My Orff Percussion group is playing this piece on Sunday the 15th! It’s one of the coolest and best of Carl Orff’s pieces in the Music for Children series. Here is a recording from many years ago when we put together an ad hoc group:
My mother-in-law is an avid American Bald Eagle watcher and advocate. This week she got to help her local family of eagles. Here’s her story in her words and pictures:
Our local nest, the Jackson Bay nest, broke this morning. The 3 babies are 6 to 8 weeks old and all 3 survived the fall. They were examined by Sutton Center staff and declared healthy. An ad hoc crew of eagle lovers worked diligently to build a new nest this evening. As you can see from my pics, the old nest is not usable.
The new nest is a pallet, some lumber from our shop, twigs from the old nest and the grass-mulch from the old nest.
The 3 babies (2 males 1 female) were reinstalled in the new nest about dark this evening. A maggoty fish was moved from the old nest to the new nest. The babies were docile and about 5 pounds each. They would have been coyote food tonight if they had remained on the ground. Parents were circling overhead while we worked.
This was one of the most exciting projects I have been involved with in a while. I will keep you posted on this project. The Sutton Center folks said the parents will be back, probably tonight.
Go Mom!
Just got back from our annual family and church community trip to Estes Park, CO and the Rocky Mountain National Park. Talk about inspiring!
It took me a long time to realize I was often confusing behavior with responsibility. Behavior is how a child (adolescent, grownup, anyone) conducts themselves in a given situation. Do they follow rules, speak appropriately and politely, keep themselves under control? If it’s my kids, behaving means NOT TOUCHING EACH OTHER FOR FIVE FREAKIN’ MINUTES!!!!! Ahem.
Responsibility is accepting both the tasks and consequences of a job over time. Responsibility is self motivation and earned trust. What I’ve had to learn is that forcing my kids to “behave” with bribes or punishment is not the same thing as teaching “responsibility”.
I was talking with some other parents one day and we got onto the subject of “when we started to do our own laundry”. It was amusing to hear the answers range from “I did my own in High School because mom went back to work full time and it was that or go stinky” (me) to “I still don’t do my own” (lucky guy). One couple piped up that they knew a family that made their grade schoolers do their own laundry. I went home that very night and announced that my then-8 yr-old was going to start doing his.
I have been blessed with the opportunity to hang out with some amazing parents. This in itself is probably the best wisdom for any mom: Hang out with other Moms! In my case, a singular soundbite has founded much of my parenting thinking for the past several years. A friend at a table discussion shared a soundbite from a news article she’d recently read. Something along the lines of:
“We live in an era where parents believe their children are brilliant geniuses, but give them no responsibility.”
I have receive what I think is the nicest and most heart-warming compliment to date: My sister told me she thinks I’m a good Mom. Been floating on cloud nine ever since, because what parent doesn’t like to hear that? As the older sister, most of my technique has come through the usual combination of trial-and-error informed by desperate bouts of hitting the books. I can’t say I’ve done everything right, but I have found some touchstone wisdom (gleaned from others, of course) that has helped me greatly on the journey.
Now that my sister is expecting, she’ll be starting on that journey for herself very soon, and I’ve decided to write a few articles musing about the things I’ve found most helpful. I offer these as a gift of love to my sister. She is an amazing, talented, brilliant woman who is going to be all those things as a Mom, too. She doesn’t need my advice, so I’m not writing advice. I want to tell some stories in the loving hope that she’ll someday return the favor and tell me hers. I want to share frustrations and challenges so she’ll know she’s not the only mom who has them. I want to wish her well, sit back and enjoy watching her become the great Mom I know she’ll be.
I can’t wait to find out what she’s going to teach me.
I learned a new, important aspect of owning an e-reader: Don’t sit on it!
The other day, I had to pull my head out of reading a long, academic blog and take my daughter to gymnastics. I really wanted to continue reading. Kindle usually goes with me to gymnastics, but its web browsing is very limited and I couldn’t assume I could get to the blog. The iPhone zapped up the content in a heartbeat, but the screen is so tiny that the scrolling and zooming quickly became very annoying. It was at that moment that I “got” the iPad (if it is anything like a giant iPhone). But I have yet to see it as a “Kindle-killer”.
I seem to have reached a bit of a peak in my consumer electronics frenzy. My kids gave me a Nintendo DS for Christmas (son got tired of me stealing his to play Brain Age II). After deciding to change our cell plan, I have also ended up with an iPhone of my very own. So every night I go to bed with the big 3 on my nightstand: Kindle, DS & iPhone.
What I am finding amusing is the overlap of uses between the devices. The Kindle (see previous posts) is pretty much a pure reading device, and excels at that narrow task. The DS is pure gaming, of course. It does offer my favorite version of Sudoku. The iPhone has surprised me with how much I love the constant/remote access to email and twitter, etc. Here is where it gets muddled though – the iPhone has a Kindle reader on it, so I have already logged into my Amazon account and flipped through a few chapters. The iPhone is also a pretty wicked gaming device with a lot of gaming choices (if admittedly not what a gaming fanatic would find acceptable). It is the “mashup” of devices, jack of all trades, master of none.
So here’s my summary of the big three:
DS will probably fall through the cracks and get passed on to the youngest. I don’t play it enough to invest in the expensive-by-comparison games and it’s bulky enough that I don’t just carry it around for when I have a spare minute.
I want to “learn” to really get the most out of the iPhone and understand the impact this type of device is going to have on future culture, technology, etc. It’s around for the duration. I’ll play games on it and occasionally read my kindle literature when I’m bored and find myself without it. I’m extremely interested in the genre of “augmented reality” that this little guy has brought to the consumer level.
I love my Kindle. It’s kind of an irrational thing. It’s one of those devices that generates loyalty (like my TiVo). I spend the most time, by far, with this device. Although its focus is narrow, it’s hit a sweet spot that fits me very well. When I started taking it to the gym this winter so it could “read” to me when I run on the treadmill, that early “crush” became absolute “True Love”. It will be hard to replace, simply out of appreciation for the ground it has broken.
Now. Any other devices out there I’m lacking? Anything? Anything new or fruity coming our way…? Oh…right. That!