I made a fool of myself tonight and it might be on 11 at 9 and 9 at 10.
We released a screech owl in BELL tonight. Darlene at Forever Wild gave us the owl. Amy from my book club brokered the deal. Anna and Kurt are the chairs of BELL. What do I have to do with it? Squat. Look at these jokers. Either of them know twice what I know and Anna looked beautiful tonight. GLUG!
Film to come. Double GLUG!
Oh, okay. Well, does this AP story bother anyone else? Makes you want to know your farmer. If you think you might like, you can read the FDA draft and then make public comments for the next couple of months.
And as a refresher, you can read labels on your produce too to see if you are consuming genetically engineered food.
Just so you know how this came to my brain, I was reading Nature Moms Blog and this item was mentioned in one of the comments. I followed the story to get to an “unbiased” news source.
Oh, how my head aches as I write this.
I had big plans for the day, but they were sidelined for multiple “right now” needs. I decided to go with it. Besides the only thing I MUST do today has been stalled by YELLOW HIGHLIGHTER. Point is, I found myself at the grocery store because the cupboard was bare and I happened to be driving past. I needed gasoline too.
So I do my grocery shopping child-free. That NEVER happens. It was nice. I bought less junk and didn’t have to say “no” a single time. I am a bring-my-own-bags gal and for the first time ever they noticed that one was insulated and put all my cold stuff in it (it’s still hot in the desert). I didn’t even have to repack. YAY, lady sacker! The guy after me had a single jar of salsa. The sacker asked if he wanted a bag. “Yes,” he replied, “double it.” Asswipe. I had four bags, he should have quadrupled it. Such inspiration am I.
Then I went to get my gasoline. The tanks were being filled and I know that I don’t want all that stirred up crap in my tank. I also know that the light is on in the van signaling I have no gas and if I don’t use my coupon, it will expire. So I fill up. I fill up so much that I just pour it all over the ground. The little automatic lever, which I put on the first divit for a slow fill, didn’t click off. Gas on the ground, gas on the car, gas on my shoe.
Anyway, I’m an ecological disaster with a headache.
Get past the Border Patrol Ad, okay?
This was my son’s teacher last year! This was her! Teachers are so way cool. Molly is so way cool. Molly can teach AND double dutch. And guess what, she’s going to have a community garden WITH CHICKENS at the school. I miss Molly.
I’ve been concerned about my son’s teacher this year. She’s more traditional and worksheet oriented. As it turns out, she is also empathetic and her students like her. She also lets us parents come in and knock around whenever we want. She’s letting me teach the students about current events. This week the 3rd graders READ THE CONSTITUTION as it pertains to the presidency. Can you imagine? All that language? But they did it and they know what qualifies a candidate for the presidency and what the duties are. Of course they were mostly interested in the part about forgiving their buddies and throwing parties for foreign dignitaries. Toward the end of the lesson, we touched on the electoral collage (S + R = E, did you know that? The presidency is not just a history/civics thang, it’s also math/geography). Next week are going to go into campaigns and eventually we will look at the current candidates. I’ll keep you posted, because I’m sure you are on the edge of your seats to know what the kids are saying.
On Friday, another parent is coming in with her bassoon to help the kids with their sound studies. Yet another parent has made tons of homemade playdough to help the students better conceptualize city, state, country, etc. And yet another parent is bringing in tons of related texts and may start an art project. So, it’s still cool this year, though it’s hard to top Molly. I wish every child could experience a classroom where the teacher and a large number of parents frequently indulge in active learning and engaging children.
One thing I should learn is how to post a video that doesn’t immediately start playing every time the website opens. Sorry about that. I hope next time you visit, you won’t mind hitting the pause button.
Smörgåsbord my style isn’t exactly Swedish or buffetish, but I like the word anyway. Those Sweds just use cool words. I’m attempting a more enriching daily kitchen experience through the preparation of one inspired foodstuff creation each day. Sadly, today’s effort fizzled with an applebutter sandwich. I should have recognized my own culinary incompetence, but I have had some successes.
George and I made the muffin recipe again only we used organic blueberries and lemon juice instead of chocolate chips and vanilla. Next time, I would set my blueberries in sugar like my great aunt. In fact, I really need to get that recipe. The muffins were drier than I would have liked. Also, I tried to save them for a potluck lunch, but in just two short days a swamper/plastic bag combo set them to mold. Not exactly inspired, but attempted.
Starting 15 or so years ago, it became impossible for me to think of summer without thinking of tabbouleh (tabouli?). The tomatoes and cucumbers are just too good to be true in the summer and the two in any combo makes my stomach go mad with anticipation. I tried a new recipe and it worked. Only I didn’t stick to the recipe. This is something like a cup of bulgar, a cup and a half of boiling water, some olive oil, and some lemon juice sitting for an hour. I added salt at this point. Also, I used table salt instead of kosher salt. It was too salty. Once the bulgar soaked up all the juicy goodness, I added tomatoes, flat leaf parsley, spring onions (or whatever you call them), cucumbers, and dry mint. I didn’t like the tabouli at this point, so I put in lots more lemon juice and more onion. It worked and was eagerly received at a potluck lunch. Is potluck the new fondue?
Olive oil has been central to my attempts in the kitchen. My girlfriend Anna brought some to me from her husband’s folks in California. I used it to make my favorite garlicky mustard vinaigrette. I stole this recipe from my friends the Cojeens. If you are ever in Oklahoma and in need of archaeology, guitars, or salad dressing, they are your peeps. I don’t know that it would be appropriate for me to publish their recipe, but to give you an idea of why I like it so much, this small half jar took eight cloves of garlic. Luckily, we had just been to a garlic and onion festival at Agua Linda Farm.
I put up some blackeye peas in the freezer some time back. I needed to cook them up. Nothing fancy here. Peas, water, bacon grease (I didn’t want to wait for hamhock to thaw), and after 45 minutes, salt. Now we are full circle because this food reminds me of my mother and her family. It goes super yummy with my great aunt’s tomatoes and cornbread.
After all this eating, I need to jump on a stationary bike at the kids’ school to exercise and generate electricity.
Parrish’s former teacher got a sentence write-up in today’s paper:
● $994.74 to help second-graders at Borton Primary Magnet School see energy being produced by pedaling a stationary bicycle linked to a generator.
Read the full article here.
For Earth Day I taught 300 Borton children and adults how to determine “what lives down there?” Here I am.
My daughter is the noticeably bored kid in blue. The first language of the kid staring at the ground up front is Kurdish. I’m hoping they don’t represent how miserable everyone else was at the only station in full sun.
For three years, I’ve been visiting the bird sanctuary at my children’s school and staring at a variety of ground holes. The first year, I walked around a couple of times watching Anna and betts struggle with irrigation while noticing the subterranean homes of the desert critters. Jesse was in Iraq and so my attention was divided. Mostly I remember the striped shirt I wore on both visits. The second year was focused on pulling buffel grass and looking at ground holes. I don’t remember what I wore. This third year we’ve worked on getting children and families into the bird sanctuary. Since I’d spent three years thinking of Wonderland down those rabbit holes, I was elected to run a station on ground hole identification. I wore a striped skirt.
Here’s your minilesson:
1) Where is the hole located? Is it elevated or level with the ground? Is it out in the open or under a bush or between rocks?
2) How big is the hole? Is it small for insects or ants? Is it medium sized for a rodent of some sort? Is it large enough to accommodate a coyote? Measure the height/width of the entrance for more precise identification. In general you’ll look for holes smaller than 3 inches, between 3 and 8 inches, and greater than 8 inches in diameter.
3) What shape is the hole? Circular holes typically belong to rodents. You’re likely to find lizards in semicircular holes. Ovular holes will house tortoises, for example.
You can take note of other details too like if it has a silky barrier to it (you can expect a spider in that hole) or whether the homeowner is tidy or messy. Sometimes another animal will move into an abandoned hole. I showed the kids all kinds of photos of animals with their holes, including burrowing owls and kangaroo rats.
At this point, I asked the kids to look around the sanctuary to see if they can guess “who lives down there?” If they wrote down the answers to the three questions I gave them and send a letter to me using the school’s post office, I would help them identify ground holes in their yards or nearby parks. The kids were pretty cool, but the adults giggled when I invited everyone to tell me about their holes. I have received no letters thus far.
Check out more pix of our awesome Earth Day. Sadly, the composting station didn’t get photographed. The kids really got into worm poop.
Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) published a self-promotion story on the bird sanctuary at the kids’ school where I spend a few hours each week. Borton Environmental Learning Lab (BELL) is a patch of desert that a few parents and I have been cultivating for the past few years. The committee is mostly driven by betts, though other parents contribute significantly. We try to get the kids outside once a week on top of the planting, watering, and clean-up we also do once a week.
It’s great to see the kids outside, but the ventures into BELL aren’t to replace recess. The kids are involved in meaningful learning. They take in their surroundings through careful visual, auditory, and tactile observation and then journal about the experience. There’s a great deal of science and writing involved. There’s also the occasional cactus prick and bug bite.
The kindergarteners and first graders I’ve taken to BELL learned about symmetry when comparing mesquite, palo verde, hackberry and other tree leaves. They’ve learned about Precolumbian people and uses for the desert plants. They’ve learned about habitat, adaption, and how they relate to each other. They’ve learned some state history too. My next goal is for them to create their own desert story using the information they’ve gathered. I’m not an educator, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’m proud of the students’ work and would post it, but it’s not my intellectual property. Let me just tell you, it’s incredible. At the beginning of the year, students were unnerved by crickets, unsure about sitting on the ground, and asked about polar bears. Now they run to the bee bush to see if it still smells like lime gummy bears. They are much more confident in that couple of acres of wilderness.
Kids are too smart to be taught how to take tests or to write to arbitrary prompts or to sit in front of a computer. For that matter, teachers are too valuable a resource to be scripted. I’m probably biased toward an inquiry curriculum since I work for the woman who put it “out” there, but to teach all subjects to a child’s imagination is a powerful thing. I’m thankful for this school, principal, and teachers. Every child deserves these opportunities.
“She’s so frugal, her pennies will forever show her thumb and finger prints.” My family didn’t make up the phrase, but did oft apply it to me. I thought economy long before I thought green.
About five years ago, I read the Tightwad Gazette and Cheapskate Monthly issue for issue. I was fascinated with tips such as recycling paper coffee filters and even tried it with success. I calculated the cost of everything I did, but mostly purchases of consumer goods. I was on a mission and completely blissful.
These thoughts (d)evolved leaving me now lost in figures relating to my water, gas, and electrical use. I read my bills; I’ve figured my meters; and I compare month to month behavior. As Jesse points out, it’s still about money. For example, I knew we had a gas leak in our water heater, but lived with it until the gas company hiked their rate by 30%. Nevermind how it may have impacted the health and safety of my family.
One of the largest energy users for residential domiciles is the refrigerator. Last week, I pulled mine back from the wall and saw a huge wad of Boris hair mucking things up. Being a good housekeeper, I swept it up, but didn’t think much of it except that it satisfied my fear that someone might someday want to look behind my refrigerator. I mean I knew, but I didn’t really think about it. But guess what! Cleaning refrigerator coils makes a HUGE impact on energy use and there is a right way to do it.
I guess I’m not all that green. At my core I just don’t like waste but do like manipulating the numbers. I do it while driving too. If I’m headed to Oklahoma at 80 mph and it’s 1000 miles away and I’m held up by icy road conditions, how long before I yell at my kids to quit touching each other?
I can’t believe I’ve been desperate for rain for so long, then today, the day I invited three sets of friends on a mammoth hunt with my husband, it poured rain. When we arrived at Jesse’s site, he and his crew of volunteers were tying tarps up to protect themselves and us from the rain while in the bone bed. Archaeologists have some quirky behavior that I can’t wrap my brain around, but their ability to deal with extremes of weather and large amounts of soil inspires awe.
Whereas we couldn’t help, but could greatly hinder the efforts, my friends and I set off with our children down the wash to the river. We romped in the San Pedro with the most fantastic Labrador who happens to be a member of my very own family. Once the cold and wet, by desert standards, beat us down, we walked back up the wash to Jesse’s mammoth site. He oriented us to the river and pointed out that the site elevation topped the cottonwoods that had just loomed over us.
Sitting on dirt buckets in the bone bed, Jesse showed us the mammoth tusk (and the scapula) as well as artifacts associated with the mammoth. He discussed the prehistory of the area, first Americans, megafauna extinction, and so forth. Then Jesse took us to a cut bank with an eroding mammoth tooth on display. Nearby was evidence of pot hunting, broken screens left behind by people who indiscriminately tear up these sites for personal profit. Rather than focusing on that, Jesse used the wall of the bank to demonstrate how archaeologists “look through the windows to the past” using marks like the black mat. Our finale took place at the Moson homestead, which retained its full foundation, including some of the ORIGINAL adobe brick that the rain slowly washed away.
We were cold and wet, but the snow covered Sierra Vistas were beautiful. Meanwhile, back in Tucson, everything is dry as a bone and all that once lived in my yard now crackles brown. But for a few glorious hours, it rained upon our heads ensuring continued growth.
Did the prayer vigil work? Georgia got rain, but nine people in Tennessee were injured by the storm’s winds, including children injured by flying glass. Oh, and the storm also damaged the roof of a Baptist church. Georgia’s Governor Perdue said he wasn’t gloating, which I think is secret code for “nanny nanny nanny!”
Consider Luke 18:
10. Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. 11. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men [are], extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. 12. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. 13. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as [his] eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. 14. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified [rather] than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
First, if God sent a storm because we asked for rain, did he also damage the church and hurt the children in response to our prayer? Call me unpatriotic, but I don’t think God works like that.
And B, what if Perdue focused slightly more on the fact that PEOPLE could have answered/prevented the prayer through less wasteful, more sustainable behavior? What if he asked forgiveness for his abuse of the gift God gave us? It’s telling that not enough rain fell to ease the trouble for Georgia. Perhaps more humility is in order for all of us.