Wordless Wednesday: Aquarium

Poem of the Week: Beyond the Red River

Beyond the Red River

By Thomas McGrath

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,

And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass

Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,

Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,

A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses

Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping

An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.

My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.

I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,

Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.

HT: Poetry Foundation

Wordless Wednesday: Early Fall in NJ

NJ Trip

 Finally got away to see my folks in NJ this past weekend and I brought my mom this fine war llama.  I mean it's a llama in shining armor- who wouldn't love that?!

I think I mentioned that my mom kept sneaking sheep into my car every time I visited her, so the last few times I went up, I kept sneaking her this llama.  Unfortunately she almost always snuck it back in my car before I left.

You might think, "Why don't you just check your car before you leave?"  Because she's VERY GOOD AT HIDING THINGS! 

Anyway, she loved the llama and actually kept it, so I figured I'd won this round.  Silly me!

Halfway through the weekend I found this creepy sheep stuck under some large fragile objects (in my car) that would be a huge pain to unpack.

Well, at least I knew what she was up to.

In other news, my dad had a really nice retirement party.

They gave him this cool poster and this neat carved wooden plaque.

 And this clock. I know clocks are a traditional  retirement gift, but this one is pretty special: it's built into a landmine! 

Do I need to say the mine is inert?  It is.  It's a clock, not a time bomb.

Anyway, I got to spend some time with my dad going through lots of special stuff in the house.  Not bombs or fuzes, more personal stuff.

It's always fascinated me that my dad had such an interesting and creatively challenging job, but in his spare time he spent a lot of time making things.

Now I recognize that he was making art, really.

 This is a piece of plaster that he poured, then carved into a bas relief.  I presume it's some historically accurate soldier.

He was always reading history and poetry, and making things like this.  He made an astonishingly beautiful copper etching that was a replica of a Medieval knight's sarcophagus.

He also carved wood, did pottery, wood and metal working- a little bit of everything.

My mom also did pottery, macrame, weaving, sewing and other stuff.

 That's all besides their work raising kids, helping people, and doing a ton of work on their "fixer upper" house.

 It's really not surprising that both my brother and sister became professional (if part time) artists: there was a lot of creativity going around our house!

This is a recent painting my sister did that I just love!


 And my mom continues to creatively surprise me. 


24 hours after I got back I discovered that she had stashed a second creepy sheep in my car!!

Seriously!  It's not like she's sneaking them into my huge van, this is the teeny tiny car!

How is she even doing this!!??

Poem of the Week: The Beautiful Changes

The Beautiful Changes

By Richard Wilbur

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides   

The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies

On water; it glides

So from the walker, it turns

Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you   

Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed   

By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;   

As a mantis, arranged

On a green leaf, grows

Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves   

Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says   

They are not only yours; the beautiful changes   

In such kind ways,   

Wishing ever to sunder

Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose   

For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

HT: Poetry Foundation

Happy Birthday to the Emperor!

 He was given this very elegantly wrapped gift (it's plain white paper decorated by Klenda).


And this not so elegantly wrapped gift (I just draped some fabric over it)!

And we celebrated with family and friends and all had a marvelous time!



Happy birthday, dear Emperor: I'm sure I could come up with a list of that many things that are wonderful about you, but it would take too long to type it up!

Awesome Geography: Mexico

We are taking a trip around the world with our Awesome Geography class!  Yes, we have done this a bit before, but I think I'll have an easier time with follow through as a class with other families.

The format is that we do a country a week, doing whatever study and activities each family wants to do, then we meet up Friday morning and do an art activity, an active activity, and food from that country.


Yes, it does sound a bit like Awesome History...

At any rate, we have the big advantage of having people with actual ties to some of the countries we are studying!

My friend, Shelli, is half Mexican, half German, and married a Swiss guard when she was living in Italy.  She's half of our first semester!

Anyway, we started in Mexico, making a pinata as our art activity.  The kids loved this, not least when she filled it with tamarind chili candy and let them have at it!

Breaking the pinata could have counted as our active activity, but she also had brought some beautiful wooden toys from Mexico, and the kids had fun with them, too.  We had been planning to also do marbles (a game she played a lot while visiting her grandmother in Mexico City every summer), but the kids hadn't seen each other in a
while and they just started playing...




For our snack, we had cut up fruit with pico fruta.  It's chili pepper with salt, sugar, and...lime?  I think the stuff I had used citric acid, but traditionally it would be lime juice, I think.

We let people put on as much or little as they wanted, and, for me, it was addictive!

Sooooo good: sweet/sour/salty/spicy all at once!

Evidently it's often sold as street food in Mexico city, usually with mangoes.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Geography Now!  We used their Mexico video and their Geography GO! Mexico! video, and we loved them.  We've been watching a lot of his videos and I loved Choclo's comment, "All those countries have real people in them doing real stuff!"  Yes, my boy, they do!

More Fun with Dry Ice

 Since we had extra dry ice from the Astronomy class, the Zoomlians had fun experimenting.

We looked at putting the dry ice into water, alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide.

The alcohol was interesting because the bubbles were smaller (alcohol has less surface tension).

The hydrogen peroxide was interesting because it seemed to bubble at a faster rate.

One thing we found was that it's easier to see how much gas the dry ice is giving off if you capture it in bubbles - a simple matter of adding a bit of soap.

This also showed what was up with the hydrogen peroxide.  Some of the bubbles were misty with the cold CO2 coming directly from the dry ice.

But some of the bubbles were clear oxygen from the hydrogen peroxide breaking down into oxygen and water!

Then we took the rest of the dry ice outside where it was warm and humid.

It was lots of fun to watch the dry ice sublime in the breeze!

Wordless Wednesday: Astronomy Class, Dry Ice Comets and Fun