Dress Like a Penguin Day

We here at Mariposario have designated October 30, 2008 as Dress Like a Penguin Day. We are wearing black and gray and white and have orange-colored things near our throats. We waddle. We squawk sporadically. Ella sat on my feet.

This is in honor of the fact that Madison has somehow come to grips with the fact that the stuffed emperor penguin whom she thought was her beloved penguin Sheila was in fact Ella's beloved penguin Jeffrey. This has been a many-week saga, believe me.


October 30 is also John Adams' birthday. He was born in 1735 and so would have been 274 today if he hadn't, you know, died 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration (the same day as Thomas Jefferson).

Despite the fact that John Adams also seems to be celebrating Dress Like A Penguin Day, these two facts are unrelated.

Half-birthday and birthday of the day

Today is Ella's half-birthday, and ever since last week when I told her that this Wednesday she'd be 7-and-a-half, she has been excited about it and counting the days. The reason she's excited is that I told her that we could celebrate a little. She immediately knew what she wanted to do: She wanted to go to Burger King and get an i-Dog. What is this thing? I don't know. But it proves one thing: Madison and Ella have been watching commercial television, and they seem confidently well-informed about the whole deal. Madison has been politely skeptical of the fact that Ella is more excited about going to Burger King for lunch today than about the far, far more significant event coming up at the end of the week. (It will be 65 degrees on Friday! Yay!)


Today is also Bob Ross's birthday, or it would be if he were still alive. I can no longer find listings for his Joy of Painting in our cable guide, to my regret, so I couldn't tape any episodes in advance of today. Bob Ross (sans the famous afro, I assume) was born in 1942 in Pennsylvania, spent 10 years in the Air Force and a considerable amount of time in Alaska before moving to Florida. He is most famous for his position that everyone can learn to paint, and he set about setting up a method to teach people to do so. His painting method is wet-on-wet oil. I have two of his Joy of Painting instruction manuals, and this afternoon (after the bliss of Burger King) they'll each attempt to copy one of his paintings. We'll use acrylics, though; I don't have my own oils, and acrylics are easier to clean up and because they dry so much more quickly than oils, the colors don't blend and muddy each other with kids' uncertain strokes, so I think kids find them ultimately more satisfying.

Music to a homeschooling mom's ears

"I get this now, Mom, I totally get this so much better than when you showed me last year!"

This from Madison about computing the area of triangles.

We've been doing a fair amount of geometry, both of them, this week and last week. A trip to Office Max for printer ink had resulted in a stupendous purchase: Two protractors at 30 cents apiece, and since then, we've been having a great time with angle measuring and calculating.

Ella really GETS the idea of the angles in a triangle (and bisecting a line) adding up to 180 degrees. We draw a triangle, she measures two angles, she predicts the third angle by adding them up and subtracting from 180, and then sees how close the actual measurement comes. She can't get enough of this. Go figure.

If anyone knows of a neat web site that deals with beginning geometry at this level, or something cool using area of triangles, please let me know.

Quick dip

David took the girls up for a hike in Webster Park, on Lake Ontario, early yesterday afternoon.

It was beautiful up there this last weekend before all of the leaves are down. They had a goal of collecting beautiful leaves; we're going to laminate them, and see whether the diminished oxygen in any way preserves the colors.

They didn't get to collect the leaves. Shortly after they got there, Madison fell into Lake Ontario, and David had to fish her out and scoot for home. Don't worry, it was shallow; they were only at the edge.

She's pretty pleased about it, actually. Well, what normal 9-year-old wouldn't be? It's not the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Calling all Objectivists and other rational, caring people

I had a crummy experience with a parent yesterday, the woman who had a little Spanish club thing for the kids last year, the lady whose son HIT Ella in May. We have had limited contact with them since that incident even though Ella and her daughter are friends. But she asked if we could get together without her kids around so she could talk with me. Sure, I said, and so we met at the science center during the school day yesterday. My kids played and explored, and we talked. Well, I talked. She spewed. Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have been really intimidated and upset by the whole thing. But 12 years of marriage to David Ross plus other experiences with unthinking people has taught me a thing or two. And, I kind of suspected where she might be going, so I wasn't caught off guard. It wasn't pleasant, though. I could see how much she hated that I wasn't getting upset, that I could still be, at times, smiling and warm.

It is rare when issues come down so clearly to bare-bones discussions of philosophical differences--usually that stuff is hidden, under the surface, not the things that are actually talked about. In this case, though, I had decided to make sure that the fundamental differences were elucidated as far as I could.

Relativism, and rejection of the need to identify and integrate objective facts, is a crummy thing; when someone is forced to say it out loud, those who maintain this position can become really hotly defensive. My holding so confidently to the idea that there is such a thing as right and wrong, of good and bad...my passionate committment to doing the right thing in all situations...my emphatic maintenance that I am teaching my kids to turn their back on crappy people (and, let's face it, to become people who are just like me and David)...all of this was so offensive to her that in the course of the conversation, she said that she was feeling "uncomfortable at the idea of our kids interacting, given the stark difference in our philosophical orientations." (That's a direct quote.) Perfect, I thought to myself, good excuse not to have anything to do with you ever again, but I didn't say it out loud. You're so intolerent, she said. Open your mind, she said. Other people have opinions too, she said.

I found myself thinking over and over of one of Jerry Seinfeld's routines, the one where he describes the attitude of his friends who become parents. "We don't need YOU, they say. "We can make our OWN people."

It wasn't the first time that people have been intimidated by my confidence in my own evaluations, my assertion that what matters is coming to grasp the facts of objective reality, and my energy and productivity...but it WAS the first time that someone has suggested that hanging around with me might be somehow detrimental. (I had thought that someday this might happen with a homeschooling fundamentalist Christian, but this lady is an atheist.) Yeah, I thought to myself. Don't let your kids be around THAT lady, she might teach them not to lie, she might teach them not to be aggressive, she might show them that she's absolutely intolerant of anyone hitting anyone else, she might teach them that facts are important, she might somehow question their unthinking emotional responses to issues they should get in better perspective. She might teach them to judge. She might teach them how not to take crap from others.

David has said that people find this particularly startling because I have a warm and friendly exterior...people are not expecting the steel backbone and scorn for stupidity that underlies it.

Anyway...can someone please say something sensible, about ANYTHING, I don't care what. I need some long rational digital arms around me today. I'm feeling a little heartsick. Show me that there are some reasonable people out there who care that their assessments and emotions correspond to objective reality. People who, like Rand's characters, want nothing better than to be around people who are smart and productive.

You know, all five of you who read this blog. You know who you are.

Happy Birthday, Weird Al

Today is Weird Al Yankovic's 49th birthday. We did him as the Birthday of the Day, admittedly partly because there really isn't anyone else today that was someone of real historic note, but also because the kids know who he is, and thereby have a connection to him. We had a good discussion of how rock-and-rollers tend to take themselves SO seriously, as opposed to country or jazz musicians. Who are the rockers who actually have enough perspective to incorporate humor? We were hard-pressed to come up with many. We found the Bare Naked Ladies, maybe a little Queen. Any other suggestions?

Thanks to YouTube, we watched some great comparison videos, discussing what parody is. The one the kids like best is Weird Al's "Eat It," which is of course a parody of Michael Jackson's Beat It.

Ella said to me: "Mom, the thing is, I UNDERSTAND "Eat It." But I just don't get "Beat It" and what Michael Jackson is trying to do.

You and me and everyone else, kid.

And here is my personal favorite, Bob:



The kids don't get the Bob Dillon parody, but they enjoy the palindromes. Does anyone know the name of the video that Weird Al is parodying there? I can't find it, and I'd love to show the original to the kids.

See all the education you can get from Weird Al Yankovic?

The secret to getting them to do their work

I've found a great method for getting the kids to do their school work happily and busily: Make their Halloween costume in their presence. Let it be known that when they stop or balk, you stop and shrug.

Too bad Halloween only comes once per year.

Wait until you see the photos. Madison is a piano. I almost didn't think I could pull it off.

Music and history research

I'm sorry I've been so quiet lately. October has been just non-stop busy, busy, busy. I have been making revisions to my first book at the recommendation of another author who wants to introduce me to her agent (who sold her book to Random House), and that needs to be done by tomorrow. We've been hopping around trying to Do Everything with all of these free tickets that have been given to me so that I can Report On Everything on KidsOutAndAbout.com. I actually decided NOT to take the kids to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow outdoor play yesterday because we've just about reached our limit.

However, a lot of the work I've been doing has been--believe it or not--some research for my own pure pleasure. Actually, that's not entirely true, it started as some work to get the Bach Children's Chorus some historically interesting music, and that's still the main reason I'm working on it. Plus, I'm sure I'll use it in a book someday. But the sheer amount of effort I've put in has been motivated by the pleasure I'm taking in it moment to moment.

I have gone to some effort to interest the National Lincoln Bicentennial Commission in having the Bach Children's Chorus sing at the main celebration in D.C. in February, which has led to my working closely with the directors of the BCC to help them decide on a good repertoire that can be arranged for the kids in short order. Because you always need a "hook" -- a reason to have it be our kids be the ones singing--we've decided that a great one is to have our kids be "ambassadors from the city of Frederick Douglass" (and, it's true, saying that phrase has definitely made the organizers sit up and take notice). See, after Douglass left slavery, he made Rochester his home base. Rochester, as you can imagine, loves Frederick Douglass. And, it seems, no other performing group has a specific "Frederick Douglass repertoire." If the BCC develops one, it will pay off well into the future, as it's actually marketable.

But in what, exactly, should this Lincoln and Douglass (one should NOT make the mistake of saying Lincoln-Douglass, as that conjures up images of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in which the Douglas in question is Stephen Douglas, the anti-abolitionist) repertoire consist? Someone needed to find a good body of work for the director to review with the intent of arranging for a 4-part children's chorus. Because this project has been my baby, fundamentally, I'm the one who has been doing the historic research into the music enjoyed by Lincoln and Douglass, and into some of the music actually sung and played by Douglass, who, it turns out, was a gifted singer and violinist.

I've been at this for a couple of weeks, bringing the kids from library to library, calling and emailing historians and librarians all over the country, and charming the sellers of rare books into making photocopies of index pages of an 1827 version of the hymn book The Seraph (the 1836 edition of which Douglass carried up from Baltimore as he escaped slavery). It has been absolutely fascinating. I'm making connections that people have never made before, and informing people who have helped me and who care about this issue about those connections, making them excited. I even found a slight mistake that one Douglass historian made; I have his email address (in fact, he's one of the people who has helped me), and I'll be able to let him know the mistake once I've compiled this data a bit more formally.

Last week, I saw in one research book that the hymn that inspired Frederick Douglass to leave slavery was called "Run to Jesus." Douglass quotes from this hymn in his second autobiography:

Run to Jesus--shun the danger--
I don't expect to stay
Much longer here.

He points out that this was a thinly-veiled song about escaping to the North:

In the lips of some, it meant the expectation of a speedy summons to a world of spirits; but, in the lips of our company, it simply meant, a speedy pilgrimage toward a free state, and deliverance from all the evils and dangers of slavery.

I didn't know where the historian had gotten the specific information that it was this song that first inspired Douglass to leave slavery, but in a way, it was good enough for me--it sounded like a perfect song for the kids to learn, with this story behind it. So I went looking for the sheet music in the Sibley Music Library here in Rochester. I had the librarians hunting through various index books, and they pointed me to a collection in their general stacks, a songbook published in 1887 for the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University. To my shock, right there at the top of "Run to Jesus," it said:

RUN TO JESUS.

[This song was given to the Jubilee Singers by Hon. FREDERICK DOUGLASS, at Washington, D.C., with the interesting statement, that it first suggested to him the thought of escaping from slavery.]

We had our primary source!! I was able to tell this to the curator of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in D.C.. She was extremely pleased to hear this; she hadn't known of that songbook, and I think she's going to try to acquire one for their collection. Then, in the same email, she told me something great: The Frederick Douglass NHS has Douglass's original copy of The Seraph (the book, various editions of which I have been chasing all over the country). Tomorrow, the curator is going to open the case and write out for me the list of hymns in it, so I can compare it with the index of the 1827 edition (emailed to me from Wilmington) and the index of the 1860 edition (sent to me from Harvard), AND so that we can choose some of the songs for the kids in the chorus to sing as part of the repertoire.

I had started the research on The Seraph based on the information in a history collection at the Rochester Museum & Science Center, so I've kept the historian there apprised of my progress. She's been so pleased that she asked me to give a talk on this adventure to a gathering there next month of people who support their archives. That should be fun.

In short, this has been an intensely pleasurable three weeks or so of gathering and integrating information, and lighting little fires of excitement in librarians and historians, and even a Presbyterian minister, in places as diverse as Harvard and D.C. and Hartford, CT, in Bridgeton, NJ and Atlanta and San Francisco and Wilmington, DE. Everyone, almost without exception, has been happy to help, photocopying things and sending them to me for free.

On Friday afternoon, I hosted a meeting here at my house with the BCC directors and a famous baritone who lives here in Rochester, and they worked out right there on my piano a beautiful rendition of "Run to Jesus," and talked about how they would arrange the parts for the BCC kids to weave in between what the baritone would sing. I felt moved by the private concert, and privileged to have been the person who had made it happen. The baritone is going to perform it at that November event at the RMSC that I mentioned above, at which I'll be talking. Well, that's not definite yet, but I'm pretty sure I can just tell the RMSC folks that he'll be doing it and he'll be welcomed with open arms. Important, too, because all of the people who are involved with Frederick Douglass's legacy here in Rochester will be at this event, and we'll be able to rub elbows with them.

One thing to mention here: Frederick Douglass was a really great guy. Brilliant, articulate, one of us. His autobiography, especially the second one, My Bondage and My Freedom, is a terrific read. Worthwhile. I have many thoughts on this, particularly concerning the extent to which it is important to make abstract arguments for individual liberty, and whether that is more or less valuable than making a specific case for the concrete ways in which slavery is cruel. But that's for another post, someday, if I feel like it.

You know, sometimes you do a lot of unpaid work for a project, and then feel terribly discouraged when it all slides down into a black hole. But here, yes, I've spent hours and hours on this, ostensibly to help the Bach Children's Chorus. But it's been so fulfilling, even if we don't end up getting asked to go to D.C. in February. There are still a few rare people out there who care about these things, who care about getting them right, and who get as jazzed as I do to think that they're adding to a body of knowledge, filling in holes in history. These small discoveries give me an immense amount of energy. Being in contact with people who care like I do gives me hope.

And the kids are getting an education, too--in music, and in history, and in watching me care about this so passionately. History matters, getting it right matters...and also, getting it right is possible and pleasurable with a little effort. Great lessons, I think.

Non-stop fall fun

Too much is going on to miss it, around here. Plus, I feel that I have this responsibility to report on as much as I can for my readers.

Saturday, after choir, we went apple picking. The empires were awesome.

Yesterday, we went to Holiday Hollow, the most awesome Halloween venue in the world. Someday soon I'm sure I will find the connector chord for my camera to the PC and then there will be good photos.

Today, we're going to Brown's Berry Patch -- they have a special day for Columbus Day -- that is, as long as the kids get their work done.

Tomorrow there is the kids' beloved nature class out at Genesee Country Nature Center. And Wednesday is a field trip to Ganondagan, an Iroquois longhouse in Victor, NY. Wednesday night we're seeing a dress rehearsal of Fiddler on the Roof being performed in Rochester.

Oh, and by the way, I'm getting busy making Halloween costumes. Madison is going to be a piano. An upright, in case you're wondering. We'll see if I can pull it off. We had gone for dinner at some friends' on Friday night, and they had just gotten a large flat-screen TV--with the perfect box to use for making a piano, at least the way I envision it.

Ella is going to be the piano player: She's going to wear David's tuxedo coat, a top hat if I can find one at the Dollar Store, Madison's tie and cummerbund from her choir uniform, a carnation, and white gloves.

It's David's job to rig the iPod and speakers inside the piano so they can blast Rachmaninoff or something.

Where does it end?

I'm going to get my weekly supply of vegetables this afternoon from the pick-up point of the CSA.

AND THEN I'M GOING TO RUTHLESSLY CHOP THEM ALL UP AND ROAST AND BOIL THEM!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

Good thing I don't live in Switzerland.

(Thanks, Tony.)

Leaf blower

I was not surprised to discover today that there are few household tools that are more fun than a leaf blower. I was not surprised because I have been plotting to buy a leaf blower for more than two years.

David always made his skeptical face when I informed him that a leaf blower was in our future.

(Trust me, love, you'll be blown away.)

Frantically fall. Also, "Ella!"

It's the annual Frantic Fall here in Rochester. October. The time when everyone suddenly realizes that the snow is going to fall soon, so it's time to get the kids Out And About. I have the numbers to prove it; my KidsOutAndAbout.com readership spikes 30% as soon as October 1 hits. Mother Nature responds with harvest season, and all of the farms around here open their arms wide and welcome families with:

corn mazes



and strange activities




and crazy swings



and hayrides with friends to the pumpkin patch.



Of course, I'm the person with the master list of great things to do in fall around here, so we have to participate to the max. I have to report on them, after all! Friday we sat down and planned what we have to fit in, as there are only four weekends in October this year. Those photos above are from Stokoe Farms, a place out west of Rochester, where we spent several hours Saturday afternoon.

For me, three hours were taken yesterday morning on the telephone with my friend Amy Asch, a musical theater historian who has just published a book with Alfred A. Knopf (pronounced "K-nopf"--really) called The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II. If you are a person who likes to know everything about musical theater, buy this book.

After we talked last month about the book, Amy got an unsolicited earful from me about the need for authors to help market their work, and how a web site is a must. She bore up cheerfully, especially when I offered to hold her hand to get it done. (You know how sometimes things are just so hard to figure out when you have to do it alone, but all you need to get over the hump and push through is a friend taking the first steps with you? I figured that was the case, and I was right.) Amy is fairly non-techie but a quick study, and we set up a GoToMyPC.com connection and made her a free web site on Google Sites. She has to finish up the content this week, but soon you'll be able to go to AmyAsch.com and it will forward to a real web page that lists her book info, bio, selected talks, links to resources for other historians and students, and upcoming appearances. I was happy with our work. It's not often that you get to make such a difference in someone's life by taking three hours out of yours doing something you love anyway, and it felt to me like we got a lot done in that time. I felt, you know, productive.

Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, we had Homeschool Mother-Daughter Book Club (Willie the Squowse). And then, last evening, we took the girls to see a production called "Ella!" at Geva Theatre. It is a kind of combination play and Ella Fitzgerald retrospective. David and I were skeptical -- I mean, Ella Fitzgerald is incomparable, so much so that we named our Ella after her -- but the reviews from people we trust who had seen it were so positive that we figured we should see it as a matter of principle. I wanted to bring the girls, too -- Ella in particular, of course -- and so because I didn't think that we should spend $150 on a night out, I scouted out how to go for less. (I will also admit to having become spoiled by many theaters giving me free tickets to dress rehearsals or first night performances so I can report on the show.) My newsletter (which goes out to 7500 Rochesterians on Thursdays) proved handy here: I asked, and found out that the Pittsford Crew was selling coupon books as a fundraiser that have two-for-one coupons. So we went.

The show was actually really good. The girls were, as usual, the youngest people there. I am so pleased to say that we are now at the point where it's not just that they behave themselves when we push the envelope and bring them places not designed particularly for kids, but they actually enjoyed the show. I'm gradually finding myself relaxing at these things and becoming absorbed in the production rather than hyper-monitoring them to make sure they're behaving appropriately and seeing how they're experiencing the show. I'm not sure that other kids who were not familiar with Ella Fitzgerald's music would have been other than bored, but ours already understood enough about Ella and her music to have a place to put the new information.

It was also really cute a couple of times in the lobby, when there was an occasion for me to say Ella's name. People in the crowds saw me calling over to the little blonde girl in the sparkly dress, put two and two together, and smiled.