Lift Up Your Hearts!

The trouble with being a reasonably regular poster is that people start to worry when you get too busy to write.  When someone in Europe asks your daughter if everything's okay because she hasn't seen you on Facebook lately...you have to start thinking maybe your online life has been a little too active.  Be that as it may, herewith a few highlights.  Recently we have:

• Awakened to a Winter Wonderland.
• Shovelled two and a half feet of snow.^*
• Zoomed down a hill on fast sleds.
• Enjoyed hot cocoa and a toasty fire.
• Played games.  Lots of games.
• Celebrated a nephew's first college acceptance letter.
• Finished (although that's a relative term) a huge genealogical Christmas present project.  (To be posted here eventually.)
• Enjoyed cello, clarinet, and guitar music (though not enough).
• Listened to Bartholomew's Passage.
• Made dream cookies.
• Ate dream cookies.  And kringle.  And M&Ms.
• Watched A Charlie Brown Christmas.
• Stayed up too late.
• Had a wonderful time visiting friends and family.
• Sneezed.  (Some of the friends and family had cats.)
• Played at the Connecticut Science Center.
• Enjoyed a few presents and a whole lot of presence.

And it's not even Christmas yet!

First, our daughter turns 30.  Then over Thanksgiving I had the privilege of taking my first nephew-driven car ride (and a great job he did, too).  And if that weren't enough, today another nephew received his first college acceptance letter!

Next thing you know, our grandson will be losing his first tooth.  Oh, wait, that already happened....

The Franklin Insitute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I don't remember my first visit to the Franklin Institute; I believe it must have been on some visit to Philadelphia when I was very young; all I remember was walking through the heart.  Later, however, we moved to the Philadelphia area, and were regular visitors.  For two summers I worked in the Franklin Institute Research Labs in the building next door, and even more important to me than my paycheck was the ID badge that allowed me to take the tunnel between the buildings and spend most of my lunch hours in the museum.

After he retired, my dad became a Franklin Institute volunteer, and it was natural for him to take his grandchildren there when they came to visit.  By that time, the museum had grown an addition, with new exhibits that made it look like any modern science museum, but the kids' favorite, and my own, was the old building, with its greater educational content and more detailed, written information with each exhibit.  Now Dad's grandchildren have children of their own, and on our recent visit to Philadelphia we all looked forward to watching them delight in our old favorites.

The great-grandkids were happy enough, but the rest of us were somewhat disappointed.  To our delight, the heart is still there, as is the train that Dad used to drive as one of his docent duties (it's easier to keep a 350-ton locomotive than to get rid of one) but the "new building" style has now infected the old building, too.  Many of our favorite exhibits are gone, replaced by displays designed for shorter attention spans and lesser literacy.  The math room that had kept our kids entranced for hours was nowhere to be found, and when I finally asked a docent, "Excuse me, it's been a long time since I was here last, and I can't find the math room," he replied, "It has been a long time since you've visited; they took that out years ago."

It took a bit of effort, but we did find Newton's Dream, the kinetic sculpture that so entranced Heather as a child.  It's in a different place now, and has been cut down in size, but that didn't stop the children from following it with the same fascination.  Also riveting was Der Lauf der Dinge, a Swiss-made movie of a 30-minute Rube Goldberg setup with lots of pyrotechnics and impressive chemical reactions.  Thanks to the magic of YouTube, you, too, can see this amazing performance, albeit broken into three segments.  (Here are the links as well, since I note that embedded videos don't always show up in feedreaders:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Lest I be seen as a totally hopeless conservative who never likes anything new, the museum's newest exhibit, Amazing Machine, is also excellent, and we could have spent much longer playing with its cams, gears, pulley, and linkages had we not been nearing the end of our visit.  (Heather:  That's what I want for Christmas.  You can turn a mechanical engineer into a joyful homemaker, but the engineer is still there.)

 

The American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York

On my first visit to the American Museum of Natural History I was probably about as young as when I first encountered the Franklin Institute, but in this case nearly half a century elapsed between visits.  The AMNA, however, shows more respect for its old exhibits, and the wonderful dioramas that are all I remember from my first visit are still featured, with all their high information content and long descriptions to read.  I could easily have spent the entire day among them.  Porter found one, the African buffalo, that was sponsored by George Eastman, and remarked, "He sponsored the Buffalo because there is no animal named Rochester, but he should have sponsored the Kodiak bear."  Yes, we're still married; I happen to like that kind of humor.

The museum has several new exhibits as well as the old, most of which were quite good.  There was a bit of a "politically correct" feel in a few places, but it was not unbearable, and in general the educational value and written descriptions were sufficient.  Despite my primary concern for material to read, I am also particularly sensitive to the layout of displays—color, font, background, use and placement of images and other media—and this, too, the AMNH exhibits did well.

One disappointment was the Hall of Minerals, chiefly because whoever is responsible for lighting must have been on vacation.  For several months.  It was dark.  At first I thought the gloom was meant to provide contrast to the brilliance of the minerals and gems, but many of the lights that should have been highlighting the rocks were also out.  We very nearly missed the famous Star of India because it was in the dark.

In addition to the old favorites, we signed up for several special exhibits and shows.  Traveling the Silk Road was disappointing, but only because I had expected the most from it.  It was well done, but crowded, with not as much information as I had hoped and not enough time in the crowd to do justice to what was there.   The best part was the section on silk making and sericulture.

I believe Journey to the Stars was a better-than-average planetarium show (more information, less mindless entertainment), but unfortunately I responded the way I always do when faced with a movie or movie-like substance in a dark room, awakening only at the end.

The Butterfly Conservatory was interesting, though I think I've seen more fluttering in the butterfly garden at our own Leu Gardens.

Frogs:  A Chorus of Colors was great; Heather would have loved it.  Except the part where we learned about the devastation being wrought by the chytrid fungus.

Where Bd [Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis] thrives, generally in moist cool habitats, 50% of amphibian species and 80% of individuals can be expected to disappear within one year.... Currently it cannot be stopped in the wild and a minority of species seem able to survive with a Bd infection as larvae or as adults and these animals likely serve as a reservoir and vectors for future outbreaks. Notable among resistant species are worldwide invasive pest species including marine toads, American bullfrogs and African clawed frogs.

The American Museum of Natural History is well worth visiting more often than every 50 years.  The dioramas alone are a homeschooler's paradise.

This morning, the mp3 player that powers the perpetually random assortment of music emanating from our stereo system struck up Stacey Lynn Regan's, I Offer My Isaac.  Seven years after our firstborn's firstborn made his grand entrance and agonizing departure from the stage of this world, Stacey's song still has the power to stop me mid-anything and tap into deep wells of sorrow.  So do In Christ Alone, which our church programs into the service with alarming frequency, heedless of the fact that one choir member can never make it all the way through the song (breaking down at "from life's first cry to final breath" if not before), and also There Were Roses, a powerful song made all the more poignant because I first heard it, around the time of Isaac's death, in the Green Linnet version—where the name of one of the protagonists is Isaac.

Music has such strange power.  These songs call forth deep sobs of agonizing grief, but it is not a miserable sorrow.  There may be wounds that time cannot heal, but the lively presence of Isaac's subsequent siblings is a powerful healing agent, as is the certainty that Isaac is safe in God's keeping and we will be reunited at the right time.

Without any justification for such images, other than that he was born blond, I have a definite picture of Isaac in my mind:  a cross between C. S. Lewis's Prince Caspian (from the books, not the movie) and George MacDonald's Sir Gibbie; of no particular age, blond, blue-eyed, and almost always laughing.

Here's to our firstborn grandchild, with joyful sorrow, on his birthday.

Some things one can never tire of, like the light of understanding in a child's eyes, the leap of the space shuttle into the sky, and the magesty of animals in their natural surroundings.

As a rule, on most days I take time out for a four-mile walk/run, followed by a swim when the weather permits.  My legs are short, so this usually excises an hour and a half from my day.  Being a procrastinator by trade, too much of the time I find myself attempting to squeeze it in before sunset.

It doesn't help that here in Florida we do not have the long twilight that northerners enjoy, so I need to watch the clock rather than the window.  I can leave home in broad daylight, and by the time I return it is dark.  The halfway point is in a small, nearby park with a jogging trail through the woods, and before I finished my circuit the other day, dusk was well-settled.  I prefer not to run under those conditions, since it's harder to see the potentially treacherous dips and hills in the path—but there are advantages.

Like the sudden, silent flight overhead of a huge barred owl, who obligingly paused on a tree branch long enough for me to admire it briefly.

I continued my run with a lighter step.

Recently I enjoyed the position of Grandma-in-charge for Jonathan and Noah while the rest of the family spent the day in Pittsburgh.   It was loads of fun, but by the end of the day I could identify with Zoe in the Baby Blues comic below.

Jonathan discovered language early, and has been exceedingly verbal ever since.  He also shares with his Aunt Janet a vivid imagination and an endless capacity for story-telling.  Unlike his aunt, however, his stories have a decidedly Y-chromosome twist.  (More)

When we first moved to Central Florida in the mid-1980s, the region was setting record lows.  Freezes, and the subsequent descent of developer-vultures, killed off most of the local citrus industry.  No one who was not here during those times can believe we had fired up the furnace by the end of September—we, who were fresh from the north country and happy to keep our home cooler than was comfortable for our neighbors.

I won't be tempted to cite our current heat wave as evidence of global warming, because I understand Central Florida experienced a similarly miserable October back in 1961, but our experiences here certainly attest to the variability of climate.  It's hot.  And humid.  And miserable.  (More)

My recent visit with our grandchildren reminded me of why I don't like video/computer games. I don't mean I don't like to play them; I know all too well how addicted I can get if I allow myself to get started.

It began, of course, with television.  When the technological wonder entered my home when I was seven, I was already familiar with its delights, thanks to the generosity of our neighbors.  We matured together, television and I, and with such a sibling it's no wonder we bonded strongly as the years passed.  It was not a healthy bond, and I'm thankful that I went to college before televisions were ubiquitous in the dormitories, because those four years of abstention were the beginning of my liberation.  It would be many years and much struggle before I could declare myself free, but never again would the glowing opium box control my life. (More)

School at the Daley household could hardly have been called normal, since Grandma was there as a distraction and Mommy was sick for the first part of my visit.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed my glimpse into the official, sit-at-the-table side of their 24/7 educational process.

Jonathan is not at the moment as excited about math as he is about reading—unlike his Aunt Janet at that age, for whom reading was all right but math was a bowl full of candy.  He's doing well, though, with basic addition and subtraction (and even some simple multiplication and division), and enjoys the "math paths" that Grandma sends him in the mail, problems like this one:

Both boys also like using their Cuisenaire rods, base-10 blocks, and bucket balance.  The Cuisenaire rods are from our own homeschooling days.  We also had a set of base-10 blocks that I had made out of cardboard.  They disappeared somehow, probably in one of our moves, and trust me, buying a commercial set is well worth the $16 investment.  I can't get over the resources available to homeschoolers these days!

The fun is the same, though.  There are few thrills more sublime than observing the "ah ha!" moment in your child's (or grandchild's) eyes.

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