Lift Up Your Hearts!

I never could keep cousins straight.  First cousins—the children of my parents' siblings—I understood, but I was lost when it came to second and third cousins, let alone those with the "removed" designation.  Not that I cared; it was rarely an issue for me.  When genealogy entered my life, however, family relationships suddenly needed to be a whole lot more specific.

After much puzzing over confusing definitions and tables, I gained enough head-knowledge to create the following algorithm.  My gut instincts in the matter are still a bit fuzzy, so I fall back on the strategy of the confused high school algebra student and rely on formulas.

To Calculate the Family Relationship Between Person A and Person B

Find C, the common ancestor between A and B.

Let N = the number of generations from A to C

Let M = the number of generations from B to C.

1. If N = 0, A is the (M – 2)^th great grandparent of B, where the 0^th great grandparent is defined as “grandparent,” the –1^st great grandparent is defined as “parent,” and the –2^nd great grandparent is defined as “self.”
2. If M = 0, A is the (N – 2)^th great grandchild of B, where the 0^th great grandchild is defined as “grandchild,” the –1^st great grandchild is defined as “child,” and the –2^nd great grandchild is defined as “self.”
3. If N = 1 and M > 0, then A is B’s (M – 3)^th great grandaunt/uncle, where the 0^th great grandaunt/uncle is defined as “grandaunt/uncle,” the –1^st great grandaunt/uncle is defined as “aunt/uncle” and the –2^nd great grandaunt/uncle is defined as “sister/brother.”
4. If M = 1 and N > 0, then A is B’s (N – 3)^th great grandniece/nephew, where the 0^th great grandniece/nephew is defined as “grandniece/nephew,” the –1^st great grandniece/nephew is defined as “niece/nephew” and the –2^nd great grandniece/nephew is defined as “sister/brother.”
5. If N > 1, M > 1, and N = M, then A and B are (N – 1)^th cousins.
6. If N > 1, M > 1, and N < M, then A and B are (N – 1)^th cousins, M – N times removed.
7. If N > 1, M > 1, and N > M, then A and B are (M – 1)^th cousins, N – M times removed.

It's a little nerdy—okay it's a lot nerdy—but it works for me, and I've never seen anything like it, so I post it here in case it may help someone else.

You can always count on Mallard Fillmore, the only one of my favorite comics to remember.

Worms Eat My Garbage, by Mary Appelhof (Flower Press, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1997)

Long, long ago, John Holt introduced me to Worms Eat My Garbage.  Whether it was in one of his books, or in the magazine Growing Without Schooling, I don't remember.  What I do remember is that worms ate his garbage.  John Holt lived in an apartment in downtown Boston; if he could manage a small worm farm there, what was my excuse?  It would be many years before I finally joined the movement, but here we are.

The book I borrowed from the library is the second edition; the original was written in 1982.  Both are somewhat dated, and offer much more detail about making your own worm bins that I needed, being quite happy with our out-of-the-box Can-o-Worms. It's also oriented towards people of northern climes, offering more advice on dealing with cold weather than hot.

I'm glad I borrowed the book, because while I was glad to read it, I don't feel the need to keep it as a reference.  There's plenty of information about worm farming online now, too.  But for those of us who prefer the comfort of reading a physical book, it's a good introduction to the subject of vermiculture and vermicomposting.

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.

The lituus is not a test to determine the pH of a substance, although that's how I read it at first.  It's a musical instrument, and one of the last works written for it was J. S. Bach's O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht.  No modern listener has been able to hear Bach's motet as it was intended, however, because the instrument fell out of favor and became extinct.  No one today knows what it looked or sounded like. 

Until now.  Alistair Braden and Murray Campbell, from the University of Edinburgh, at the request of—ta da!—the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, applied to the problem software they had designed to improve modern brass instruments.

SCB gave the Edinburgh team their expert thoughts on what the Lituus may have been like in terms of the notes it produced, its tonal quality and how it might have been played....They also provided cross-section diagrams of instruments they believed to be similar to the Lituus.

"The software used this data to design an elegant, usable instrument with the required acoustic and tonal qualities," says Professor Campbell.  "The key was to ensure that the design we generated would not only sound right but look right as well."  He added: "Crucially, the final design produced by the software could have been made by a manufacturer in Bach's time without too much difficulty."

Using ths design, the Schola built two of instruments, which were then used in a performance of O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht earlier this year.  I urge you to read the entire BBC article, or at least click through to it so you can listen to a sample of the music.  It's not the best of all samples, and the performers had almost no time before the concert to practice this completely unknown and difficult instrument, but it will give you an idea of what may be to come.

It is an unwieldy instrument with a limited tonal range that is hard to play. But played well, it gives Johann Sebastian Bach's motet a haunting feel that couldn't be reproduced by modern instruments.

In case the link to the article breaks, as such links are wont to do, here is a picture of the instruments.  Those of you who attended a certain joyous celebration in Basel may recognize the other performer as one member of the alta capella band that led us from the church to the reception.

The young lady at the grocery store was right:  a chopstick makes a great cherry pitter.

Until I was nine years old, I lived in a small house with a yard that was small by American standards, but large enough to support four beautiful trees:  two spruce, one maple that was the delight of my heart and the joy of my tree-climbing days, and one cherry tree.

The cherry tree produced a gorgeous display of blossoms every year, followed by an abundant harvest of cherries.  These were sour cherries, the kind used most often for pies, though to my child's tastes they couldn't get much better than straight from the tree into my mouth.  The abundance, however, was more than I could consume, even had that been allowed, so I remember hours of sitting around the table with my family, pitting cherries to freeze for future pies.  Despite the work, it was a delightful time because we were all together, working and talking and laughing.  It is nonetheless a pity that we didn't discover the delights of Chinese food until after we had left the house and its trees behind.

The aforementioned young lady was standing at a table in the produce section, offering samples of cherries and Häagen-Dazs ice cream.  I gladly took the cherries, but passed up the ice cream—not, I hasten to add, from any virtue, but because the carton displayed was banana-something-or-other.  But when she suggested Honey Bee Vanilla instead, I acquiesced.  My favorite ice cream remains the Swiss Mövenpick, but the smallest scoop of Honey Bee Vanilla in a tiny cup, graced with a couple of pieces of California Bing cherries...and I was nearly transported to Switzerland.

She did her job well:  I left the store with two pounds of Bing cherries and a pint of Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Vanilla.  How could I refuse?  The cherries were on sale; the reason I was near her table was that I was considering buying them already. Häagen-Dazs ice cream is another story:  I've raised my standards of ice cream from the el cheapo variety I once enjoyed, but only as far as Edy's Double Fudge Chocolate Brownie or similar, and then only if there's a really good sale, preferably two-for-one.  Häagen-Dazs is rarely in my price range.  In this case, however, not only was the Häagen-Dazs on sale, but the delightful young lady handed me a coupon that brought the price of the pint down to 50 cents if I bought the cherries.  Sold!

Honey Bee Vanilla is exquisite by all itself.  A little experimentation at home proved that it also does wonderful things for fresh raspberries.  And as soon as I finish this post I'm going to introduce my darling and hard-working husband—who has already today been on the roof to fix a leaking skylight, and torn the lawn mower apart to determine why it has gone on strike just in time for the opening of mowing season—to Honey Bee Vanilla and Bing Cherry Heaven.

The purpose of the promotion is in part to raise awareness of the threats to the honey bee population.  Learn more at http://www.helpthehoneybees.com.

Oh, yes.  Back to the original point.  In preparing the cherries for our upcoming treat, I used a blunt-ended chopstick to remove the pits.  Piece of cookie.^*

 

A common theme over at the Front Porch Republic is a respect for place: for home and community, for not only eating locally but being locally, staying in (or returning to) one's hometown rather than venturing off to "better" places.  The article Root Hog or Die is where I chose to ask a question that has been bothering me about this approach to life, much as I like some of the ideas.

I’ve moved enough times in my life to know I hate it. (The only time I didn’t was when moving from an apartment to our first house, just a few blocks away.) I grieve that my present grandchildren live an 18-hour drive away, and some future grandchildren are likely to grow up where I can’t visit them without a passport. Our extended family makes a point of getting together at least twice a year—but that’s not the same as being able to drop by my nephew’s house for an impromptu cello concert, or to comfort my grandson when he is sick.

That said, I want to ask a question that has bothered me ever since I first encountered the stay-home ideas here at the FPR. Having done extensive genealogical research, I know that the best thing my maternal great-grandparents did for me was to get out of their West Virginia town. Among those who remained, the incidence of “father unknown” on the birth records is depressingly high.

Moreover, I noticed that each of my hated moving experiences provoked growth in my life and that of others. In my own (highly-rated) high school the brightest, most interesting students were almost always those who had come from elsewhere, not because of any deficiencies in the local population, but because the non-locals had a wider range of experience from which to draw. I like to think our different perspectives brought enrichment to our fellow-students as well.

I wish we could have it both ways. Home, as my friends and family will assure you, sometimes with exasperation, is my favorite place to be—wherever home happens to be at the moment. I wish my entire family were no more than an hour’s drive away instead of spread across the country and the globe. But living, at least for a while, in Japan, and Costa Rica, and Switzerland, and Italy, and yes, Pennsylvania, Florida, Washington, Massachusetts, and many other states, in small towns and suburbs, in cities and on farms, has brought such richness to our family that I wouldn’t have it otherwise.

How does the philosophy I see here at the FPR allow for such enrichment, such growth, such joys?

If there's a good response I'll include it here in the comments.

What is my home? Eastern upstate New York, where I grew up?  Eastern Pennsylvania, where I also grew up?  Western New York, where our children were born?  Florida, our home for most of the last quarter-century?  My two parents and four grandparents were born in New York, Washington, West Virginia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Florida—representing the middle and three of the four corners of this continental United States.  How far back do I go to find my "family" home? Do I go back to England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Germany, France, or the Netherlands?

These ruminations were sparked in part by what I learned recently about the Swiss system of citizenship, which perhaps reflects, at least in principle, the rootedness extolled at the FPR.  Swiss people are not citizens of Switzerland, per se, but of their family’s home town, which may be neither the place they were born nor a place they have ever lived.  Children and wives take on the citizenship of the father/husband, which probably would make me a citizen of Quidnessett, Rhode Island, if not of somewhere in England. Mindboggling.

Ancestral lands or no, "home" to me would ideally have all family members (children parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings, in-laws) living close enough together for casual visits, mutual support, and tremendous Memorial Day picnics, while at the same time providing for all the enrichment of life that comes from extended immersion in other cultures, both the cultures of foreign lands and the alien cultures in our own country.  (If you doubt we have alien cultures in our own country, you've never experienced the contrast between New England and the South, let alone Middle America and California.)  So it's impossible:  but what kinds of attitudes and actions could bring us closer to the ideal?

A friend alerted me to an article on midwives from the May 20, 2009 Orlando Sentinel.  It's about a recently-developed program of the Orange County Health Department that provides hospital-based midwife services for low-income women in the Orlando area, and told me some things I didn't know about midwives and Florida law.

Knowing from experience that links to Sentinel articles break after a while, I'll provide a few relevant excerpts below.

The program came about after health officials took notice of the positive birth outcomes of women who were working with local lay midwives. Florida is one of only four states in the country where women with little medical training can be state certified as midwives....Legal practice of [lay] midwifery in Florida—one of 25 states that regulate midwifery—is done by Certified Professional Midwives, who must complete training and meet clinical requirements.

"We were seeing low cesarean rates and very low percentage of low birth weight babies," said Dr. Kevin Sherin, Orange County Health Department director. "It was sort of a natural to bring together their successful practice and our resources."

For those of you following the trial of Judy Wilson, Judy is a Certified Professional Midwife.  According to this state-by-state chart from the Midwives' Alliance of North America, the statement that Florida is one of only four states to license lay midwives is incomplete; many other states have licensing procedures in a different form.

But instead of lay midwives, the county hired five certified nurse midwives to work with women at the Lila Mitchell Health Center in west Orlando, where about half the patients are uninsured and the other half are on Medicaid. The clinic also serves a largely black and Hispanic clientele....Certified nurse midwives, like doctors, can use some medical intervention including electronic fetal monitoring, labor-inducing drugs, pain medications and episiotomies.

I'm all in favor of Certified Nurse Midwives—especially the one that delivered Faith —though it should be clear from all the medical interventions listed that they're operating from a different model of care from the midwife in Amish country who delivered Jonathan and Noah.  "Electronic fetal monitoring, labor-inducing drugs, pain medications and episiotomies" are, in my experience, what people who employ the services of midwives are seeking to escape.  This route is not for everyone, however, and Orange County's hospital-based choice appeals to many of the women they hope to reach.

Like a lot of women, Tiana Marrero thought having a midwife meant giving birth at home.  "I was kind of scared," said the west Orlando resident. "Once they broke it down for me, I learned it was a good program that gave you a lot of good information about having a healthy baby.....They give you personalized service. They make you feel comfortable."

"In Hispanic countries, women know all about midwifery. When we tell them about it, they say, ‘Oh, yeah, partera," said Alyn McGee, a certified nurse midwife, referring to the Spanish word for midwife. McGee said women from the Caribbean islands are also well-versed in the practice. Other women, like Marerro, get on board once stereotypes about midwives are debunked.

"There's a lot of education that goes on," said Stacey Gruka, a certified nurse midwife. "When they find out a midwife isn't someone wearing hoop skirts and lighting candles, they feel better about participating." 

I don't remember any hoop skirts, nor can I imagine a midwife wearing one—it would get in the way, horribly.  I don't remember candles, either, but they may have been an option.   I wonder how wide-spread that stereotype is.

It seems to me that hospital-based midwifery is providing the care that obstetricians gave in the 70s and 80s, back when our children were being born.  The practice of obstetrics has changed radically since then, as I wrote in Options in Childbirth.  All women should have legal access to home birth, free-standing birth centers, and midwives for whom medical intervention is a last resort rather than a first response, but Orange County's program is a good middle ground.

So far, the program, under way since last October, has had a cesarean rate of less than 10 percent and low percentage of low birth weight babies. The average cesarean rate is 30 percent for pregnant women who don't have pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure or HIV infection.

Not only does North Korea continue to flaunt its testing of nuclear explosives and ballistic missiles, but it has abrogated the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean war.

Since its nuclear test Monday, North Korea has issued a stream of harsh rhetoric, even declaring that the armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War is null and void.

The situation in North Korea, with what appears to be a madman brandishing nuclear bombs, will require more knowledge and wisdom than even President Obama's most ardent supporters can claim for him.  Hence the prayers; feel free to join me.

Who the Hell Writes Wikipedia, Anyway? is a refutation of the idea that "[t]he bulk of Wikipedia is written by 1400 obsessed freaks who do little else but contribute to the site."  That disparaging notion came about by looking at Wikipedia editing activity to see who made the most contributions to the project.  Therein is the problem: What is "most"?

[Aaron] Swartz analyzed percentage-of-text instead of number of edits, and what he found was slightly different: The bulk of the original content on Wikipedia is contributed by tens of thousands of outsiders, each of whom may not make many other contributions to the site. The bulk of the changes to the original text, then, are made by a core group of heavy editors who make thousands of tiny edits (the 1400 freaks).

When you put it all together, the story becomes clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing things like changing the name of a category across the entire site—the kind of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it's the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.

I find that reassuring; Wikipedia is useful and much better for finding the random information I look for than any other encyclopedia I've found. It's much like the news media:  great for getting information if you don't trust it overmuch.  In all the times I've actually known something from the inside about a news story, whether newspaper, magazine, or television report, it has been obvious that the story, as reported, was wrong.  Sometimes egregiously so, sometimes in minor detail, but never reliably correct.  So too with Wikipedia, as anyone who knows Old Saybrook, Connecticut, will attest upon reading the entry on Katharine Hepburn, which contains the following sentence:

On September 21, 1938, Hepburn was staying in her Old Saybrook, Connecticut beach home when the 1938 New England Hurricane struck and destroyed her house. Hepburn narrowly escaped death before the home was washed away over the cliffs.

Behold the cliffs....

It has been nearly five years since I honored here two family members who gave the "last full measure of devotion" in France during World War I:  Harry Gilbert Faulk and Hezekiah Scovil Porter, both of the 101st Machine Gun Battalion.  Today, for Harry I post a picture of the tree planted in his memory in Cypress Cemetery, Old Saybrook, Connecticut.  It has been a few years since World War I.

For Hez, these pages from Yale in the World War (George Henry Nettleton, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1925).

   

Here's another Memorial Day thought from Patrick Deneen, who reminds us that while politicians may send soldiers into battle for ideas and ideals, the soldiers themselves fight for something much more personal.

No soldier dies for a theory.  He dies on behalf of the people with whom he enters battle, seeking to save those whom he loves, to whom he feels a strong sense of duty, and for whom he is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.  Today, on this day of remembrance, we should recall not only the lives and deaths of the soldiers whom we rightly honor, but the right and proper grounds for their sacrifice, and keep in mind those reasons as we seek to defend, in our own less demanding ways, a nation of particular places, particular people, and particular memories.

I know why I write, but why do you read?

Because writing is an essential part of the way I think, and blogging is the best venue I've yet found, I'm not likely to stop posting here anytime soon.  However, as part of an ongoing analysis of the most productive use of my time, I'd appreciate your feedback very much.  Feel free to answer here, by name or anonymously, or if you prefer you can e-mail me.  Below are some questions that are burning in my mind, but don't let them limit you.

1. Which subjects and approaches make you eager to read the post?  Which do you read with only minor interest or skip altogether?   Book reviews?  News, commentary, and ideas I've found elsewhere and repost here?  My own commentary on various issues?  Stories about our everyday life, including travels?  Education, children and family issues, conservationist living, health topics, food, genealogy, computing problems/solutions, amusing comics and other fun stories? Short posts with links, or longer posts with quoted excerpts?
2. How often do you like to see new posts?  Does one/day overwhelm you?  Does one/week disappoint you?  How often do you visit?  Do you come by every day, hoping for something new?  Or do you check in via feedreader once a week and think, "Oh, no, there are too many"?  (If you say the latter I won't take it as an insult; I love the quality of most of the Front Porch Republic posts, but I can't handle the quantity.)
3. What, if anything, do you find of value here?  This is not quite the same question as #1.

Many thanks for your responses.  I don't know yet how I'll use them, but I'm sure they'll help in my deliberations.  Choosing good over bad may sometimes be difficult, but at least it's usually clear.  Deciding among several good things can be rather murky territory.

Wolfram|Alpha is in its infancy, and like any baby it can be quite cute.  Like this example Janet discovered while trying to figure out how much powdered (confectioner's) sugar is in a box.

As if I don't already have a huge backblog, Jon keeps posting things in Google Reader/Facebook that I think those who can't see them will be interested in.  In this case, since I can't comment at GeekDad, I'll comment here.

When GeekDad's son was 12 years old he entered his school's science fair, which called for inventing something new and useful.

[A]fter various aborted attempts and blind alleys, ;he' came up with the idea of a self-buttering toaster....The device Andy designed was intricate yet simple: a wood and steel construction that held a slice of bread at an angle in front of a carefully wound matrix of nichrome wire heating elements. While the bread toasted, the heat from the wires melted a glop of butter on a perforated metal holder positioned over the bread. The butter dripped through the holes and on to the toasting bread. Voila! There was a slice of automatically buttered toast....When the judges came to Andy’s table, the toaster worked perfectly. With self-assurance and a smile, he handed each judge a slice of warm, buttery Wonder Bread for a snack.

But when the winners were announced, Andy’s name wasn’t called. Crestfallen, he approached the judges and asked, “Why didn’t I get a ribbon?”  “Well, Andy,” said a judge, “we thought your machine was dangerous. After all, it uses electricity and it gets very hot.”  “Of course it does. It’s a toaster,” he protested. “It’s supposed to get hot and use electricity. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a toaster.” Unswayed by logic, the judges would not reconsider.

First place went to a girl who made a cap and vest for her hamster.

Further commentary would be superfluous, but I'll share one of our own frustrating experiences with science fairs.  I know that at higher levels kids are doing projects with names like ALPHA-Lipoic Acid: Towards a Novel Neuroprotective Treatment for Alzheimer's Associated Cognitive Dysfunction in a Drosophila Model, but how they get there from here is a mystery to me.

When Janet was in kindergarten, our school district, which is county-wide and consists of many elementary schools, held what they called a Curriculum Fair, including not ony science but also mathematics and social studies.  All students were required to participate on the local school level, and Janet chose mathematics.

Her project, which I suggested, was to consider the numbers 0 through 20, to write down all the combinations of two numbers whose sum was a given number, and to note how many such combinations there were for each number.  The work was all her own, and she discovered that, for each number, the number of com­binations was always one more than the number itself.  She also noticed that she could write the problems so that the first addend ran from 0 up to the number, and the second addend ran from the number down to 0.  She made observations, formed her hypotheses (how she loved the word "hypothesis”), and checked them for the remaining numbers, finding them to be true.  It was a fun and valuable project, and to my mind demonstrated true mathematical thinking at an appropriate level.

Her teachers thought so, too, and her work earned first place at the school level.  Not so the district judges, where she was given an "honorable mention."  It's difficult to comment on this without sounding like a ridiculous stage mom or helicopter parent, but I was offended more as a mathematician than as a mother.  There was no opportunity to talk with the judges and attempt to discern their logic, but based on their choice of winners they appeared to be impressed by surveys and charts.  In my admittedly not-so-humble opinion, Janet's was far and away the best kindergarten project there, certainly the only one that considered real mathematical questions and showed mathematical thinking.

Through this and other science fair experiences we learned to be content with the knowlege gained and not give much credence to the judgements of others, positive or negative.  But somewhere, somehow, our top students are finding reward and encouragment for high-quality work, even if it "uses electricity and gets very hot."