A Mother's Therapy (Part 1)

I am up late even though I have to get up super early . . . but sending one's first-born 2000 miles away to his freshman year in college can cause one to be unable to sleep, and that is the situation in which I find myself. So, in an attempt to reconcile myself to how the years have passed I pulled out picture albums -- and found about a hundred thousand pictures I want to scan and post -- if for no one other than myself! I am tired, though and ran out of steam once I hit "First Day of Kindergarten!" So I'm putting up what I've got so far with more to come. I can't believe I'll be saying "good-bye" to this guy at 4:15 tomorrow morning. Where DID the years go?!

Daddy loved it when Anthony "melted" on him.
Look at those baby blues!!

An early outing to one of our favorite places, Knight's Ferry.

We taught our kids many things early on. Here Anthony is learning to skip stones.

David and Anthony at another of our favorite places, Capitola.

Getting acquainted with the ocean.

A first trip to Yosemite -- seems happy about it!

The classic one year picture.


Back at Knight's Ferry -- a pensive moment.

Always good to have Dad to lean on!


Anthony in his "suit-coat" -- his favorite church attire back then.

-- helping Dad mow the lawn.


In the backyard by Mom's daffodills.


Back at Knight's Ferry and finding an interesting sight.


Like I said, we teach 'em young, and what's more important than card games?


Ah yes, the long ago Duplo days -- always building -- later it was K'nex.


BROTHERS!


First day of kindergarten . . .

. . . and now off to bed for this mom or she won't be able to get up at 4 to see him off!

Fast Food Math

I was pleasantly surprised at seeing Wendy's promoting mathematics on their french fry packaging. SO, how many ingredients ARE there on a Wendy's hamburger?

According to the Quiz . . .

I am Blue/White
Take The Magic Dual Colour Test - Beta today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

I'm both orderly and rational. I value control, information, and order. I love structure and hierarchy, and will actively use whatever power or knowledge I have to maintain it. At best, I am lawful and insightful; at worst, I am bureaucratic and tyrannical.

Checkmate

If you're in the area and looking for something to do this Friday, you might want to consider the movie premier of Checkmate. It's showing at the State Theater (1307 J St.) at 7:00pm. I'm especially excited to see it, as it is the feature-length movie debut of my cousin Arvin Berner who produced and directed it and wrote the screen play. :-)

Modesto, it's where George Lucas got his start, you know!


Berner Films site:
http://www.bernerfilm.com/page6.html

Local newspaper ad:
http://www.modbee.com/2010/08/12/1292064/modestan-set-to-debut-his-feature.html

Blog review:
http://filmstewdotcom.blogspot.com/2010/08/staring-at-imdb-checkmate.html

An Anniversary (10)

What we have been becomes
The country where we are.
Spring goes, summer comes,
And in the heat, as one year
Or a thousand years before,
The fields and woods prepare
The burden of their seed
Out of time's wound, the old
Richness of the fall. Their deed
Is renewal. In the household
Of the woods the past
Is always healing in the light,
The high shiftings of the air.
It stands upon its yield
And thrives. Nothing is lost.
What yields, though in despair,
Opens and rises in the night.
Love binds us to this term
With its yes that is crying
In our marrow to confirm
Life that only lives by dying.
Lovers live by the moon
Whose dark and light are one,
Changing without rest.
The root struts from the seed
In the earth's dark -- harvest
And feast at the edge of sleep.
Darkened, we are carried
Out of need, deep
In the country we have married.

Wendell Berry 5/29/72

If I Weep

The Dream

Love, if I weep it will not matter,
And if you laugh I shall not care;
Foolish am I to think about it,
But it is good to feel you there.

Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking,—
White and awful the moonlight reached
Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere,
There was a shutter loose,—it screeched!

Swung in the wind,—and no wind blowing!—
I was afraid, and turned to you,
Put out my hand to you for comfort,—
And you were gone! Cold, cold as dew,

Under my hand the moonlight lay!
Love, if you laugh I shall not care,
But if I weep it will not matter,—
Ah, it is good to feel you there!

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1917)

Proverb

Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, "I was only joking!"

Proverbs 26:18-19

The Cold Pane

Between the living world
and the world of death
is a clear, cold pane;
a man who looks too close
must fog it with his breath,
or hold his breath too long.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934)

Meijer Gardens

Cousin Circle

Faith and Culture

While wanting to dig deeper into a movie I had just watched, I stumbled onto an interesting Christian website maintained by a place called Damascus Road that seems to be using culture to explore Christian themes and to engage society.

I haven't fully researched it yet, but I'm pretty intrigued. The subtitle on their site is "exploring culture, love, truth, life and God."

There are a number of movies for which they have posted discussion questions and discussion comments on-line. It seems to me these could make for good small group discussions, but I need to add the DISCLAIMER that though the discussion questions and comments are Christian, the films ARE secular, and not all films are appropriate for all audiences! You can find the discussion resources if you scroll down to Cinema and Spirit Resources at

http://www.damascusroadtucson.com/Media.html

Here is a quote from the comments on the film What Dreams May Come

There is a great quote from C.S. Lewis concerning the relation between our life now and the afterlife. He said, “Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heavenly creature or into a hellish creature -- either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.” This quote makes a lot of sense to me. What I do in this life shapes who I will be in the afterlife. If I have lived a life in harmony with God and chosen his way then I will be prepared to experience Heaven. If I have chosen to rebel against God and others, I am not prepared to exist in Heaven but rather Heaven itself may even be a Hell for me because I am so out of sync with reality there. Maybe Hell truly is the horror of a life gone wrong. Maybe it is the realization that life lived without a restored relationship with God and others is the worst Hell that could ever exist.

May you choose life and love and truth with God's help and become the Heavenly creature you were meant to be.


"Now, with God's help, I shall become myself."

- SØren Kierkegaard

Yep!

Poetry

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

To A Young Poet

Time cannot break the bird’s wing from the bird.
Bird and wing together
Go down, one feather.

No thing that ever flew,
Not the lark, not you,
Can die as others do.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Nostalgia - What Can Be Done?

My parents finally gave up on me ever going through the childhood boxes I had in their garage, and they came over and brought them to my entry way. I have guests coming over Sunday, so I'm finally going through them. This is a very hard task for a nostalgic person! Other than college notes and old birthday cards, here's some stuff I'm finding:An old box for special things. Yes, that's a self-portrait on the front. Can you tell what I'm supposed to be? My grandpa was fire-chief and lived in the firehouse, so I drew myself as a fire-fighter - note the fireman's hat "in" my overly large hand, the badge pinned on my chest, and the fire on the bottom right of the box. I remember drawing this and punching the holes in the box. After all a fire does burn through things right! I was clearly a stickler for realism. My shoes are tied with very precise bows!Here are some of the items from my special box - souvenirs - a train whistle, a pennant, and a spark gun that still shoots sparks because I used it carefully and conservatively as a child!Old Sunday School books. I still remember specific pictures inside! Anybody know a Mrs. Vander Veen who taught Sunday School at Immanuel CRC, Ripon, in about 1970? There's only a last name in my book. Oh, wait! I bet it was Tracy Vander Veen . . . When I got a bit older I was a Dungeons and Dragons wanna be! I didn't know anybody who played, so I just looked it up in books and drew maps and dungeons. It seems my drawing skills improved a bit since my box-lid days. I even bought the polyhedral dice - ones you had to paint to get the numbers to show up! Apparently I also went through a romance-novel stage. I have very little recollection of this, but the quantity of books speaks for itself. I notice some were 33 cents apiece at Raley's! Clearly I was very discerning!And there was also a comic-book phase . . . And here are the results from the career center testing at college. Hmm . . . I wonder if being an INTP on the Myers-Briggs explains the variety of phases I had? Romance novels, Dungeons and Dragons and Little Archie comics?!?!I started out as a computer science major and still have an old program I wrote to prove it. Anybody remember the old green and white paper with the holes on the sides? If so, don't admit it, you'll be giving away your age! How have we gone from those old dinosaurs to I-phones? AMAZING! Ah well, computers weren't for me, so I made my minor, which was math, my major.And there's certainly a reason I went into math rather than sociology. Here are my notes from the first day of class, September 13, 1983. I clearly and specifically remember the first thing the professor said, which is borne out by my notes above: "Why do people commit suicide?" Uh . . . and people dislike math?! Go figure!And then, of course, my own romance - as witnessed by a card I started making for David. Yeah, it's a self-portrait. Maybe I'd better stick with drawing dungeons for D&D!

OK, that all that is just a drop in the bucket. There are other notes and books and letters and cards and puzzles and snatches of poetry I began writing (one to my grandpa - one to my yet-unborn children, whom I apparently thought would be girls!) and old slides and my lucky horseshoe from Columbia with my name engraved on it and books whose pictures bring me back to specific times in childhood. Sorting this stuff and figuring out what to do with it is very hard for a nostalgic person! And, given our recent move, there is no room in our garage! I can't get rid of it, and I can't keep it - so I've been sitting on my entry-way floor sorting and reminiscing for 4 hours.

Seeing Invisible Worlds

To hear this phenomenally wonderful lecture on understanding the fourth dimension - and seeing invisible worlds in general - go to:

http://www.baylor.edu/player/index.php?id=100412&gallery_id=4627

This Kind of Fire

sometimes I think the gods
deliberately keep pushing me
into the fire
just to hear me
yelp
a few good
lines.

they just aren't going to
let me retire
silk scarf about neck
giving lectures at
Yale.

the gods need me to
entertain them.

they must be terribly
bored with all
the others

and I am too.

and now my cigarette lighter
has gone dry.
I sit here
hopelessly
flicking it.

this kind of fire
they can't give
me.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

Dangerous, Great and Bearable

I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that could be ever. There they were, seemingly lifeless, made only of black and white, but out of them, out of their own being, came love and terror and pity and pain and wonder and all other vague abstractions that make our ephemeral lives dangerous, great and bearable.

from On the Words in Poetry by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

It's About Time!

It's about time a comic strip artist dealt with the ridiculous nature of television ads these days! GOOD GRIEF!!

Get Off the Ladder!

There is something wrong with the way mathematics is taught. Most people claim to hate math, but I don't think most people ever got a chance to know what Math (captial M) really is. Here is what often happens when I meet someone new:

Other person: What do you do?

Me: I teach math. :-)

Other person (after involuntarily jumping backwards 2 feet): UGH! I've always HATED math!

Me: Well, if it makes you feel any better, let me assure you you are not alone. Most people respond to me that way.

Other person: You know, I do remember a problem my teacher showed me in 3rd grade, though, it was about getting stuff across a river, a fox, a goose and some grain, I think. I've always wanted to know how to do that problem. Can you help me with it?

Me: Well, let's think it through . . .

Fun and joyful conversation about mathematics continues at length from here.

ALWAYS.

There should be more opportunity IN the math classroom for fun and joyful conversations about mathematics, which will help alleviate individual anxiety and perhaps benefit our nation as more students might decide they like math and want to pursue it!

Math is not linear on Prezi

For All of Us

Professor Edward Burger of Williams College addressed this comment to college students, but I think it applies to anyone who cares to be a lifelong learner - and more -

You.

. . . your education centers about the most important creative feat of your life – the creation of yourself. It is about you – creating your effective mind, a mind enlivened by curiosity with the intellectual audacity to take risks and create new ideas, a mind that sees a world of unlimited possibilities. So I ask again: Have you failed recently? If not, then what are you waiting for?

Status

A friend of mine in Norway has this up as her facebook status. I love it!

What part of an inverse tangent function approaching an asymptote don't you understand?

(Sheldon - Big Bang Theory)

Wee Sleeket Beastie

... mousie, thou art no thy-lane,*
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy!

Still, thou art blest, compared wi' me!
The present only thoucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
And forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess and fear!

from To a Mouse by Robert Burns (1759-1796)
"no thy-lane" means "not alone"

The last of our "wee sleeket beasties" died Friday. Her name was Oreo, and, as with her companions Munin, Hugin and Milkshake, gave us joy in her life, and we feel grief in her death.

New post on DAVID - link at right.

Exploring

I love this woodcut - can't find a title or artist name, though - anybody know?

Today I tried to post more pictures to my last post, but I find my summer draws me to ponder and explore. Books I'm exploring right now are:

Is God a Mathematician? by Mario Livio
The Math Book by Clifford Pickover
The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
The Myst Reader by Rand Miller
That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

Eventful Week+

Wow! What a week! We've had so many events that I want to record for family and friends at a distance to see and "participate in" from afar. I find I can't finishing posting pictures tonight and will put up a start. One major event - the one for which I have pictures up so far - is Anthony's high school graduation.

When he was little, all the "old people" in my life told me to enjoy those early years because they would go by so fast. Back when I was packing a diaper bag and getting up multiple times at night I didn't believe it, and all of a sudden - POOF - he's graduated from HS and is off to college in a couple months! I blinked and 17 years have passed! Now I guess I'm one of those old people and am passing on the same advice to young parents!

Also in the last week or so David's mom visited from Michigan, Caleb made public profession of his Christian faith, all 3 boys had a piano recital (the last for Anthony), and we had lots of parties celebrating all these events. Whew!

More pictures to come . . .

Formula for Failure