End of summer, travels done

And now, here we are in August, having spent a good part of the beginning and end of summer traveling.  Rochester and Maryland in early June, quiet homesitting for the better part of July, then a week-long trip by train (going) and plane (returning) to Austin, a week of homesitting after, then a 9-day trip to Ireland at the very beginning of August.  I should have written down more recollections from the earlier trips - Tess, Garveys, Emilia and Errol and Miriam (and a new one on the way), but I'm fresh back from Ireland with a lot of very happy and recent memories, intellectual, cultural and sensory still freshly rubbed into my consciousness, so I'll have most to say about that.  But hey, Ireland.

Visiting Rochester was great - I'd really never been there before - my Uncle Tom's house was in Pittsfield, a wealthy (now, anyway) country club type suburb of the city, so I had no sense of Rochester per se.  It was pretty great - a nice blend of a prosperous, intelligent-seeming city center, with good museums and cultural events, and a healthy young person environment, hipster evident but not obnoxiously so.  Tess took us to many things, especially the Greek festival at the church (where we had an excellent tour of the church with an excellent explanation of aspects of the iconography and ritual done by a sincere, unapologetic believer - this makes a big difference in the presentation. Excellent visit to a children's museum concentrating on play and games.  We took a trip to Letchworth State Park, a beautiful  place along the Genesee River, and got in some good walking.  We met Mo, who seems very nice, kind and intelligent, and very fond of Tess.  She's thriving there, good friends, lots to do; I'm sure she'll miss the place when/if she leaves.

We then drove down to Maryland with Tess, stopping overnight in Frederick to visit with Stephen, Gina and Maggie - they're doing well, and it's always good to be with them without everybody else around.  In fact, I learned pretty conclusively that that's the best way to spend time with all of the individuals in my family - I can give much more attention to them in their own environment and appreciate them for who they are when we're not all trying to be a part of a group.  I'll have to try to find a way to work this out in the future, or at least plan on how to deal with it.  We stayed with Maura and Don after this (Don's doing very well, after months and months of recovery), and that was great too.  Spent some time with Dad, and basically let him talk about things (which he's great at) and tried not to talk too much - too frustrating for everybody.  Got him to connect to Hulu for the Criterion films, which he's clearly taking great advantage of, so that's good. And, we had a very nice evening with Peter, Laurie and Michael and his wife; this visit, more than any other, convinced me that we all do best one on one, since there was great conversation, no internal comparisons or anything, and it was clear that we have lots in common, where that's not always been evident in previous family gatherings.  All his other kids are off elsewhere, doing their own things (as are all the kids, actually), but Michael is currently back home living with them - his life is still very tricky, I think.  Poor kid.

Then we split up with Tess, who drove the rental back, and flew back to Illinois, where I began a pretty quiet month.  I learned to play Minecraft (woohoo) and gradually wasted a bit too much time doing that, but I worked around the yard too, and got in lots of walking.  It was the quiet time for the summer, without question.

This year, rather than driving, I took the train to Austin, while Barb went to a conference in Cincinnati.  The ride was pretty good, although much longer than it should have been, but train travel is always pretty easy overall.  It was predictably hot in Austin, but not as bad as I remembered from last year (mostly because it was very dry - no humidity to speak of at all, but they were in a drought, which is not a great thing.)  We had a lovely time - Emilia didn't feel as driven to take me places this time, which was fine; Miriam is growing beautifully, and being around a 14 month old is very satisfying.  No talking yet, or not much, but she had just learned to walk and was busy trying that out in creative ways.  She's a very good-natured baby, didn't fuss much, slept well and ate voraciously.  When Barb flew out, we kept on the same way, but then let Emilia and Errol go off for an anniversary overnight date, and then drove down to Houston for an overnight as well.  We met up with Amy in her new church, had a good creole dinner, and a good visit to the Houston Art Museum, which was lovely.  Then we flew back, but got stuck in Detroit due to a very tight missed connection.  It was late, no possibility for a replacement flight until late the next day, so we rented a car and Barb drove the 5 hour trip to Bloomington (with a surprise guest, a young Indian man), getting in about 4 in the morning.  And then Barb went to work the next day.  And I slept.

Finally, our trip to Ireland.  It couldn't have gone better.  But that's all I had to say about that, apparently.

7 mai, 2015

It's been several days, but I'm ok with that; my initial obsession  interest should sound familiar to me, who knows me.  Something takes total control of my interest, and is really, really important for a while, but then it palls.  But that's not what I want this to be, neither obsessive nor abandoned.  It should be a repository when things build up that I want to remember or chew over. So let's get comfortable with each other, journal and I, ok?

Here's a thing I've been thinking about the last several days.  There are tons of clickbait things where old people are reminded of all the things that were commonplaces for us that these kids today have no idea about.  That's fine, as far as it goes, and if nothing else, it reminds us how much technology has been a factor throughout our lifetimes, which has its good (mostly, for me, ready access to information whenever I want it) and bad (capitalism in full flower, cough cough) sides, but what I started to mull over was, what are the things that these kids today have grown up with and take entirely for granted, as truths and not choices, which we either have come to acknowledge as maybe true, maybe not, and accept or not.

The day ended, surprisingly, with Barb's diligent efforts to get me behind a tiller and into the garden.  It took about three hours (plus a bit), but I got the whole thing tilled, and she also bought plants, which we got in just as the sun was really going away, viz: 4 romas, 1 mortgage buster (and one beefsteak that Gloria had extra) and an orange tomato called Old German.  Also, four bell peppers, four chili peppers, four brussels sprouts, four collards, four red cabbages, and two rows of beans (two types).  Also, a new tarragon plant (which I hope takes, adding to the thyme and oregano I already have thriving out there) and cilantro.  Not bad for going so late.  Here's how it looked before the planting:

I'll have to skip potatoes this year, because it's so late, and wait for the fall planting for cooler weather crops.  But I can still get in more brassicas, okra (which I should work on really using this year) and zucchini, cucumber, and probably another squash, just to try.  And onions, garlic and shallots, of course.

Goodness, it's been a while.  End of the school year, coupled with taking off for Rochester, then Maryland, then the first real week of down-time vacation, made me pretty lax at sitting down to anything like thoughtful composition.  I've been on the computer a lot, of course, but mostly looking at what other people are doing in their lives, posting little snippets of our travels and visits, and doing crosswords.  I'm trying to balance feeling like I should be doing work around the house, figuring out what to do, then avoiding as much as possible.  Although, when I do something, I realize it wasn't that big a deal to begin with, and wonder what took so long.

I don't know what I've learned, recently, since that is the point of this blog.  I have been putting a lot more things on Pinterest, with the hope that I'll remember to look for them there later when I want them.  It's been interesting.

1 mai, 2015

In which: I discover that if the weather's right and the sun is beautiful, le premier mai is a pretty wonderful experience.  Muguets everywhere (except in reality; still too chilly, but ours are in bud, at least).

En ce premier jour de mai

Reçois  ce brin de muguet

Qu'il ensoleille ton cœur

Et qu'il te porte bonheur!

Next thing - I was in Beesley's group with Comp Lit 1, and they were looking at an article on their screens - my first impression that they were working on In Design, and it was one of his jokey articles about the school.  But no....cover story from today's News Gazette.  Oops.  Good future example for careful checking of email distribution lists.  Although no one will ever speak of this again, in all likelihood.

April 29, 2015

Just got a homework assignment emailed from a French 2 student.  I'm beginning to think that having them submit homework digitally, allowing me to make corrections/comments immediately, might be the way to go - I can squeeze a whole lot more correction into a document this way, and if I go the next step and have them correct to submit again, some of them might benefit from the revision.  Have to try this with an assignment or two before the end of the year, maybe?

First lawn-mow of the season yesterday - only did the curbside parts (what do I even call these - easements? They're not berms, shoot - I should have a word for them) since Barb had pointed out pointedly that they were getting pretty shaggy.  The only really grassy grass in the yard is there, so...
Mower started, surprisingly, on the first pull.  Hoorah.  Didn't really mind a bit, but it was disappointing that the new audio book I had just loaded on the phone (Dorothy Sayers' Unnatural Death) had a volume setting too low to hear over the mower.  Listened to WWW instead.  Nothing serious to report from that one.  It's been a long time since I read/listened to a Wimsey novel, and listening to it on the way in to school this morning was a most pleasant reminder of how much I like her prose and Lord Peter's character.

Been considering getting a cordless electric lawnmower (like Mad and Joe have) and so far, this is the one I think I like best:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ryobi-20-in-40-Volt-Lithium-ion-Brushless-Cordless-Walk-Behind-Electric-Lawn-Mower-Battery-and-Charger-Not-Included-RY40107A/205336359?N=5yc1vZc5arZ1z0ylm1  Need to discuss this with Barb.  Now I just wish (although I haven't, to be fair, looked yet) that I could find a cordless tiller with any power.

Oh, thank you Mallory Ortberg/The Toast.  Basically any day you post something about
Art History I learn something new (and laugh intellectually), and this one is just out of the park (since I learned a tidy little story about Aristotle that I have never ever heard before, but must have been enough of a Renaissance thing that there were pictures and paintings made of it.)
http://the-toast.net/2015/04/29/here-are-some-paintings-of-a-woman-riding-aristotle-like-a-pony/

One of my favorites...




Did a blank map of Europe exercise with the French 2s today, and they were quite involved.  This made me think of another similar thing I could do, which in turn let me learn a thing.  I've casually wondered before how to generate a poster-style print for blowups of smaller images, and a quick search brought me to http://www.blockposters.com/create/ , which allows you to customize documents by size and number of pages to make a blow up.  The map it made for me (four sheets across and four down) will actually also be a puzzle to put up, since they're disassociated sections of the full map.  Then they can tape them up to the board and label the countries (EN FRANCAIS, S'IL VOUS PLAIT!)  Whoo hoo, new stuff.

April 30, 2015

Lynda's Poem in the Pocket today: Christophe Plantin, (1514-1589)

Le Bonheur de ce monde

Avoir une maison commode, propre et belle,
Un jardin tapissé d'espaliers odorans,
Des fruits, d'excellent vin, peu de train, peu d'enfans,
Posseder seul sans bruit une femme fidèle,

N'avoir dettes, amour, ni procès, ni querelle,
Ni de partage à faire avecque ses parens,
Se contenter de peu, n'espérer rien des Grands,
Régler tous ses desseins sur un juste modèle,

Vivre avecque franchise et sans ambition,
S'adonner sans scrupule à la dévotion,
Dompter ses passions, les rendre obéissantes,

Conserver l'esprit libre, et le jugement fort,
Dire son chapelet en cultivant ses entes,
C'est attendre chez soi bien doucement la mort.

Also, Hugo's Demain, des l'aube will be a very useful (and touching) poem to use for introducing the future tense of irregular verbs (aller and etre, anyway). 

April 28, 2015

I'm paying attention to things.  We had a longer than necessary session to complete the applications for transfers yesterday, and more than ever, it seems difficult when upper-class teachers are examining the new student applications under the assumption that, by the time they get them, the difficultly quirky kids will be nice, interesting and tamed.  I guess this school thrives on a core of quirks, though, and I do appreciate the marginalized kids in a different way than I do the successful, privileged ones.  So it's a delicate balance.  I do think it's a valuable service to the school, though, and will continue to help with the committee whenever it's possible.

Heard a good WWW this morning - the origin of the word "mall" as we use it.  I had figured that it came from the London "Pall Mall", but hadn't realized where that in fact came from.  It was apparently given to a particular alleyway (more treelined than nasty, from the description), that was used to play a particular ball game, and the name came from the Italian (hence the unique pronunciation) pallamaglio, ball and mallet, although there is a suggestion that it came via the French for the same or a similar game, paille-maille, for the straw hoops that one sent the ball through.  And then of course it evolved into the notion of a public promenade, then eventually to the idea of a large public gathering place, so the shopping mall.  Good background.  I should go back to smoking them, just so I can casually drop that information whenever there's a lull in the conversation.

Just learned the ways to change the layout, font, background etc. of this blog.  Seems like there is a great deal more possible variety than when I first tried it, years ago now.  Don't know if I'll keep it this way (the font looks a bit like my favorite of the fonts I drew with the font paint application, which is both good and bad), but we'll try it for a while.  It looks different, anyway.

And, note to self: when I noticed the comprehensive test available for French 2 the other day, I didn't check whether there was something similar for French 1.  There is, but it's in the assessment material for Unit 6 - don't forget this one - it's pretty good for a final.

Thanks, as usual, Alex Tarr - he posted something from today's Writer's Almanac, which prompted me to look for it on FB - it's there, so now I will never miss another one.  Good little thing, in its way.   http://writersalmanac.org/ 

Small thing, but the roasted broccoli dish from SK today went very well with the risotto from Aldi.  Plan to do each again, hoping that Aldi still carries the risotto, and that it wasn't just seasonal.

April 27, 2015

Not much new; we have the last admissions meeting this afternoon, which promises to be fairly brief (since it's transfers, and there aren't many openings, as usual).  Lynda pointed out something I had only started to articulate in my head, that admission to an already established, insular class can be a deciding factor in the ability of the student to make it - although, how can we really judge that in advance?

Went with Barb to Middle Fork last night to listen for frogs.  It was chilly, which dampened my enthusiasm - I got too cold to really enjoy it, but we did see some beautiful dusk sky, saw a muskrat (or two?) annoying the geese, and heard lots of spring peepers, if not much else.

Remembered something from WWW today that I wanted to note; the other day they were talking about the big spelling bee, and they mentioned that it now requires a multiple-choice vocabulary test to qualify for the final round.  I like this very much; I've always felt that the genius kids who don't do anything but memorize lists of words are not benefitting from the experience at all; since they don't have to know what any of them mean, they aren't really gaining anything from being able to spell obscure and bizarre words.  I think this should be an integral part of any contest of this type.

April 25, 2015

Slow-starting Saturday.  Not usually the best day for doing things in the morning, so I'm trying to get as many transfer admissions docs read through.  Also not the best way to learn things, except how depressing it must be to be an applying student with no hope of getting in.  Walked to Pecara's this morning for bread and croissants, saw the beginnings of the marathon, but walking made it simple - no intention of driving through town this morning at least.  Barb is feeling unwell, so she's staying in bed to rest and feel better.  She did manage to eat her cinnamon roll, though, so I guess that's good.  We went to Wedge for dinner last night - it's not impossible that something she had disagreed with her (I felt queasy for a moment this morning, but I put it down to morning joint pain).  We did like Wedge, though - they didn't even make us feel guilty for not ordering a tequila anything.

Does it count if I go out of my way to learn something new?  I guess I get to make the rules, but it feels wrong - my point starting this was to catch the inadvertent learnings that I run into in the course of the day.  But I'll bend the rules when I feel like it.  Cause that's how I roll.  In any case, I haven't done either today so far.  Too many applications.

And, as expected, it was a pretty thin day as far a learning new things went.  Although I did learn that it's a good idea to count (and mark) ahead of time how many verses there are in each psalm verse before you get up to cantor it.  Waving your hand for the congregation to come in when you still have another verse to sing is a bit embarrassing.

April 24, 2015

Started reading a new book (for me) - The Magicians, by Lev Grossman.. I remembered hearing it talked about sometime last year on Fresh Air or Ask Me Another or something else NPRy, and when I was flitting through the library yesterday it caught my eye.  52 pages into it, and it's shaping up quite well.  It's usually hard for me to start an entirely new book by an entirely new author, like making a new friend with all the possibilities of being sadly disappointed by some deep character flaw or something, but I'm happy with it so far.  I feel unreasonably guilty for having 5 simultaneous books on my Goodreads list of "currently reading", especially because I'm taking forever to read the last Game of Thrones book, but really, who's grading me?

Walk this morning was good - another good episode, or most of one, from WWW, but nothing earth-moving in terms of new understanding of vocabulary.  Mr. Mennenga came, so I walked in a bit later than usual, but that was ok - Amy's doing the Comp Lit 1 class right now (and Greg too), and French doesn't need much prep.  Although, yay, I discovered that there's a very useful (and complete) comprehensive test for Units 5, 6 and 7 which I will gratefully use for my final.  I'll add a bit, too, mostly to test their more recent learning of future and conditionnal (which is in Unit 8), but this will be worth remembering.  So it qualifies as learning something new, right?



Beesley put the anniversary of the Easter Uprising, April 24, 1916 on his list of "Today in History"; Rayburn, very graciously, pointed this out to me. I don't think he expected the spate of family history I threw at him, but I wonder how differently I'll be perceived (since, face it, our perception of others is also influenced, in sometimes microscopic ways, by the smallest of pertinent details we learn about them in small increments). I'm also grateful that both Amy and Steve posted lovely and pertinent poems which, in their individual ways, epitomize elements of the cultural mindset I embrace. Viz:


http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/easter-1916 from Steve, a poem he subsequently sent to all students to commemorate the day, and:

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/quarantine from Amy, a lovely, sad one that has an additional level of meaning for her, which I feel priviledged to know.  Thanks, Amy.


In the realm of straight "I just learned how to do this", two versions of a very similar thing. I received a document as a PDF which I wanted to use as an editable document (it was the prize chart for the NFC winners, into which I wanted to insert my students in their appropriate categories). I use the option, which I had really never noticed before, of "Save to Other" within Adobe, and saved it as a Word doc. It did a very creditable job, especially since it was a table, of creating the same document in Word, and the important thing is that I can edit it now.

The other, similar thing I learned, is that from within Adobe I can scan a document, create it as a PDF, and then do the same thing (Save to Other) so that I have an editable Word document. This will probably not seem like a big deal in the future, but I'm pretty sure that I've wanted to do something like this more times than once in the past, and feel pretty happy that I managed it with absolutely no fuss. It was significant enough of a breakthrough that it should be written down, so I have a reference.

April 23, 2015

Heard this morning (on Way with Words, naturally) about the XKCD comic called Up Goer 5, which diagrams a space vehicle (I think it's a pretty typical one) using only the 1000 most commonly used words in English: https://xkcd.com/1133/; they went on to talk about the Up Goer 5 text editor, which is a clever little tool in which you can input text and they flag it whenever the vocabularly falls outside of the "1000 most" criteria.  Tried it with directions on how to make a sandwich.  Clearly my vocabulary is very sophisticated.  Virtually every other word was flagged.

Thanks to an excellent picture posted by my colleague and friend Dave Stone (biologist, entomologist and wild-life photographer extraordinaire), I now know that geese have teeth, scary, tearing-looking teeth, and that they are made of keratin, the same material of which their beaks and the base of their quills are made.  Look at this:

I would not like to find myself in a beak-related confrontation with this thing.

I learned that April 23 is definitely not too late to have frost in East Central Illinois.  Glad I don't have anything specially tender in the ground right now.

West Side Park, about 7 am

First Things First

I'm inspired to create this as a private, journal-like blog.  I may or may not continue it, but I've had so many thoughts rattling around lately, I thought it would be interesting to try to write them down as I think of them.

In theory, what I want to do is have a place to comment, muse, whatever, when something occurs to me.  Some of it will be clever, probably, some remarkably simple-minded, some that I will never care about seeing again, some that I will want to make reference back to in some obscure future.  But with the fugaciousness of my thoughts (see? I learned a new word today!), I thought it would be interesting to see what I keep and what I lose.  So ok.

It's a bit late to make a point of it, at least in my daily life, but a big influencer of my thinking lately has been listening to A Way with Words - http://www.waywordradio.org/- it's lovely to have a regular old pair of smart people talking about a wide spectrum of language and language use with people who use it.  My favorite expressions learned in the last week or so are:

• schippchen (the pouty lower lip expression)
• sitzfleisch (the ability to sit still for long periods, usually expressed in the negative)
• saddity (although I haven't found anyone at school, yet, who knows this word)

Other stuff that's going on: Barb got us all started on Lumosity, and that's actually a pretty good thing.  What eventually happens with it is still moot, but it's interesting to see the ability to get better at doing discrete tasks, mostly involving memory and focus.  I didn't feel like I started out that badly, thinking that spatial relationships and number processing were my big weaknesses, but there are things that I am definitely getting better at.  So that's cool.

My walking is a big part of my day.  Even though the time consumed is pretty small, relatively, I spend my most quiet, uncommunicative time in the morning and afternoon, back and forth from school, and even if I do listen to stuff - books, podcasts, rarely the radio, I'm still inside my head a lot more than even when I'm quiet-timing other places.  I think this is good, but it does concern me that I'm perhaps becoming even more solipsistic than I usually am.  

I'm trying to use Pinterest to organize aspects of my life, thoughts, et cetera, and enjoying it a bit more than I would have thought.  I hope I never become one of those who automatically things of pinning things without actually examining and processing them first, but it really is a convenient dumping ground for stray pieces of information, images, ideas or what have you.

One thing I did learn today (one that I wasn't looking for, but was happy I found); to paste a field of data or a chart from Excel into Word or Powerpoint in such a way as to make the new document still interactive with the original workbook, use paste special in the document or slide show, pick the chart or data range, and link.  It works beautifully, and added a new dimension (very timely) to my teaching of Excel in class this morning.  I will definitely add this to my instruction from now on, geeky as it is.  As well as using a double click on the autofill button to avoid having to drag.  That's pretty cool too.

A new thing I did in French 1 - we're starting the big unit on food and food vocabulary (plus some grammar stuff I haven't looked at yet), so rather than me standing up in front blathering about all the words for food that I know, I decided to break them into 4 categories, Viandes, Fruits/Legumes, Produits Laitiers, and Ingredients, and have four groups, each one assigned to one of the categories, make Powerpoints with images and vocabulary for at least twelve items in each category.  So far, it seems like they took to this very well.  We'll see what the results look like.  Here's the Box folder that should eventually hold their results:

https://uofi.app.box.com/files/0/f/3485959810/Categories_de_Nourriture

Another Way with Words interesting thing to have learned: in St. Louis, and with a variant spelling that might or might not be related, the term "Hoosier" has long been a term of derision referencing lower class, rural or hick people.  Not specifically related to people from Indiana, but I'm sure there was some reference to the outsider.  Apparently, the Indiana usage was the residents owning the derisive term, so that it wouldn't be offensive anymore.  Huh.  Never heard even the breath of this before.