Cool bird stuff

Early last month, I wrote about how I won this cool iPod full of bird songs in a contest from 10,000 Birds. And then, HarperCollins, who sponsored the contest, by mistake sent me the book I hadn't won instead of the iPod I had won: The Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America. I let them know that they'd made the error, but I was so happy that they'd sent me the book that it barely mattered. Because the book is awesome. I took it to Martha's Vineyard with us, and as the kids can attest, I kind of went a little nuts. And I wrote about it in last week's KOA newsletter, thusly:

I'm having a new experience with my kids this summer, one I mentioned a few weeks ago: We received the awesome Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America book from a contest at 10,000 Birds, and have been going gangbusters with it. Okay, well, I have, and Madison and Ella are being swept along happily (as though they had a choice!).

Interesting to me is that my new experience of constantly trying to identify birds is remarkably like my experience of first learning physics as a teenager. (I know that sounds odd, but bear with me.) When I first started understanding physics, it was as though my eyes had suddenly been opened to a whole new world that had been all around me all the time: I saw everything in terms of motion, mass, and objects' relationships to each other. It was as though a new layer of mental life was suddenly available to me. My brain was busier, and happier.

Well, it's the same thing with birding. I'm still a total novice, but I (and the girls, to some extent) suddenly see a new dimension to the world. Before, we'd see something flying by, and our minds would barely register "bird." If we were lucky, we might identify "robin," "cardinal," "sparrow," and "starling." But now, something flies by, and we see beak shape, and wing span, and breast color, and flight pattern. Our brains are starting automatically to run through our list of what we know and what we don't know, comparing what we just saw with those birds we have identified as a result of this book. "Quick!" someone will say (and not always me). "Get the book before I lose the colors in my mind...let's see if we can identify what it is." Yesterday, Ella and I saw a towhee. I'd never heard of a towhee before we looked it up and determined that this was the bird. The point is, before a few weeks ago, I wouldn't even have noticed much beyond "bird." Now, the whole world is a-flying, and our brains are now attuned and enjoying it.

The fact is, all learning can be like this. No matter what new thing you decide to learn about, it will open up a whole new way of looking at the world. It can be birds. Or math, or anatomy, or politics, or training for a marathon, or orienteering, or jazz music, or WHATEVER. There is a real joy in applying oneself to something new, a joy that may leave many of us after we leave school (or even before we leave school). So I encourage you to find that something new to learn about with your kids, and show them not just that learning goes on forever, but that it adds rich layers to our lives.

Interestingly enough, now the 10,000 Birds folks want to publish this as a guest essay on 10,000 Birds! I just got the request from Mike, one of the editors, who coincidentally just moved to Rochester last month.

And, the iPod arrived today. It's amazing. But the weird thing is, it arrived with ANOTHER copy of the book. So I'm giving the new book away on KidsOutAndAbout.com. The HarperCollins publicity folks thought that was pretty cool.

Now I just have to find someone to send me an awesome binocular-camera, and I'll be all set. :-)

Happy Birthday, J.K. Rowling

Ms. Rowling, you have provided my daughter Madison with much joy, and me with a writing standard I can't hope to match. Happy 43rd birthday. I hope you're living the happy life you deserve.

A perfect day yesterday

With an unfinished book no longer hanging over my head, it was a perfect day at the beach yesterday. 81 degrees, low humidity, not a cloud in the sky, perfect surf.



Well, it was almost perfect: I applied the girls' sunscreen somewhat imperfectly (should have applied a third time), and so they're still groaning a bit this morning.

The water was awesome: Warm and welcoming and just surfy enough. I spent quite some time out in it, swimming around and floating. I marveled at how much easier it is to float in salt water. It seemed even easier than it has in the past, somehow...and then I remembered that the more fat cells you have, the more floaty you are...so I dispelled that thought quickly and just concentrated on the lovely up and down feeling. Up...and down...and up...and down...and OH MY GOD can it be true? Yes, it is...I've made myself seasick floating in the ocean! I had to swim frantically to shore, flop down on the nonundulating sand, and take some deep breaths to avoid barfing in front of all of the proper people on the beach.

That's one thing about Martha's Vineyard...people are so proper that going to the beach is quite a different experience than in, say, New Jersey. No swearing, no inappropriate behavior, that's just the way the people are. Didn't even see anyone smoking.

Oh, and we saw a SEAL about 40 yards off the shore. So cool. Wish I'd gotten a picture. But we did get photos of other unusual marine life:

Dance the samba with me, folks

The book is done. A Perfect First Draft.

(According to Anne LaMott, all first drafts are perfect first drafts.)

The Frontier Team. Midgrade novel. Eighteen chapters, 150 pages, 39,000 words. And hey, its protagonists are home-schooled, although that's not really the focus of the book.

Of course, now the work really begins. A month or so of editing, and then goodness knows how long to find a publisher.

But it's done. And fortunately, I love editing. It's the writing that's like bleeding. Editing is more like using Starfleet Medical gizmos to heal a scrape on the kneee.

Vigorously relaxing

Despite the clouds and rain here on Martha's Vineyard this week, we've been getting in birdwatching and beach time every day. I have gone a little nuts with bird identification thanks to my great new Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America book. I wrote in my KidsOutAndAbout.com newsletter yesterday that beginning birdwatching feels very like when I learned physics as a teenager; it opens up a rich new layer of the world around me that I hadn't known existed. Then, I suddenly saw everything in terms of motion, mass, and objects' relationships to each other. Now, I see the whole flying world in terms of beak shape, and wing span, and breast color, and flight pattern, and we all rush to open the book to figure out what it is. Ella and I saw an eastern towhee on Wednesday. I got a pair of binoculars with a digital camera in honor of having won the bird stuff, but it takes miserable photos, as you can see from this one, which is the best of them:



What can you expect, though, from a $29.99 pair of binocular cameras from CVS. That's a female pileated woodpecker, I think.

Anyway, we are relaxing with our customary vigor:

Investigating what gets into our snorkel masks:



Running away from the waves as the surf gets stronger:



Whining when the surf knocks us over:



Mugging the Ross Scowl into the camera:



Dashing frantically after our floaties when they get away from us in the wind:



And we don't let no stinkin' rain get us down when we want to walk through the cute little Victorian Methodist camp in Oak Bluffs:

Vining away...

We made it to Martha's Vineyard yesterday.

I was a packing goddess. I had lists. I checked things off. I got the car "vacation serviced" last week. I had all bits of clothing we own washed by Sunday afternoon. I "shopped at home first" to get together a box of food and staples in a way that would have made Cindy proud and which saved me having to pay Island prices for things I already had. I packed the car Sunday afternoon by referring to mental rules of geometry, fitting this into that seamlessly. All we had to do Monday morning was put in those last bags and get out of town.

Except we couldn't get out of town. I happened to suggest that we stop for bagels on the way out, and the car died, right there in the parking lot of the Bruegger's. The AAA guy used Sprite to dissolve some of the crystals fountaining out of our battery enough that he got us jumped and on our way to the mechanic. The mechanic was so embarrassed that he hadn't noticed the battery problem last week that he got us in and out of there pronto with a new battery. So, I am lucky I was craving a little carb action on the way out of Rochester, or we'd have been stranded somewhere on the Thruway until we got someone to install a new battery.

And then, today, our first full day at the Vineyard, we were all set to go to the beach. No matter that it was foggy, we were excited to get out there in the sand and surf. The girls had new noodles and snorkels packed very carefully in the pool bag. We had our beach towels and books. The camera was charged. We were ready.

Except that the Packing Goddess had forgotten to pack my bathing suit.

More on the Math Wars, from David

The following is from my husband David, industrial mathematician and professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, as a follow-up to my post below on the Math Wars article as addressed recently by CNN. He was, needless to say, less than pleased with the way the article addressed how New Math is being taught in American schools. Here are his thoughts on the matter:


Deb asked me to write a few comments on CNN's recent article on the Math Wars.

A few years ago, I argued against the recent trends in mathematics education in an article called The Math Wars, in which I present the thorough case against the approach promoted by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Please feel free to read that article, as I'm not going to rehearse the whole argument here.

I'll just summarize my thoughts on the CNN piece, which offers a "black-and-white" summary of the Math Wars:

They call it the Math Wars: The debate, at times acrimonious, over which way is best to teach kids math. In its most black-and-white form, it pits schools hoping to prepare kids for a new world against reluctant parents who feel that the traditional way is best and that their kids are being shortchanged.

The kids are being shortchanged. I say this as someone whose job it is to teach calculus to young adults who've just finished high school and are studying to become engineers or scientists, and as someone who has spent 20 years as an industrial scientist and an applied mathematician. High school graduates these days do not know the math that they need to know. The reason that they don't know it is that those who were responsible for teaching it to them didn't teach it to them.

The claim that schools that have done away with traditional mathematics instruction have done so because they want "to prepare kids for a new world" is ridiculous for many reasons. The most important is that the job of math educators is to get students to understand math, and the best way to understand math is to master the traditional algorithms.

That is: The best way to get students to understand math--the best way to get them to grasp the conceptual structure of mathematics, the best way to get them to integrate the whole structure of modern mathematics at the abstract level--is to have them learn, apply, master, and come to love precisely the traditional methods that the modern NCTM approach abhors. The position supported by Pat Cooney and Hank Kepner in the CNN article is not merely mistaken; it is diametrically opposed to the proper method for teaching students mathematical concepts.

My wife and are home schooling our daughters in large part to avoid their wasting time on this sort of nonsense.

The traditional approach has the wonderful, and useful, feature that students who have mastered the algorithms can actually do calculations. But its most important feature is that it provides the tools that students need in order to get inside the abstract structure of mathematics. For a detailed argument for my claim here, please see my Math Wars article. The CNN article discusses an admirable parent, Ms. Morey, who's teaching her son traditional math. She, bless her,

...feels no guilt. She says her son was relieved to learn long division. "He wants a quick and easy way to get the right answer,"

What this responsible parent probably doesn't know is that her son can not only divide numbers better than his teachers, he will probably grasp the nature of ratios and the operation of division and the structure of decimals--and, in the end, perhaps, how the solutions of certain differential equations reflect the quantitative facts of polymerization--because she taught him long division.

One problem, Cooney says in the CNN article, is that parents remember math as offering only one way to solve a problem.

"We're saying that there's more than one way," Cooney said. "The outcome will be the same, but how we get there will be different."

This what we call a straw man argument. The traditional approach to mathematics never involved the claim, implicitly or explicitly, that there is only one way to solve a problem. Everyone understands that there are special ways to solve special problems, quirky methods of multiplying by nine using that finger trick, multiplying 199 by 7 quickly by doing 200x7 then subtracting 7, and on and on and on and on.

But, in a serious sense, there is only one "way to solve a problem." That is, there is, e.g., exactly one universally applicable, perfectly reliable, optimally efficient, method for dividing one number by another: long division. And these qualities--universal applicability, reliability, efficiency--are precisely the qualities of good conceptual thought: They characterize what effective abstract thought is all about.

The author of the CNN article was provided with a typical sitting-duck example for the anti-traditional-algorithm approach:

Thus, when a parent is asked to multiply 88 by 5, we'll do it with pen and paper, multiplying 8 by 5 and carrying over the 4, etc. But a child today might reason that 5 is half of 10, and 88 times 10 is 880, so 88 times 5 is half of that, 440 - poof, no pen, no paper.

This, of course, is like the 199x7 example that I mentioned above. It's a special example. The propaganda for the NCTM approach is full of such examples. Let's amend it a smidgen:

Thus, when a parent is asked to multiply 838 by 37, we'll do it by multiplying 8 by 7, put down the 6 and carry the 5, and so on. But a child today might reason that...er...um...well...I'd better check with Ms. Cooney about this.

In the article, Pat Cooney is quoted as saying:

"The traditional way is really a shortcut,"..."We want kids to be so confident with numbers that it becomes intuitive."

Well, yes indeed. It's a shortcut. That's what conceptual thinking is all about. That's it! That's the reason that humans live the pleasant easy lives that we do and animals live, well, like animals: We have the cognitive shortcuts of conceptual thought, and they don't. If education isn't about shortcuts, that is, about cognitive efficiency, about effective abstraction, about methods of organizing our awareness of the world into manageable units, what is it about?

Is it about, as Ms. Cooney suggests...intuition!? Please note carefully what Ms. Cooney is saying. The traditional method, because it's a shortcut--by which she seems to mean that it's a reliable, efficient, universally applicable method for solving a large class of problems--is bad. Intuition, whatever that is, is better.

In fairness, I want to recognize that math folks often use the term "intuitive" to refer to methods and facts that have become thoroughly automatic; effortless. And, this automatic quality is an important feature of conceptual thought. But such automatic, effortless, awareness can only follow from thorough mastery of the traditional methods.

********************

Please feel free to send questions or comments to me at dsrsma@rit.edu.
___________________________________
David S. Ross, PhD
Professor, School of Mathematical Science
Rochester Institute of Technology

Guess I'm a renegade parent

CNN just posted a story about "renegade" parents teaching their kids "old math." (HT to Melissa Wiley.)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/07/18/renegade.math.parents.ap/index.html?eref=rss_latest

One problem with the article, of course, is that there is no mention of whether the New Math works, and as my mathematician husband David can tell you from the college professor's standpoint, it most certainly does not.

David and the chair of his department at the Rochester Institute of Technology started a brand-new Summer Math Institute which they hosted for local high school math teachers (public and private) a few weeks ago. It's been obvious to the folks at RIT for a while that the math that kids need to succeed in math and science in college is not what kids are currently being taught by the New York State Standards. Interestingly, teachers understand this and are extremely frustrated by it. So this seminar, which RIT designed through lots of conversations and meetings with high school math teachers during this past year, showed teachers what kinds of math students are learning in college, how engineers and other scientist use math in their jobs, and what kids need to know before they get to RIT. RIT is a second-tier engineering school, not the top tier, so its students--while they may differ from others in that incoming students actually want to be scientists--are more representative of B-average students that public schools are turning out. And, they don't know math.

The seminar was a resounding success. I was pleased to hear that high school teachers care about this stuff, enough that they gave up a week of their vacation to learn about it. And, David says, they were very willing to integrate their new knowledge into how they teach their kids and what they emphasize, even though, of course, they can't change the New York State Standards. Of course, I was not pleased enough about this actually to send my kids to school. But it illuminates how very bad it is for mathematics to be run by a small committee at the top of a government structure.

I have been trying to persuade David and the department that they should be going further with this. Yes, the SMI has started and is already very successful. But they should also be establishing the RIT Mathematics Standards tutorials and exams for high school and incoming college students, which should be developed independently of the public school system, for subjects going back to algebra. They could be marketed to those high school students and homeschoolers who want to ensure that they know what they need to know in order to succeed in college science and math. They can market them like the Achievement Tests, to give students a commonly-accepted certification that they have attained a certain level of knowledge, for business and colleges to review as part of interviews/entrance exams.

I believe, of course, that home schoolers would generally wipe the floor with the public school students, like they do on the spelling bees. But I mostly think that it's an awesome way to draw attention to general educational deficiency in the U.S. without RIT having explicitly to point fingers at public schools. People will draw their own conclusions, and this may help state departments of education sit up and take notice.

UPDATE: David has just posted a more detailed analysis on another post here on this blog, entitled More on the Math Wars.

Say howdy!

Hi! It looks as though readership of this blog has recently doubled...from the longstanding ~five readers to TEN WHOLE READERS. I installed the free SiteMeter functionality to this blog, and was fascinated to see readers from a couple of locations that I don't recognize. So...Do I know you? Phoenix? Michigan? California? Anyway, welcome!

This blog mostly provides a way for me to record Madison and Ella's progress through life. Since they were born, David and I have been writing a Book of Madison and a Book of Ella. I copy the posts to separate files periodically, and David writes privately. We'll combine our observations and bind it into books for each of their 18th birthdays. So, you may not find everything you read here to be interesting or relevant. I never particularly intended this to be insightful public commentary or anything--those who regularly read what I write publicly on KidsOutAndAbout might find themselves shocked, and that wouldn't be too good for business. On the other hand, if you find what I write pithy or inspiring, well, great!

If you unknown readers care to drop me a line just to introduce yourselves, send it to ross@axton.com.

Beginning of the end of an era

Ella, who is 7, breastfed until she was 2 1/2. She's always loved sleeping with us, and I attribute the remarkable closeness she and I have partly to these two facts. She is snuggly, oh my how that child is snuggly. And it's always been nice how she likes to sleep with us. She sometimes starts out there and stays all night, and if she starts out in her own bed, or if at any time we move her to her own bed, back she comes at some point in the middle of the night. This habit was solidified when David had moved back up here to Rochester in late 2006 and I stayed behind in Virginia to sell the house. Three months of blissful sleeping with Mommy, for Ella.

I have a daily snuggling quotient, it seems, and Ella fulfills that, with much joy all around.

But. The girl has been in a growth spurt lately. Couple that with the fact that it's summer, and Ella (unlike Madison) radiates body heat. And also the fact that in her sleep she will fling her arms around you, or twine her legs through yours. Nice, but not very restful.

So. It's time.

She has chosen the prize she will get (four plastic coconut cups she's been coveting at Target) when she makes it to 7 nights in her own bed. She got the concession from us that if she comes in, in the middle of the night, we'll walk her back to her room and tuck her back in. (Not so restful as letting her cuddle in, but necessary.) She's on Day 5 and last night she made it all the way through in her own bed without coming in. Only 2 more days.

My baby! :-( Very bittersweet, for me.

On the other hand, last night I got great sleep and today I'm working like heck to finish my book this week, before we go on vacation.

Ella in 2002:



Ella in 2003:


Ella in 2008:

Worthwhile to post the poem, too

Here is a translation of the poem "Stream of Life," by Rabindranath Tagore, which Siddique adapted for "Dancing."

Stream of Life
by Rabindranath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.



----------------------
You can see the lyrics of the song in Bengali, as adapted by Garry Schyman and Palbasha Siddique for the song "Praan" (which you can download from Amazon.com or iTunes) on this YouTube.

I hope they're getting rich.

You must see this video: Dancing with Matt

Today, I learned how to embed a YouTube video in this blog just so I could bring it to anyone who has not happened to see it yet. It is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. I keep wishing it were longer than four-and-a-half minutes.

I found a really interesting article about it here. Notice the poem translation on the right side. The girl singing, Palbasha Siddique, is a Bengali girl who lives in Minneapolis. She's only 17!

David's favorite part is in the Demilitarized Zone, Korea. There's also a clip from Central Park, where we had our first date.

Green green green engineering camp

Madison came home from camp yesterday, smiling again at me in that way.

"Okay, guess what we talked about TODAY at engineering camp?" she asked.

"Oh, gee, did you save whales?" I asked.

"Nope."

"Refuse to cut down trees?"

"Worse."

"What could be worse?"

"Organic food, of course. Did you know," she continued, mock-innocently, "that organic food has more minerals. Yep. That's what they told us. More minerals. That's why it's better for us. So it's time to start buying organic food, Mom. Right? Or we'll all start dying soon."

I groaned.

"Aren't you going to bang your head against the wall again?" she encouraged.

I complied.

I guess it really IS Beatles week

...because Laura has a new review of the family board game Ticket To Ride up on the KidsOutAndAbout.com web site.

This is one of her family's favorite games.

It's not the end of the world, Ella!

Oh, wait, I guess maybe it IS the end of The World...



This is the big cardboard book we use every morning to identify where the birthday of the day comes from. This was no one's fault (heh, heh...just a little tectonic plate humor for you there). It just came apart tonight due to years of enthusiasm.

Thank goodness for clear packing tape, because there is no way we're giving THIS book up anytime soon.

Rewind idea

I just love this idea from Mrs. Hannigan's blog: Have a magic invisible rewind remote control device floating somewhere near you, which you can pluck out of the air at any moment, point at the children, and direct them to rewind and try that more time, this time properly. She swears it works:
http://mrshannigan.blogspot.com/2008/07/wait-rewind.html

Update: It just worked with Ella. Just after lunch, it was time to start looking at the patterns in the 7 times table and she started moaning about it. "Wait!" I said, pulling the rewind device out of the air. I pointed it at her and said, "Rewind!" and made that sound that you always associate with rewinding but which is not reproducible on screen... and she giggled and tried a better response.

With a wink and a glint of a smile

Madison told me that large chunks of the engineering camp that she's currently in are replete with environmentalist junk science.

She's got such a good, smiley attitude about it; it doesn't bother her at all. She's extremely good about dissecting the doomsday junk. ("Don't use hair dryers, don't use air conditioning, get your parents to use fans instead, because global warming is drowning the polar bears".... Really. Not kidding.)

David can't decide whether to write a polite note to the director of the camp. He's fairly incensed that HIS university, an engineering university, is propagating this crap when they should be doing, well, engineering. (To be fair, they do one bona fide engineering project each day and Madison is enjoying it.)

It really doesn't bother her, it kind of amuses her, and if she wasn't herself able to separate the garbage from the worthwhile stuff in her good old mental recycling bins, I might be encouraging David to write away. But I think he should wait until after the camp to do so. She's fine, the kids are nice, the counselors are nice, she's having fun, and she knows gloom-and-doom stupidity when she hears it. And, frankly, she likes being able to come home and see how many of my buttons she can push by describing it.

But yes, I think David should write a note when it's all over, unless they shape up pronto.

Ringo

Today's Birthday of the Day was Ringo Starr. So we did a lot of Beatles facts today at breakfast.

Each evening at dinner, it's the girls' job to remember the facts; for each one, they get a nickel. You know: When was he born, where was he born, what did he do, can you name the Beatles song that was Mom and Dad's wedding theme ('Til There was You), etc.

In answer to the question "What was the Beatles' nickname?" there was dead silence for a few moments.

Then Ella ventured a guess. "The Four Short Guys?"

Damned girls

No, not MINE. My girls are not damned.

But those other 'tweenie twits, damn them.

Okay, it's not quite so bad as that. Yet. I'm borrowing the trouble from a future whose inklings have only just started rearing their ugly little coifed heads.

(Have you ever seen a metaphor as badly mixed as that one? Almost certainly not.)

The inklings were around last week, in the form of Isabelle. Or Isobel. I don't care how she spells her name.

She was a 9- or 10-year-old at the drama camp where Madison spent her days last week. And she was nasty. Nasty to mine, on Tuesday, as well as to other girls, as Madison reports. For example, Madison asked nicely if she could sit next to Izzie at lunch, and the little wench glared and snarled, "Don't you dare." Madison was a little freaked by it. Not traumatized, mind you, not enough so that it was the very first thing that she reported about the day. But it WAS the second thing. And the girl talked nastily about the "other Madison" in my Madison's group. ("No one likes her. Don't YOU go being friends with her.")

So Madison and I had several talks about it Tuesday night, all of the "hold your head up, you don't need to stand there meekly while people give you crap, this is HER problem not yours, here is how you need to think..." and generally pep-talking her into some backbone. Madison asked me to have the counselor keep an eye on the perp on Wednesday morning. So I did. ("Yeah, we noticed she's a little spitfire," said the counselor. "We'll keep a closer eye today so that we make sure everyone has a good experience this week.")

And then...

Seems that the backbone pep talk worked, too well.

"Guess who I ate lunch with," said Madison after I picked her up on Wednesday. "Isobel! She asked me to sit with her, and I thought it would be rude to say no...actually I was kind of afraid she would be mean to me if I didn't but mostly it was that I didn't want to be rude...so I did. I gave her my chocolate, too."

It didn't even occur to my Madison that she could really be hurting the Other Madison and anyone else to whom Isobel had been mean, just by sitting with her.

I could see, suddenly, so clearly, how these things get started with the girls. One bad apple and then a lot of misinterpretations and confusion about how to navigate these things.

I did tell her something that I'd never needed to emphasize before: It is not rude to politely avoid people who are mean to others, and in fact REALLY not rude if you point it out to them that they're being mean. And, when you notice someone being mean habitually, you ABSOLUTELY do not play with them. Ever. You play with the people they're being mean to, unless of course you don't like those people either. And we never give them chocolate.

I wanted to shake the mean girl. I wanted to skip the next seven years for Madison and land her nicely on the other side, where it's easy to not care about the popular girls. But I didn't want to make too big a fuss about it, because then it would be sure to loom larger than life in Madison's mind. So on Thursday, the final day, I didn't even ask who Isobel was at the performance for the parents. And that was that.

What I didn't say to Madison was that starting almost exactly at her age, there were girls from the fourth grade through the twelfth grade who thoroughly scorched my soul with their nastiness. I'm still bitter, 30 years later. My baby cannot, WILL NOT, damn it, become one of those people. But as I saw last week, the subtleties of it are just so hard to negotiate when you're young and inexperienced, and nice.

Fortunately, these next two weeks she's at Engineering Camp at RIT. I'm hoping she finds some friends-forever soulmates among the brainy geek computer types like her.

Great, gorgeous independence

We had a wonderful Fourth of July. Our dear friends were up from Pennsylvania to join us on our annual pilgrimage to Brown's Berry Patch. That's about a 45-minute drive from Rochester, which is significant around here because we're spoiled with getting anywhere within 20 minutes. Waterport is midway between Rochester and Buffalo, out in the middle of nowhere. It not only has great cherries and strawberries and raspberries and blueberries to pick, but a terrific little "Barnyard Adventure" playground/maze/farm animal section for which they charge about $3.50 per person to play as long as you want. Awesome little store inside, too.

Since we go there every year on July 4, I had the idea a month ago to ask Farmer Brown's daughter, who is in charge of publicity, if they would be willing to offer a free pass into the Barnyard Adventure for all KidsOutAndAbout.com readers. I'd create the coupon and people would need to print one for each person.

I'd had the idea, I confess, mostly because I knew that we'd be going, and I wanted to save our family the extra $14. So, quite self-interested. But of course, I wanted it to have the effect of bringing lots of readers out to Brown's. And they thought it was a great idea. But little did I expect it to have quite the effect it did. Apparently, there were literally hundreds of people out there in Waterport using their coupons to get in. The people in front of us into the Barnyard Adventure had one. So did the people in back of us. I saw two coupons blowing over the ground in the wind. And then when I was in line to pay for my cherries, Mrs. Brown found me and hugged me, and someone else recognized me, and then there was a chorus of "Oh, that's you? Hi! I read your web site!" and "That's why I'm here!" all around me. Very odd. Fun, though. I felt great. I love the idea that it brought them so much business. Mrs. Brown said that it's been a very slow season so far because of fuel costs, and she was totally lit up to see the crowds there on Friday. It was a gorgeous day, too...so, to be fair, I'm sure Mother Nature had more to do with the crowds than my coupon. But still.

A little idea, a few minutes creating and posting a coupon, a mention in the newsletter...and then, crowds of people out there having a blast, saving money, and picking pounds of cherries with their kids...and a huge profit (at least I hope) for the worthy folks at Brown's Berry Patch. You gotta love capitalism.

Here are some photos of the girls and Dario:





Ella picking cherries:


Madison picking cherries:


A few of the best people in the whole world:


Tony and Tatiana are from Cuba, and there is nothing like spending Independence Day with them. They are so INTO it. The cherry orchard is like what everyone imagines paradise to be...handfuls of the sweetest fruit just there for the picking. Unimaginable under a communist dictatorship. Tatiana said it brought out the Cubana in her whenever one of the cherries hit the ground--painful, the idea of it being wasted when so few people there get adequate nutrition.

And then an afternoon of cooking and making cherry ice cream, and fireworks at Harris Whalen Park with a couple of other dear Objectivist friends, Tom and Susan. One of those great, uncomplicated, satisfying days.

Creeping closer to that magic "I love reading" day...

Ella had a first this morning.

It was Sunday, so it was an eat-breakfast-when-and-what-and-how-you-feel-like-it kind of morning. I was working on the laptop at the dining room table.

Ella poured herself some cereal, got a spoon, and then, lo and behold, brought out a chapter book and stuck it into this plastic book-holder-upper thing that will allow you to read while you're eating (probably meant for cookbooks). And then, without comment, she flung herself down next to me and started reading as she munched. It was Flat Stanley. I sent a silent message of gratitude to Jeff Brown.

10,000 Birds iPod contest...believe it or not...

Well, our birding horizons have just been dramatically expanded because...

...We won the big contest from 10,000 birds.

Yes, we...me, Madison, and Ella! If you click on the link you can see Charlie's daughter's jammy finger pointing to our name on his laptop! We won an iPod from HarperCollins, just LOADED with bird songs. Charlie emailed me today to tell me that we'd won. Yay to HarperCollins for donating the iPod! Yay to 10,000 Birds for hosting the contest!


Each day for 10 days, Charlie posted a fragment of a post from 10,000 Birds, and each day we got to search through the site, identify the URL of the post that the fragment came from, and send that URL to Charlie in the hopes of winning one of 10 Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America that 10,000 Birds was giving away. Day by day, we searched, found, and sent in that day's URL. But we didn't win a book.


But...there was more to the contest. If we diligently collected the first letter of that post each day, then the 10 letters could be rearranged to form the name of a species of North American bird. And so before June 30, we were to send Charlie all 10 URLs and the name of the bird.

The name of the bird was BLUETHROAT. Isn't he cute?

He lives in western Alaska.

We cannot wait to get that iPod. Ella, in particular, is just going to go nuts with it. And so am I!