Awesome Ologies

Do you listen to podcasts?  They sort of feel like a 1990s thing but I still follow several podcasts and one of my favorites is Ologies.  In an episode on wasps with Eric Eaton as the guest an interest in figs was sparked; so I bought a book mentioned in the podcast– Gods, Wasps, and Stranglers: The Secret History and Redemptive Future of Fig Trees.

So what did I learn?

Figs figure large in the history of the world.  They have been around a very very long time.  There is a wasp that pollinates them by living in them and they contribute much to biodiversity.  They can save areas that have been decimated too.  Figs are awesome and there are many varieties of them too.

Having not lived where figs are I loved learning about fig trees: 

"'the most extraordinary trees of the forest.'  They lurk in forests throughout the tropics where they can grow to colossal forms.  It is not only their size that seizes the attention of anyone who sees them.  It is also their shape.  They look less like plants than primeval creatures that have frozen in time, their bodies a hulking mass of once-writhing limbs that dangle matted strands of dark hair." (15)

For some time in college, I made a bunch of pottery with handles inspired by vines... as I read about figs trees I realized the vines I had been thinking of were much like these images of the strangler fig tree.  It grows up around a tree and eventually takes over that tree... and yes this book is interesting it has stretched its lines into my mind and lifted my imagination by feeding it amazing facts.  Science is good like that, as is Ologies.  You should check out the book and the podcast.  

The Way I Work

The revised and updated...

The Way Things Work Now: From Levers to Lasers, Windmills to Wi-fi, A Visual Guide to the World of Machines by David Macaulay

I love looking up a mundane thing.  A thing I never even think about... then learn what I did not know or even consider.  Having just been to Anchorage it is interesting to see the inner working of an escalator (and see a picture of a dog riding the escalator).  The elevator picture looks like the clear elevator in the airport.  I like this book because it makes an engineer's view of the objects all around us visible.  The pictures are clear and the writing is too... "At the tip of a ballpoint pen is a tiny metal ball in a socket.  Ink flows from the ink tube through a narrow channel to the ball, which rotates to transfer the ink to the paper.  The ink dries immediately."  (141) . A simple thing... clear and in view now, just like the elevator at the airport.  Thanks to writing.

Don't Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest! if you must; but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow;
You might succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup.
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out;
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit;
It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.

Unknown/Inspirational Poems

Savoring the last days of National Poetry Month

Famous

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.   

Naomi Shihab Nye

A poem for you... April is National Poetry Month!

Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

From: Essential RumiBy Coleman Barks

I'm No Einstein

I hope you are enjoying the pile of new books that arrived in school this week.  Keep reading and putting them back on the shelves for others to enjoy.

I like to take my own advice so I am reading one of the new arrivals.  Jon Scieszka is famous for writing children's books like The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.  He also writes chapter books like The Time Warp Trio.  Not being a child hasn't stopped me from enjoying his books and even using them to teach my classes (point of view is played with in the The True Story of the Three Little Pigs).  So when Frank Einstein and the Antimotor Motor arrived I decided to read it before I put it on the shelves.

Basically a kid invents a robot that sort of invents itself.  The story is what happens next... and I am still reading it so I don't quite know yet.  But it is silly and I am feeling like a kid again reading it... and I do like feeling like a kid.  That is my review thus far.

Maniilaq

Delving into the Alaska bookshelf in my classroom I read Maniilaq: Eskimo Prophet Crying from the Wilderness by Sarah Haile. There are other books on him in print, check Amazon, and even some YouTube videos about him.

Although this is about a figure from Inupiaq history many things reminded of what I have heard here on Yupik traditional stories.

Basically Maniilaq is a great hunter but he is also controversial in his community.  He was traditional, but as he had visions of the future he began to break more and more with traditions:

"Maniilaq was a cautious man in many ways who disliked arguments.  With knowing eyes he studied the shaman's face for he had known the man from the time of his first remembering, and he was aware that the man from the time of his first remembering, and he was aware that the man would contest the obvious and make foolish decision based upon his decision not to agree with another man.  It did not matter if a person spoke the truth or not; however, knowing this he yielded to the temptation to irritate the shaman." pg 121