I like carbonated fruit sodas. I like them in glass bottles. Hardly any sodas come in glass bottles anymore, and it’s a shame. Glass is a wonderful insulator. The soda comes out of the fridge so cold it has extra bite. These particular glass bottles have the added attraction of a very cool flip top. You pull the wire forward, and *pop* goes the ceramic stopper. (It has a rubber […]
Jeannette McCurdy was a checkered garter snake. She lived in our backyard until this morning, when she was discovered deceased on the neighbor’s driveway. Before her untimely demise, Jeannette looked something like this: She was a lovely little snake, with a nice yellow stripe down the middle of her back. She was about 10 inches long. We don’t think she made it to full adulthood. My children gathered with their […]
Every now and then I put in the DVD for a lecture series on discrete mathematics and watch one. I like discrete math because a) it’s not calculus and b) it’s all about patterns, so it’s like doing a puzzle. I can actually wrap my head around discrete math. It suits the regimented side of me. Anyway, today’s lecture started off about recognizing patterns in series of numbers added together. […]
I’ve been thinking more about the Joshua Bell story and why it’s so uncomfortable to be the one person standing and listening to a street performer. During the summer there was an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition where young country music star Miranda Lambert sang her #1 hit “The House That Built Me” to the people who had just received their dream house, mortgage-free. It’s a sentimental song, but […]
Today I stumbled across this fascinating old article from the Washington Post about virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html A reporter challenged him to play in a Metro station as a street musician to see what would happen. Would commuters on their way to work recognize the transcendent beauty of his playing, or would they hurry on by? Bell had sold out Boston’s Symphony Hall three days earlier. Tickets for okay […]
I tried a new voice on as I read to the kids today. The character is called Constance Contraire, and she’s supposed to be a cranky, little thing. I decided she needed to sound nasal and annoying. My six-year-old stopped me after the first line. “Who is Constance?” she asked. I explained that she was the character we had just read about. She looked shocked. “My God!” she exclaimed, “she […]
I *love* reading to my kids. We read intermittently over the summer, but I’ve decided to do nightly reading now that school has started. We wait until Dad is home and read as a family. He plays Angry Birds on his iPhone and listens. Or surfs Craigslist for Corvettes. And listens. He can multitask. I’m bad at that. I can’t even listen to the radio while I drive. Reading to […]
I love this sign. It’s outside the full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. What would Socrates say? P.S. Am looking through vacation photos now that the kids are in school. I’ll eventually write about The Bath.
School started Monday. I finished my summer reading to the kids this afternoon with the end of Little House in the Big Woods, a book we read together three years ago (half my daughter’s lifetime) and that the kids wanted to revisit. I’m so glad they did. I had forgotten how delightful this book is. We finished re-learning about how Ma made cheese and how she prepared hominy (which she […]
I never know when a teaching moment will show up. Today it happened when I looked in the fridge at lunchtime and noticed that we were out of jelly. “How about PB and banana?” I asked the kids. “That was Elvis’ favorite sandwich.” “Who’s Elvis?” they wanted to know. Which was a better response than the expected, “Yuck!” So while I slapped together the ingredients, I told them. “Elvis was […]
Flabby Brain 