Thinking Globally

When I got home tonight at 6:30 PM, the house was dark. Totally dark. When I stepped through the door I could see that the light that normally glows on the phone was off. Even though I knew it was pointless, I flipped the hallway light switch. Nada.

I found a flashlight, called the power company to report the outage, and then set about hooking up our generator. Once it was chugging away on the porch, I fixed a picnic dinner and ate it. Then I rebooted our internet connection.

I wrote a couple of tricky emails, then decided to write a quick blog post.

Here are today's earrings: a pair of western hemispheres made by the Wood Thrush Fimo artist I've mentioned before. I wore them for a lesson about Room to Read, the group that fights illiteracy in developing countries. At then end of class, we played a game in which we raced to name the countries we might help on the map. 

But now I'm a bit chagrined with myself, sitting here in comfort, thanks to my  generator, burning fossil fuels to maintain my internet connection. (And to keep the food in the fridge and freezer from spoiling.)

Even when my life hits a bump, it's easier than the lives of most people around the world. Soon I'll head to bed, to read by flashlight.

A project supporting Room to Read

I dug my knitting machine out of a shelf in my basement craft room where it's been stowed since we moved into this house. I used it a lot, long ago before we had cats and children who stopped taking long naps.

On Friday afternoon, I'm going to begin working with my class on craft projects that we will sell to benefit an organization called Room to Read at our Holiday Craft Bazaar next month. Learn more at http://www.roomtoread.org/ . Or read a column from today's NY Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/opinion/sunday/kristof-his-libraries-12000-so-far-change-lives.html?emc=eta1 Tomorrow in Social Studies I'll be telling my classes how the money they raise will be used: to publish picture books in the native languages of children in developing countries, to build schools and libraries to hold those books, and to educate girls so that the next generation will become more literate. Tangible goals that the children can support through their own efforts.

I spent some time designing a simple knitted project that my 3rd graders can mass produce. I came up with a neckwarmer-earwarmer. Everyone will want one this holiday season!

 I tried different weights of yarn, different widths, different lengths... How to make the tension right for small children's strength? How to teach them to troubleshoot?

It wasn't until late in the day that I thought about earrings. I made a couple of pair, including this one using hammered copper wire and these lovely stone beads. They go with everything I wear!

The Bare Essentials: Coffee, Cream, and a Pruning Saw

 This morning I woke up to a very cold house--34 degrees outside, no heat and 54 degrees indoors... I put on my fuzzy blue sweater and headed downstairs to make coffee.

I've had a tough coffee week. I ran out of cream on Tuesday, so I went to Safeway and bought half and half on my way to school. Even with cream, my coffee tasted lousy. Too cold after that long drive, I told myself.

But on Wednesday, even when I added extra cream, my coffee tasted lousy. I poured my second cup for the road, but hardly sipped it on the way to school. On Thursday, I didn't even pour a second cup. Maybe I'm loosing my taste for coffee, I thought.

Finally, on Friday morning, I looked at the label on the cream: fat free half-and-half. The ingredient list is endless, with corn syrup, carrageenan, sugar, and assorted ingredients that "are not normally found in half and half."

That's because half and half contains two ingredients: milk and cream. That's what half and half means!

Friday evening on my way home from school, I stopped at Safeway and bought half and half. This morning, as I sipped my coffee, I realized that I am not just addicted to the caffeine but also to the fat in the cream. I could almost feel the soothing effect of the fat entering my system. Does it affect the myelin in my nerves? Supply a boost of energy to my mitochondria? No idea.

But as the infinity scarf that my daughter Kathe knitted for me slipped over my head and I headed out the door, I felt a glorious sense of well-being.

I took my camera with me, so that I could snap a photo of the obstacle that stood in my way as I returned home with groceries last night: an oak tree fallen across the drive about 3/10 of a mile from home, one of the many casualties of last Saturday's October snowstorm that have been dangling and ready to fall.

Last night, using the beams of my Forester's headlights and the pruning saw that I carry with me, I cut the two trunks of the tree. I trimmed the many branches still attached to the trunk. Then I eyed the 15 feet of tree that still stretched across the drive. Bending my knees to protect my back, I swiveled the trunk a foot at a time until it lay parallel to the bank, rather than stretched across the road. 

Good thing I snapped these pictures on my way out this morning, since by the time I returned home my husband John had chainsawed the whole tree into next year's firewood. The evidence of my woodswomanly feat had vanished from the road!

I think last night's tree adventure made my Saturday morning's coffee with cream even more of a pleasure. I chose this pair of earrings that I made last summer to match my sweater, and then added the infinity scarf for contrast.

Cozy clothing, coffee with cream, and a pruning saw under my passenger seat. Perfect preparations for a brisk fall day.

LOGO and Turtles

Back in 1991, I talked an elementary school principal into hiring me to teach computer. The school had a lab full of Commodore 64 computers which they used to teach BASIC progamming, LOGO (the turtle who follows commands to draw geometric shapes), typing, and some educational games (Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?) I had never touched a Commodore 64, written a program in BASIC or LOGO, or played any of those games, but I did own a computer (an Apple 2C) and I did know how to type. And, as I told Christine (convincingly, I guess), I am a teacher. I know how to analyze a set of skills and a body of knowledge, break it into manageable parts, and create lessons that will inspire my students to explore and master a subject matter.

So that summer, I borrowed a Commodore 64 and learned to write programs in BASIC. I learned to draw and animate using LOGO. I played Carmen Sandiego and decided that my students would research the answers and create a database of currencies, languages, cities, and landmarks to use in solving the mysterious clues. Oh, and I practiced my typing using Letter Invaders until I was pretty sure I could type fast enough to impress the average 5th grader.

Last year, LOGO reappeared as part of my new math program. I have to admit that I liked many aspects of the old version better. But I love watching my 3rd graders' excitement as they write the simple LOGO scripts. As the turtle begins to obey their commands, they discover the power of this simple programming language.

As class began, we sat around a grid on the floor. I put a pink and green stuffed turtle on an intersection and explained that we were going to talk to the turtle so that he would draw.

"That's why you're wearing turtle earrings!" announced a child in each of my three classes.

By the end of class, each student had programmed the turtle to draw a square and a rectangle, and most had drawn a triangle. Many were attempting more complex designs. James even drew a house that included a square, a triangle, and several rectangles. Today, at least one future programmer caught the bug.

My earrings were a gift from my mother-in-law back in the 1980's, before I first met the LOGO turtle.

Buttons and things from the past

I bought this pair of earrings at the Waterford Fair. Not from one of the crafters at the juried show--their wares are simply too pricey for me. I know that many people see jewelry as a wise investment: gold and silver, precious stones--a nest egg to stash for a needy day.

But I can't imagine wearing anything too precious to lose. What I've spent on my entire 365 days of earrings wouldn't buy a single diamond or an ounce of gold. Many pair have cost a few cents to make, a few cost as much as $30. Many have been gifts. I've acquired them over 30 years, and I treasure them for many reasons, but most especially for the memories they preserve for me.

     This pair was made by a local crafter who sells her wares under the moniker French Fox Jewelry: Jewelry made from buttons and things of the past. I love the tiny clockfaces that she glued to the waxing crescent moons--my favorite lunar phase. When I see the waxing crescent, I imagine curling up in the curve with a good book.

Those clockfaces are old--obscured by age, as tonight's waxing gibbous moon is by wispy clouds. I wore them today for a math activity involving elapsed time. Some of my students peer at clocks as if the faces lack clarity. Their lives are digital. The analog clock is becoming an anachronism. The stuff of French Fox Jewelry: made from buttons and things from the past.

America's Metric Future

We're beginning to focus on measurement tools in 3rd grade math this month, so I wore this great pair of measuring tape earrings--a birthday gift from my friend and colleague Debbie a couple of years ago. She saw them, and thought of me: Measurement. Tools. Earrings. Blue.

Early this morning, my students rolled a number on a 1-20 die, and wandered the classroom searching for an object that matched that number-- that was 2 or 12 or 20 centimeters long.

To photograph my earrings, I hung them on a metal L-square that I bought at an antique shop in Oil City, PA. As Debbie knew, I love measuring and I love tools.

I treasure many measurement tools that my dad taught me to use, some that my father-in-law used in his work, and even a few that belonged to my grandfather Richards. Now he was a measurement fanatic.

During the early 1900's, my grandfather (the man in the middle in this photograph from August 1920, holding my two-year-old dad's head between his hands) was an active participant in the American Metric Association. I think he was secretary at some point. He special-ordered a new car with a metric speedometer.

My dad told a story about how his father had returned home one night greatly amused by an experience he'd just had with a hitchhiker:

As my grandfather sped along the mountain roads of central PA, the hitchhiker eyed the 70's, 80's, even 90's on the speedometer, clinging to the door handle and the dashboard, and admonishing my grandfather to slow down. My grandfather explained repeatedly that 50 miles per hour would appear as 80 kilometers per hour on his metric speedometer. He told the man to relax, that he never exceeded the speed limit. When a stop sign finally forced them to stop, the hitchhiker leapt from  the car, saying, "It's OK, mister. I drive like a demon myself!"

My grandfather was convinced that America must adopt the metric system in order to become a truly successful scientific society. He spent his life following the "Ways to Win," trying to convince everyone to Go Metric. Yesterday, my husband John asked me whether I knew the names of the 3 nations on Earth that do not use the metric system. I could name only one: the United States of America. After a while, I guessed Burma. He had to tell me the 3rd: Liberia. Strange bedfellows!

I have a little measurement shrine hanging on my wall, with conversion charts, squares and angles, protractors and curves. I try to expose my 3rd graders to as many tools and charts and opportunitites to measure as I can. And I sing the praises of the metric system.

Our standard measures really put our students at a tremendous disadvantage. We waste so much time learning 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 1760 yards in a mile. Silly waste of time. My grandfather might look old-fashioned, but he saw that the metric system was the way of the future. Ninety years later, that future still eludes us.

Bats for All Saints Day

Today is All Saints Day, celebrated as The Day of the Dead in Mexico. Here in the US, it's a day to survive: the day after Halloween, when children stay up too late, collect and consume massive quantities of candy, and expend tremendous energy worrying about costumes and who-is-trick-or-treating-with-whom and how-to-eat-as-much-candy-as-possible-without-mom-and-dad-noticing.

I admire traditional cultures in which people can visit their ancestors in the graveyard nearby. I can imagine sitting with my children amidst the marigolds and candles, sharing stories of my parents, and their parents, and their parents, just as I heard them over the years... Meeting cousins, and their cousins... But that family gathering is lost long ago in generations of my family. My disgruntled ancestors left Europe and kept moving once they got to America, movement that's become even more peripatetic in the past few generations.

Today I wore this pair of bats, carved of bone. They were a gift from a 7th grade student, Cara, who is now 25. They look regal to me--even ethereal--in flight. Bats made of bone, for the Day of the Dead. Bats who emerge at night, flitting through the darkness. Bats who are demonized, yet who benefit us all by eating the mosquitoes and other insects that plague our days.

I hung my bats on this ginkgo tree. I chose it to bear the last two months of my year of earrings: November and December of 2011. Only 60 days to go.

I imagine that my Celtic ancestors on the British Isles gathered around bonfires to celebrate Samhain, the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, on this same day. As families walked from bonfire to bonfire, perhaps they told stories of their parents, and their parents parents. I've read that they threw the bones of cattle on those fires. And perhaps they carved bone to make amulets. Bats, perhaps, which flitted about overhead.