Frosted into the windows in the philosophy department building at the University of Washington.
“Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul.”
– Virginia Woolf
“And information severed from thoughtful action is dead, a mind-crushing load. Since it simulates knowledge and thereby develops the poison of conceit, it is a most powerful obstacle to further growth in the grace of intelligence.”
– John Dewey
Yesterday we celebrated my cousins’ graduation from high school!
Congratulations Ian!
There are pictures on Facebook and all.
There were lots of cousins around.
But I’m here to share my first ever “funniest home video” moment.
The men-folk were sitting in the yard swapping stories about the days before arthritis, perhaps even the days that caused arthritis, and I was keeping half an eye on The Mermaids playing in the hammock with their cousin (once removed).
Mostly because I found myself facing their direction.
They had been playing on the hammock for most of the past two days and maintaining sanity, as most mermaids might tend to do, but this time I noticed they had finally begun stepping outside the proverbial envelope.
So, without much regard for personal safety, I whipped out my trusty video recording device and voila!
Yesterday, on my commute home, I was kinda just poking along and turning onto the Seward Park hill I saw a very strange thing. It made me pause, and when I caught up to it (him) I paused some more, because he wasn’t going very fast.
It, rather he, turned out to be a BikeE tandem recumbent carrying what ended up to be the mast for a Hobie Cat.
A Hobie Cat (for everyone but BopOp and JC) looks sorta like this.
This is what it looks like on the back of a BikeE tandem.
Now this young fellow, let’s call him Hobie, was more than happy to provide me with a picture, he even asked if I wanted him to stop for the shot.
Nothing could have been further from my mind – him stopping that is. So I got the picture and was then nearly clipped by the back end of the mast as he rounded a parked car.
About then we were passed by an oldish gentleman, let’s call him Adolf. I would estimate Adolf to be 75 or better, riding a vintage steel lugged 10 speed, with wavy shoulder length white hair, and motoring up the hill at a 4+ minute pace, doing quite well.
As he passed, Adolf said,
It looks like you’re running guard position!?
That sounded like fun, and traffic was rather heavy, so I ran wingman for Hobie to the top of the hill – a 3 minute climb for me that we managed in about 6.
During this 6 minutes I found out a number of interesting things about Hobie and his quest.
Among them:
And where did you start?
..ake …ity …
Uhhhh, did you say Lake City?
…ep
WOW!
Did you say you were running back?
…ep! (BIG grin)
I guess, that might be ok for you (looking at him full in the face) what are you…17?
…eah?!…lmos…ighteen
That was the last question I got to ask Hobie before he pulled off the road to his Dad’s house.
I wished him well and then…I reflected.
I reflected, as I returned to my 20mph pace, that he looked like he was having fun.
He was certainly enjoying the unique challenge and that I myself might have done something similar if the NEED presented itself.
I also reflected that BopOp likes to tow things like bikes and lumber with his bicycle.
In fact I snapped that picture with lumber in mind.
Getting further down the road, I remembered that TheAmboyObserver brilliantly recognized that we could cart a half-rack of homebrew (each?) home for the holidays from the UW on our bikes when we were only marginally older than Hobie is now.
And further still, now seeing Adolf growing larger, my thoughts turned to Grumpy.
I confidently asserted to myself that, like the aforementioned family, Grumpy wouldn’t be might be found dead doing something crazy like this.
It was at about this thought that I neared Adolf, and I aligned myself to pass.
I won’t speculate on why I didn’t just say “on your left!” like I normally might – but perhaps we shared a bond? Instead, I said,
Ya know, maybe I should have asked that kid if he was German!
(and without any perceptible pause Adolf smartly replied)
HA! That did look like a German act!
and then reaching the edge of earshot I heard a prizewinning exclamation
ÜBER ALLES!
On the way home tonight, in the crispish sunny evening, I saw something I’ve never seen before; a sun dog.
It pretty much made me quit thinking about anything else except taking pictures and notifying friends and family to check it out.
It (they?) lasted for the better part of an hour – which means I had a good chance to pull out my good camera and take some pretty decent shots.
Click on the image for a high-res version.
And here’s a detail shot.
Nothing earth shattering here – just the first time I’ve ever seen one.
[click for high res]
I’m thinking about all of my co-workers streaming out the door to avoid the crush of a May Day rally downtown.
If you are a rally-er rally’s are important and good but if you are ‘only’ a commuter then what?
If you commute by car rally’s are infuriating.
If you commute by bus rally’s are huge delays.
If you live in the rally zone then rally’s might be worrisome but…
If you commute by bike rally’s are, well, amusing.
And if you commute by ‘tele’ I suppose rally’s are-n’t. 🙂
I’m lucky this isn’t a picture of my rear wheel/spokes on my bike.
Today TheWeeOne is seven today.
She has fast-growing interest in things like French, piano, biking, NezPerce indians, and pretty much anything else that enters her sphere of sensation.
She takes this seriously, and makes sure everyone in the family knows that her’s is THE center of gravity – her universe is our universe.
A brief question and answer.
What does it feel like to be seven?
I dunnow, I feel older. I feel like a big kid.
Besides when I turned 6 I was happy that I could be in the student lounge by myself.Are you looking forward to anything this year?
Soccer, I wanted to do soccer. No, it was basketball – no I said soccer.What do you remember the most about last year?
Nuthin’Is there anything you miss about being six?
I miss everything.
Some recent pictures.
This is her first day riding – after some instruction on how to balance (without any pedals) for a couple hours off-and-on the day before, she picked it up right quick.
Speaking of instruction – this is the one what did said instruction. That’s right, I was at work and LaGrande taught OuiOne how to ride her bike, two sessions, two days. She even installed the pedals for her. 🙂
She bombed around the cul-de-sac for hours until her hands, feet, and bum were sore.
Then, today, we took a field trip up to the American Girl store for some good-ol-fashioned “dear little dolly” – and tea.
We were in the store for 2+ hours, just playing.
Tea Time with their girls.
Ever since I graduated (or rather, since my first Epistemology 350 class with Ann Baker at the UW) I have pined to “do philosophy”.
Sometimes other parts of life have pushed other priorities higher or simply made me fall asleep whenever I cracked a book, but the “pining” was always there.
It’s been about 17 years now since I graduated but (isn’t it always this way, when you least expect it) an opportunity has now bubbled to the surface.
I attended a demonstration with TheWeeOne at the UW a couple of weeks ago where Program Director, Jana Mohr Lone illustrated how she and some of her 4th & 5th grade students from Whittier Elementary do philosophy. (If you have an hour you can watch it all here – http://vimeo.com/62221848
If you only have 30 min – watch the 1st half)
I won’t say it blew my mind, because since I took those first classes I recognized, from a distance at least, the potential in kids for philosophy. Kids tend to have a questioning nature and that is a perfect fit for philosophical enquiry but…
…it did blow my mind because now I recognized, quite plainly, that I could do that too. Heck, I even try sometimes with The Mermaids, and while we struggle to get traction with each other;
Usually me with a question like
What is color?
and they with something more like
Can you dress my Barbie?
I’m usually forcing it.
But I still recognized that, quite on my own, I was doing some of the things I was observing up on that stage – although this session was executed with loads of skill and precision and patience.
The keystone this time, for me, was homeschooling.
Since we (TheMommy) started home-schooling The Mermaids so many options have been exposed and The Mermaids have responded so well that, in all seriousness, the urge to do philosophy fell into place alongside of plain capability right next to the challenge and slightly to the left of probability.
So I sent an email to the director of the School District HOME program – we all talked – she liked it – and bada-bing next September I’ll be leading an enrichment class of up to twelve 3rd, 4th, & 5th graders in what I’m calling
Philosophy With Children
I’m a wee bit excited (yet I can’t abdicate my other, albeit limited, homeschooling commitments).
Yee hoo!
Here’s an excerpt from the wikipedia page on kinda how this works;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_for_Children
In a typical enquiry, a group would be presented with a thought-provoking stimulus such as a text, image, picture book, or video clip. Some time may be spent identifying the concepts raised by the stimulus, and then participants frame their own philosophical questions in response to the stimulus and vote for the one they wish to explore. The ensuing discussion usually takes place in a circle, with the teacher/facilitator intervening to push the thinking to a deeper level but aspiring to allow the discussion to follow the emerging interests of the group.
I’z jus’ tryin’ ta get da peanuh budder owt.
I wish I could have these conversations on demand – but they are not at my whim.
TheWeeOne and I had just finished reading a (ridiculously simple) little book whose punchline was “triple mint snow-cones”.
And I had some very hot dinner in my bowl.
These grits are hot man! Like the opposite of snow cones!
Water is the opposite of snow.
What? Wh…Really, why do you say that?
Because hot is the opposite of cold, and when you make snow hot it turns into water.[smile]
Let’s pause the conversation here for a minute and reflect back to a day in the not too distant past when I asserted to (or agreed with?) Monya that air was the opposite of water while in another breath confirming water to be the opposite of dirt.
I think, at the time, BopOp was confounded that we were able guess “the password” using such clues. Contextually, it still might make sense – but I definitely noted that I would have to tell BopOp about water’s other opposite, later.
Then I prodded:
What about steam?
Ok?
Well steam is really hot water right?
Yes.
So what is the opposite of steam?
Water.
[laughing] But you just got done saying that snow was the opposite of water?! [still chuckling]
No. I said water was the opposite of snow.
[laughing stopped]
oh.
Whoa. I hadn’t thought that the opposite relationship might not be considered commutatitive
I said something weak like ‘ok, jus checking’. I mean, you know, who am I to imply that I know the true nature of opposite-ness?
And I wasn’t the only one who had paused to reflect.
Wee suddenly asked;
What’s the opposite of middle?
[barglegsh] I…don’t…know. [at least not any more]
Ahead of me a step, Wee looked over at the computer and said with a lilt
I’ll look it up?
Sweeter words were not yet spoken. I’m not really sure how many times I’ve refused to answer a question and told TheMermaids to look something up. So, I enthusiastically assisted her spelling and she typed her query into The Oracle The Google.
Astonishingly that same question had been posed before, online, and then even answered. But to m y mind the answer was like a long-winded, throw-the-book-out-the-window-dead-poets-society-style fashion. [Yawp!]
I tried to sum it up for Wee.
Well this guy says that there is no opposite of middle, that it can’t have one.
She smiled-ish at me with a combination of we’d-discovered-something-together but with a somethings-still-bothering-me wrinkle in her brow. Lucky for me I think I’m learning a little bit about how to keep these balls rolling.
But don’t take this guys word for it! I mean he says ‘middle has no opposite’ but what do you think?
[and without even pausing]
How about outside?
[What the…?!!] You mean the opposite of middle is outside?
Yeah, like the middle of my body and the outside of my body.
Still trying to get it straight I made three points on the table with my hands, let’s refer to them as A, B, and C. In retrospect, I think I over-simplified her idea by making it ‘linear’ when her idea might be/have been more 3D, but I said,
So you mean that A is here and C is over there and B is in the middle and so then both A and C are the opposite of B?
Yeah. [another smile]
Hm…And all of this space between A and C is like what…just the inside?
Yep.
Ok – ya know, I can go for that…but what about this spot – halfway between B and C.
???
Isn’t that also a middle?
[the question marks resolved and a big smile came across her face and she said.] Whoaaa coool!
I wasn’t expecting that AT ALL, but it certainly made me happy.
Either she was seriously intrigued or something just popped or…ummmm…perhaps it was something in the middle. 🙂
However it is I was pretty revved up and really wanted to see where else we might find ourselves when she grinned a wide sheepish grin and asked,
Can I look up Strawberry Shortcake videos?
There was something like a big whooshing sound in my head, I was still elated about this little exchange, but I made myself capitulate because, again, you can’t force this stuff.
Or as Miracle Max said in The Princess Bride “You rush a miracle-man and you get rotten miracles.”
Yep. You can look up Strawberry Shortcake videos.
And I do have to remember that she is only six.
Six and three quarters!
blief 