Lift Up Your Hearts!

Thirty years ago today was one of the most difficult and delightful days of my life.  To our wonderful firstborn, I wish a

HAPPY 30^th BIRTHDAY!

(You were worth the effort.)

Our own homeschooling experiences were far shorter than I would have liked, so it has been fun watching other family members in their adventures.  (It has also been nothing short of astonishing to see what resources are now available, rather like the difference between a gas station convenience store and a Super-Wegmans grocery store.)

It is especially fun to watch the grandkids' schooling, since our own children were in public school at this stage.  On the one hand, school time is very short, even for kindergarten, when measured by organized, sit-at-the-table time, and Heather's still working on the best way to balance everyone's needs.  On the other hand, education, if not school, is clearly going on 24/7, and one cannot argue with the results.

Jonathan can read.  It is still laborious enough that he tires easily, but he has reached the stage where what he needs most is simply to read, which he is happy to do, whether to himself or to others. And not only books, but signs, maps, computer screens, anything and everything.

I think more reading goes on here than anything else.  Noah asks to be read to at any spare moment (or not so spare), usually the same books over and over and over again, until he knows the story well enough to "read" it himself.  It's a hoot to hear him tell The Three Billy Goats Gruff:  You wouldn't understand much if you didn't already know the story, but he has all the nuances and tones of voice down pat, from "It only I, the little billy goat," to "I coming to GOBBLE YOU UP!"

This post clearly isn't going to cover all I had planned, so I'll cut it short and post it anyway.  Being part of the adventure doesn't leave much time to write about it.

If there's an advantage to Mommy being sick, it's that Grandma got to supervise, i.e. watch, Noah doing his chores.  His is not a difficult regimen, but still pretty impressive for a three-year old, particularly the enthusiasm with which he demonstrated his skills.

• Clear his own breakfast dishes off the table and put them in the dishwasher.
• Brush his teeth.
• Make his bed.
• Sweep under the table, which is only fitting, since most of the crumbs seem to be his.
• "Help Mommy," which on this particular day meant cleaning the tub in the bathroom.

 (More)

Many years ago, Porter attended a course taught by Bill Oncken, which added at least two phrases to his vocabulary:  "Don't be a monkey-picker-upper," and "Feed it, or shoot it, but don't let it starve to death."  The first advises against meddling in tasks (monkeys) that don't belong to you, especially after you've delegated them.  The second requires you to work on tasks, or scrub them, but never let them languish.

I have a backblog of over 100 items about which I want to write—and that's only the ones in my bookmark list, which are less important than those on my mental list.  Flush from success with whacking my e-mail inbox from over 200 down to less than 30, I feel Bill Oncken's ghost hovering over my shoulder and challenging me to take on the backblog.

If these were real monkeys, the ASPCA would have had me arrested months ago.  Some of them have already died of starvation; all I must do is dispose of the bodies.  Some intrigued me at one time, but I now don't find them worth the time and effort; these I will happily execute with a click of the delete key.  Some remain healthy enough to go into a "priority pen" until they can be tended to properly...after I extend Oncken's options a step further:  I intend to take most of these monkeys and turn them loose to forage on their own.

Thus I am reviving my "Casting the Net" series, and you will see, in the coming days, posts with several short comments and associated links.  I hope to put in enough detail to enable readers to decide quickly whether it's a subject worth pursuing or ignoring, but you won't get the detailed commentary and quotations I normally like to include.

It's either that, or declare blog bankruptcy.

Google Fast Flip seemed like just another gimmick, but having given it a test drive I'm already hooked.  Pick a newspaper, say the New York Times.  Or a topic, such as Health.  You're presented with an eye-catching snapshot of the beginning of the first article.  You can see the headline, the first several paragraphs of text, and probably a graphic, pull-quote, or summary.  Oh, and also some ads—but (shhh, don't tell Google) the ads are blessedly easy to ignore.

If you like what you see in the article, you can click on it to read the rest.  Or you can hit your computer's arrow key and move quickly on to the next article.  Did I say quickly?  That's why I'm so excited about this.  No point-and-click, no waiting for a page to load, just one keystroke and you're there.  In a flash.  It takes me about a second per article to determine whether or not I want to know more—usually not, it doesn't take much time to scan a lot.

This is far more satisfying than scanning news headlines in a feed reader.   The headline itself does not usually give enough detail, and I find myself wasting too much time clicking on links that might have been interesting but are not.  With Fast Flip I can take most stories with a single glance, while for many others I find that reading the first several paragraphs tells me what I want to know without having to bother to click through to the whole article. When I want more detail, it's there—but doesn't intrude unless I seek it out.

What will Google think of next?  I hope this catches on in a big way; as yet there is not a great choice of sources.

Chances are, whatever you got for a high school graduation gift, it wasn't what Steven Perezluha received:  the opportunity to ride his bicycle to Alaska and back.  It was Steven's idea, but if you want that kind of adventure, it certainly helps to have Danny Chew, former Race Across America (RAAM) champion, as your uncle.  Steven's part of the trip began June 8, when he departed Florida for Pittsburgh, where Danny lives.

There the real adventure began.  They biked north, then across Canada's vast spaces until they entered Alaska.  There they met up with Steven's parents and toured the state together for a while before heading homeward on a more southerly course.  The journey's not over yet.

You can read the Orlando Sentinel story about Steven and his trip, at least as long as the link still works. 

And I thought our grandkids had a "long leash."  Must be the Pittsburgh air....

Update  One hundred forty days and 13,769 miles after Steven pedaled out of his driveway, he and Danny returned.  As the follow-up Orlando Sentinel article reports, if the trip to Alaska was exhilarating, the return was excruciating, plagued by accidents, illness, and blizzards.  But thanks to friends; some kindly churches that opened not only their doors but also their pantries to the exhausted travellers; Steven's dad, who relieved them of their heavy trailers for the last leg of the journey; and most of all to their own grit and near-incomprehensible determination, they never gave up.

"It was one of the best feelings in my life. Ever," Perezluha said.

Here are some pictures, and a map of their journey.

Update 22 January 2010  Articles from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Family, Friends not Surprised by Pair's Ride

Million Mile Man Chew Completes an Epic Trip

 

My Google Calendar, into which I've imported the US Holidays collection, has been reminding me for a couple of weeks that tomorrow is Patriot Day.  Something seemed wrong about that, but I put it down to the careless omission of the "s"—and perhaps an apostrophe.  Whether you choose to spell it Patriots' Day, Patriot's Day, or Patriots Day, there's supposed to be an "s" there.  In these hurried days, it seems, no one has time for effective proofreading (moi aussi).

But wait!  There's more wrong than that—Patriots' Day is, of course, in April, commemorating Lexington and Concord and all that flurry that started the American Revolution.  Boston Marathon 2009 (traditionally held on Patriots' Day) has already been run.  So what's with Google Calendar and tomorrow?  Tomorrow?  Ah, September 11. (More)

If you were given an unexpected two weeks in New York City (actually 8.5 weekdays), how would you spend them?  Not the way I did, it's a safe bet.  While I did manage one or two obligatory tourist trips (more on that later), most of my time was spent at the New York Public Library—you know, the place with the magnificent lions out front, where everyone goes who wants to film something in a library because it's so beautiful.  Though in truth I never saw the main part of the building.  I made my home in Room 121, the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy.  One of the best resources in the world, a perfect complement to my beloved New England Historic Genealogical Society Library in Boston.

As with February's research trip to Boston, this was an intense time.  I estimate I spent 40 hours of those eight and a half days in the library itself; it turned out to be more blessing than bother that it didn't open till 11 a.m., as I needed the morning time to prepare.  The library is less than half a mile, a mere eight minute walk, from the Times Square Hilton hotel where we stayed, and what a pleasure it was to sling on my backpack, descend via the Hilton's two elevators to 42nd Street, walk past Bryant Park, and enter the cool, dark research room with its intoxicating smell of old books; then to re-emerge—after gentle prodding by the librarians, who reminded me that the building was about to close—and reverse the trip with a head swimming with new data, and my sweet, hard-working husband and a late dinner to look forward to.

Researching, writing, sitting for hours at a desk poring over books—that which was anathema during my school years gives me such great pleasure now.  Who'd have thought?

(You know who you are.)

I made cheese today, my first effort since succumbing to the lure of Ricki Carroll and her New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.  It was not, perhaps, an auspicious beginning, since the never-fail, easy-enough-for-a-seven-year-old mozzarella recipe...failed.  Maybe I need a grandchild or two to help.

On the other hand, what I did manage to produce is a great, lower-fat substitute for cream cheese, and if I knew what it was I did wrong, I could replicate it.  My biggest mistake was clearly to ignore Ricki's instructions to keep a cheese journal, logging everything from ingredients to procedures to the ambient temperature and humidity.  Cheesemaking is an art, and at some point you're bound to create something you'd like to be able to make again; keeping a log doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to, but it greatly increases the odds.

For now, I'l enjoy my "cream cheese," and try again with the mozzarella another day.

I don't know why anyone would want to annoy a worm, but apparently lemon balm does the trick.  I had some less-than-perfect leaves that I didn't use in making my lemon balm tea, so I fed them to the worms.  Rather, I put the leaves in their bin; feeding was out of the question.  The next time I checked, all the worms were huddled on the side of the bin furthest from the leaves.  They didn't seem particularly unhappy, but they didn't return to the other side until a few days after I removed the offending foliage.

The worms have completely devoured their Carnegie Mellon t-shirt moisture mat, except for places—stitching, and part of the design, I think—that were not natural fiber.  Therefore, since they are now more mature, and have clearly excelled in their majors of eating and excreting, I hereby declare that they have graduated, and confer upon them a new moisture mat.

It's possible they may end up in grad school—we have a couple of University of Rochester t-shirts that are getting on the worn side—but for now they are enjoying their venture into the wide invertebrate world.  (Or not so wide.  We still insist they stay in their dorm-turned-apartment.)

What a wonderful bird the frog are
When he stand he sit almos';
When he hop he fly almos'.

He ain't got no sense hardly;
He ain't got no tail hardly either.
When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got—almos'.

When the kids were young, we listened (and listened, and listened) to Mitzie Collins' incomparable Sounds Like Fun record (yes, it was an LP record) of children's songs.  Before we left Rochester, Heather had the privilege of attending a friend's Chanukah party at which Mitzie was the featured entertainer.  Janet was too young to attend, but in one of those amazing twists of life returned to Rochester for college and ended up working as an intern with Mitzie, and playing in some of her concerts. (More)

It's officially summer here, whatever the calendar may say.

We can pretty much count on temperatures in the 90's, afternoon thunderstorms have returned, the brachiation ladder has been reinstalled over the pool, the water temperature is up to 75 degrees, showers with unheated water feel really good, the A/C is on, hurricane season has begun, schoolchildren are visible during the day, and vitamin D production is 'way up.

Sounds like summer to me.

We're now officially into hurricane season, which means I'll be paying more attention to the Tropical Weather link on the sidebar.  The last two months of weather have been quite interesting.  April was lovely:  we were able to enjoy open windows and doors, using neither heat nor air conditioning.  (Yes, I know—I used to believe air conditioning was for wimps.  That was before I lived in Florida and learned the inverse relationship between sweltering temperatures and productivity.  The "lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer" only work if you don't have summer temperatures most months of the year.)

We weren't far into May before we turned on the A/C, but May's claim to fame this year was its rain.  As U understand it, an unexpected low pressure system stalled over Florida, and day after day after day sucked water from the Gulf of Mexico and deposited it on Central Florida.  Orlando had 14 inches of rain, breaking the previous record for May of 10 inches back in 1976.  Daytona Beach had almost 22 inches!

Although the surprise innundation (our rainy season doesn't usually begin till the end of the month) did some damage, flooding even non-flood zones, overall it was a very welcome break in our drought.  Now we seem to have settled back into the regular summer pattern of afternoon thunderstorms, and I must get back in the habit of remembering that outdoor work needs to be done in the morning.