Wordless Wednesday: Arboretum

Air and Space

 September really is the time to hit the big Smithsonian museums without the crowds.  Last week we went to Air and Space, something we skipped last year.

We had to touch the moon rock, of course!

And we always love their hands on demonstrations of the principles of flight.

Here Zorg and Leena are helping to demonstrate how the airfoil shape helps provide lift.


 And we had fun in their little Cessna.


Actually, we had a LOT of fun in their Cessna.

It's one of the few times we've been there where there wasn't a line waiting for turns.


We did some space stuff, too.  We went through the Skylab at least twice (some of us more). 

Klenda, Zorg and Leena found a docent with parts of real space suits who enjoyed chatting with them about how everything worked.

One of the nice things about being home schooled is that you can be interested and ask questions.  My experience in school was pretty different.

All the docent/reenactors/museum people I've seen love to talk to people who are genuinely interested, and, since there weren't many people around, the Zoomlians got to ask as many questions as they wanted.

They left the docent with a big smile!

We also saw the new (to us) exhibit on navigation.  They started with sextants, and went up through GPS - it was a fascinating exhibit!

Mums the Word

Yes, I know the autumnal equinox is still a week away, but it must be Fall: the mums are here!


I had a Behnkes gift certificate and a coupon, both burning a hole in my pocket!

I always pick  mums that are just starting to bloom so that I can watch them open up.

My doorway will get prettier and prettier for the next month or more!

And, of course, that meant it was time to get the Fall tablecloth out.

And I grabbed some bulbs for Spring...

Yes, I know, I did plant more than 300 bulbs last year.  And they were fabulous!

These were to plant for my folks when I go visit next!


Although I always wonder if I can't squeeze a few more bulbs in somewhere around here...

Maybe a few more fancy tulips.  I love fancy tulips!

And daffodils, I love daffodils!

And that is how I get into trouble!

You know what else I like?

Bonsai!  Behnke's now has hundreds of bonsai, including these beautiful groves.  Their bonsai master is amazing!

At least I know I am not in the time of my life for bonsai.

Probably.

Poem of the Week

Hazel Tells Laverne

last night
im cleanin out my
howard johnsons ladies room
when all of a sudden
up pops this frog
musta come from the sewer
swimmin aroun an tryin ta
climb up the sida the bowl
so i goes ta flushm down
but sohelpmegod he starts talkin
bout a golden ball
an how i can be a princess
me a princess
well my mouth drops
all the way to the floor
an he says
kiss me just kiss me
once on the nose
well i screams
ya little green pervert
am i hitsm with my mop
an has ta flush
the toilet down three times
me
a princess

By Katharyn Machan
HT: Ithaca College
Picture by Mr. Jack

Happy Birthday, Zorg!

 Zorg is Fourteen!

We celebrated with a light saber party with friends.  They did real combat with our armory of plastic light sabers (I thought we would ask people to bring them, but then discovered that we owned seven of them ourselves!).

Then they did a light saber tournament with the Wii U.

And we had a Death Star cake.

 And a Death Star Pinata, courtesy of Klenda.

Whacked open with a light saber, naturally!

It was a great party, and then, a few days later, we had a family party on his actual birthday.

More cake!

More fun!

Fourteen Amazing Things About Zorg

1. He has the heart of a hero.  Better not pick on anyone while he is around!

2. He's a Star Scout (that's 2 away from Eagle Scout).

3.He's my lucky Chuzzle. 

4.  He's really fast!

5. He's on Harry Potter Book 7.  This may seem more impressive when I tell you our kids don't start Harry Potter until they're 13!

5. He's a good and loyal friend.

6. Fasting for daily Mass= no problem.  His stomach doesn't wake up for breakfast until at least 9 am (we eat at 6:30 am).

7. He has an amazing sense of direction.

7. He's a natural mathematician.

8. He likes to help the younger scouts (and siblings!).

9.  He's very good at teaching and explaining things.

9. He's vary curious about the world and how things work.

10.  He's an astoundingly hard worker.  Me: Mumpy and Pa need some coal shoveled. Zorg: Sure, how many tons?

11. He's a fearfully good light saber duelist.

11. He's always willing to lend a hand.

12. He has a quirky sense of humor.

13. He can do the impossible.  Choclo asked him to do something impossible, and he drew these squares that look round.

14. He does hard things well with a good attitude.

14. He's very tough, very hard working, and very loving: he's going to be a good man.

More Mongolia

 We've been having more fun with Mongolia.  We've found we really like Mongolian food!  These are Grilled Mongolian Pork Chops - yum!

And Leena built me a yurt!  She made the walls out of the red bricks, the central pole out of our carpet sweeper, and the canopy out of a sheet.

It was big enough for several small people to play inside.Just like in a real ger, sunlight filtered in through the canopy, so it was fairly bright inside.




We also watched this great video of a real ger (yurt) going up.  They call it an instant house, and, I have to admit, it's more like a house than a tent.

On the Loose with Choclo and Oob

 The older kids were touring the National Gallery with an artist friend, so I took Choclo and Oob off to visit the Natural History Museum.

To get there, we passed through the sculpture garden, always a fun thing!

Here they are, thinking, with "The Thinker."

Yes, it is a giant rabbit homage to Rodin's Thinker.

Well, we thought about it, anyway.

 With just the younger boys, I thought it would be nice to spring for tickets to the butterfly enclosure.  What a win!

The first few weeks in September, there are very few people at the Smithsonian museums.  The tourists have gone, but the school groups haven't started yet.

 Choclo discovered that this little butterfly liked him very much.

How much?

It wanted to stay on him the entire time, and it kept licking his head!

 Choclo was quite charmed!

Oob found a butterfly on the floor, and got to pick it up and hold it with a paint brush.  There really is something magical about butterflies, isn't there?

After that we toured the insect zoo.  We got to hold a variety of creepy crawlies (horn worms, large grasshoppers, hissing cockroaches, strange beetles), and even got to see a tarantula have lunch.

That was neat!  We've been to 3 or 4 tarantula feedings, but this was the first time we saw one actually eat.  They usually eat once a week, but can go months without being hungry.

 Then we passed through the mummy section.  I've never been sure why it's next to the insect zoo, but it is.

We were very interested in their animal mummies: they have cats, falcons, crocodiles, and a (large) bull.  We also liked the shabtis and the canopic jars, but we did NOT like the unwrapped mummies.

Choclo, I think, is concerned about the ick factor.  I don't like it because I think it's not respectful to the dignity of the person who was mummified. They are still real bodies of real people (who did not consent to being unwrapped and looked at by random people).

So off we went, around the corner to the (animal) skeletons.  I was looking at the ray skeletons (interesting cartiladge!), when Choclo and Oob urged me to "Get the camera, it's Gamera!"

 We had a lot of fun looking at the different skeletons.  They group them together so that you can see the relationships.  This giraffe skeleton was near camel and bison skeletons.

Most interesting to me was the kangaroo skeleton: the foot bones are not at all what I thought they'd be like.  There is one big toe (and tarsal) with a smaller on on one side, but then the side toward the center of the animal has two wispy looking toes that look more like the wing bones of birds.  Very strange! Now I need to Google kangaroo feet: maybe they don't look the way I've always pictured them?

Lastly, we got a look at the Rex Room, the room where they are assmbling the new T Rex skeleton.  They are scanning and making models of some of the bones, and they had a 3D printer there showing how they were doing things.

If you look closely, there may be a Dr. Who fan on the loose...

UPDATE: on the kangaroo feet, yes, the medial (inner) toes  are nothing like I had imagined.  I am completely stumped as to why their feet are like that.  I would say that the inner two toes are vestigal, but then what happened to the fifth tarsal and toe?  They do have 5 fingers, so how is this arrangement beneficial? Here's a sketch, the one on the left is a normal kangaroo, the right is a tree kangaroo:

Poem of the Week

A poem from Mongolia by B. Ogderel

The Sound of Pigeons in Flight

The sound of pigeons in flight
is the everyday beauty of the sky.
Like something which the wind has received,
the birds’ bright shapes are alive upon the wind.
Wheeling round, they come to earth,
better than amazement at a silent death,
and a mind of love and prayer is born.
I have seen no doubt in birds’ bodies.
The eyes of humans, alive as the birds, are bright.
A word wound, like an arrow wound, in their breasts.
In them, there is no desire for an arrow wound.
These dear people, like the birds, are shining, separate.
So the death of humans is secret and sweet.
They have a hidden and an ordinary joy, as though traveling to Heaven.
It is not base, not sad, not regrettable.
Around us, the deserters farewell them in prayer,
and, while the behaviors of birds and humans are different,
still, at the time of death, an image and the mind
are seen as a single path.
To leave the sinful earth is but one act.

Read more: http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/the-sound-of-pigeons-in-flight#ixzz3CdtmAkH2

The Big Trip Lives!

And we are off from Japan to Mongolia!
 
I had a friend who was actually getting to go to Mongolia, and was ...not excited that she "had" to go.  When she found out how excited I was for her (after she realized I was not being sarcastic) she asked me why she should be excited about going to Mongolia. Here's why:

Five Awesome Things About Mongolia

1. They have gers (also called yurts).  They are like tents, if tents were real houses with stoves, lights, and comfortable beds.  If I had a ger, I would be actually happy to go camping.

2. My Dad used to bring me bronze Mongol arrowheads when he was passing through various areas the Mongols had conquered.  I ended up with a collection that ranged from very old, leaf shaped sand cast arrowheads with an imperfect alloy, to shiny, sleek, triple edged, barbed ones. It sparked an interest in Genghis Khan that lasts to this day.

He's probably the person that I most interested in that I would not like to meet. I'm not applauding that he conquered a third of the world and came close to wiping Europe off the map, but the forging of his nation and his brilliant military and political mind are fascinating.  Something like a third of all people in Mongolia are descended from the Great Khan, making him the Father of His Country on many levels.

3.. I've always had a keen interest in falconry.  In Mongolia, they still hunt for with birds of prey.  But they aren't using falcons to hunt rabbits.  Oh, no.  In Mongolia, they use eagles.  To hunt wolves.  I kid you not.

4. Two hump camels.  Have you seen The Story of the Weeping Camel?  If not, it's really worth seeing, for the camels, of course, but also for the beautiful insight into the lives of a four generation family of nomadic herders. It started out as a National Geographic special on camel herders, but then something extraordinary happened, and they caught it on film.

 Also caught on film, the breathtaking beauty of The Land of Blue Skies.  But, back to the camels: have you ever ridden a one hump camel?  If not, can you picture yourself perched up on the hump?  Now think of riding a two hump camel.  Nuff said.

5. There are other great things about Mongolia: the horses, archery, art, and so on, but, for me, it's comes down to this: it's the ultima thul, the farthest "far away" place.

Whenever my Dad parked in the furthest spot in the parking lot (as he was wont to do) and I complained (as I was wont to do), he told me it wasn't Outer Mongolia.  That's possibly true (it was really far away) but Outer Mongolia really is Outer Mongolia!

So far, we've arrived in Ulan Bataar and we will be going out to tour part of the steppe, watch a horse race, and stay in a ger.

Total cost to date: $42,878

Need a Smile?

She doesn't actually wear glasses!

Leena has started her own blog: For Those About to LOL!

She's posting  funny videos, pictures, jokes, riddles, or limericks on a daily schedule, so be sure to stop by whenever you need a chuckle (I'm putting in a link at the top left).

Today she posted Marcel the Shell, which is funny both in itself, and because Leena does a dead on Marcel imitation!

I have also done a minor blog redesign, and an overhaul on all the links in the sidebars.  I've pruned the dead links, added some new fun stuff, and done a little rearranging.

Have fun!