion didn't work too well for me. Thus began an interest in learning more about healthy conflict resolution w.r.t relationships. I can't say I've become an expert on the subject or anything, but I have read some enlightening works over the past few years. One of them is Words that Hurt, Words that Heal, by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, which came out awhile back but is still very relevant. The way we talk to and about one another really matters. This book was first brought to my attention by an FLT friend who told us about "National Speak No Evil Day." (She also told us about this resource.)

Deborah Tannen has made a career out of researching and teaching about the way people talk with one another. She has several relevant and accessible books on this topic. Her website also has references to a lot of articles and essays she has written on the same topics. (Hmmm, I'm thinking I need to read her latest book, You're Wearing That?! Here's a link to her conversation with Diane Rehm about the book. I love Diane Rehm's show...but that's a topic for another day.)

All of this can be extended to the wider view: how people -- politicians, interviewers and talk show hosts as well as individuals -- talk about one another in the public discourse, how leaders of one nation talk about other nations and their leaders...it all matters. I'm not saying no one should ever express anything but niceties to one another, what I'm after here is learning how to express ourselves and our feelings in ways that are constructive and building up or at the very least not destructive and hurtful. I'll be the first to admit that this is not easy, and I am not always able to pull it off, but it is still worth working on, on every level of discourse. Come to think of it, that includes how we talk to ourselves, our inner language: we can learn how not to be so self-critical. That's something I am actively working on, too. Which reminds me, I'd better go get on it!

yet another thing to do in one's spare time...

Thank you, Daragh, and Mairenn!

Honoring MLK

I forgot to mention in my post yesterday, that we now have a street named in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., here in Charlotte. Also, here's a link to a local group that annually responds to the call to volunteer on MLK Day (and the rest of the year as well!); a link to its parent group; and another link to how this year's event went in Charlotte...

"I Have a Dream"

For this day that marks the anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., I wanted to do something special (hence the link above.) Please go listen to this speech, certainly one of the most important and moving speeches ever given in this country! And I'd like to issue a challenge to those of you who, like me, had to work today: think of a way to honor the memory of this great man, whether it be by prayer, or helping somebody out, or by spreading his message, or by making a donation to an appropriate non-profit organization in his memory (some examples below)...or all of the above. Each one of us can and does make a difference in the world every day; let's try to make it a positive difference!
The King Center
Network
Nonviolence International
Atlanta Women's Foundation
NC Peace and Justice Coalition

Other organizations that promote non-violence

Goodbye to my Christmas tree

Well, I figured it was about time to take the tree down... it was getting a little brittle, and I won't have another chance to do this until a couple weeks from now, and by then it will probably not have any needles left on it. So, I've been playing music (Claire Ritter, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Adiemus...)while exploring the wonders of having a big new Christmas Ornament Box (Thank you, Daragh!) to put the ornaments (and almost everything else) away in. The only difficulty now will be finding a place to store the box, but I think that is a solvable problem, and a problem worth solving! There were a few candy canes left on the tree, amazingly enough, so I will offer them to my students this week -- comfort food as they tackle their final exams...

A beautiful, amazing view

daily dose of imagery is one of my favorite sites. I don't get to travel as much as I would like, so going to this site every day or every few days satisfies a little of my wanderlust. I like the picture linked above (click on title) because it almost feels like I am there, looking all the way to the river from the top of St. Peter's. Anyway, ddoi originates from Canada, which is someplace I have always wanted to travel in and perhaps even live in. (I could almost live there now -- I got a new coat today which is about the warmest coat I have had in a long time!)

I hope it's been a good week for everybody. I'm tired -- it was a long week for me -- so I'm not going to write much tonight, but get some rest and somehow get prepared for helping out at the Math Club meeting in the morning.

long time gone

Hey, it's been too long since I last wrote here... A lot has happened: the holidays w/ lots of wonderful visits with family and friends, a trip across country with more visiting and roller coaster rides, an old year ended and a New Year started, and a week of re-entry punctuated with various episodes of illness...(I'm much better now.)
In addition to savoring many happy memories of the holidays (and of course I'm still enjoying my Christmas tree, candles, etc.), I'm currently...
a. wishing I was in New Orleans at the Joint Math Meetings (MAA & AMS)
b. trying to get on top of prep work (for classes and students) I ought to have done last week
c. napping whenever I can find time (especially easy now that Em taught me about "virtual napping")
d. enjoying a new headset for my cell phone provided free of charge from Verizon (yay!) (they may not be able to tell dollars from cents but they do keep on supplying me with free headsets)
e. rearranging my schedule (similar to nailing jello to a wall) since most of my CMS (i.e., public school) students will be finished with their math courses in a few weeks (translate: a week of exams is coming up!) and I might (or might not) get a few new ones. (I was going to put up a link about the crazy 4x4 schedule, but curiously the CMS website doesn't seem to have any information about it. I scoured this resource for more info but no luck.) A few new students from other venues have already found their way onto my schedule; I probably ought to put a stop to this before things get crazy again!
f. working lots of Mathcounts problems; the Chapter Competition will be on February 3. The team looks good so far!
g. listening to lots of good music (including beautiful Joshua Bell violin music from Joseph & Lorian) on my new stereo, both Christmas gifts of which I am very appreciative.
h. planning more trips... so far Baltimore and Evanston are on the schedule.
i. watching season one of Numbers, thanks to a loan from Jonathan & Frances -- just what I needed, another distraction!
j. trying to figure out what to do with all this Christmas wrapping paper (really, I didn't need anymore, I have plenty of my ever-fashionable green-and-yellow...)
k. continuing my efforts to exercise more, eat better, sleep enough, and, last but not least, pray "at all times"!

Happy New Year to all!

Dad

Driving down the road early this morning I noticed a sign I'd not seen before... It read:

Honk if you love NAPA... unless your horn is broken!

If you knew Frank Lackie,this sign might have reminded you of him and brought a smile to your face, as it did for me. He made a lot of people smile with his offbeat humor, in humorous speeches and in conversation.

I'd write a whole lot more, but I've got to run. If you remember my Dad, please say a prayer for him today, the 24th anniversary of his death.
Also, if you have a memory you'd like to share with the other readers of this blog, post it as a comment. (Don't worry if your posted comment doesn't appear right away -- I have the comments' parameters set so that I can look at them before they are posted to avoid spamming problems.)

VerizonMath

Just in case anyone missed it, there's a math furor going on this weekend on the web (click on post title) over possible false advertising by Verizon. The timing is great -- I'm in the middle of a chapter on "Unit Analysis" with my problem solving class... I hope somebody asks me "why do we have to study this stuff", but I know they won't -- they love the course. So I'll just bring the transcript for show-and-tell.

We have the best time in this class -- last week someone asked me to explain my t-shirt so we got into discussions of primes (front of shirt) and binary numbers (back of shirt), and they hung in there with me to the end. A great bunch, mostly math phobic but I think that is changing!

btw, anybody have a digital photo of the shirt they could share? Please send it on!!

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 :)