Sunshyne Silverwear's blog features a quote of the day along with an image. Today's quotation was by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the image was my MLK scribblegraph postcard! All of my scribblegraphs are shown below, and are available in my Etsy shop or on DaogreerEarthWorks.com.
My edit this week: SOOC on the left, edit on the right. I cropped a bit, changed levels and saturation, burned the metal parts, and sharpened a bit. Not a huge difference, but I like it. Another boat. Canoe, kayak, pontoon, and now sail. I swear I don't spend much time on boats. And yet I have written three recent entries obliquely related to boats (not including this one). In all three posts, I refer to piloting the boat through the water in an aimless fashion as "tooling around." It is a phrase that makes perfect sense to me and it works with what I'm trying to convey, but I hadn't realized that it was such a go-to term for me. All three posts about boats include the phrase. It was enough to make me wonder if I was using the phrase correctly. Or even if anyone else ever uses the phrase. So, of course, being the information geek that I am (or, as a friend recently put it, I'm addicted to knowledge), I looked it up: Dictionary: To drive (a vehicle) or (of a vehicle) to be driven, esp in a leisurely or casual style. To drive or ride in a vehicle: tooling along the freeway. To carry or be carried. Thesaurus: Cruise, curb, direct, drift, drive, float, go, go with, guide, handle, hitch a ride, hitchhike, journey, manage, motor, move, post, progress, restrain, roll, sit, sit on, thumb a ride, tool around, tour, travel, advance, drive, impel. So, I'm using it correctly, and it's not something I just made up. But I wonder why no other phrases immediately come to mind when I think of spending time in a boat, particularly with no destination in mind. One can paddle around in a boat, or row a boat around, or use a boat's motor to traverse from point A to nowhere and then back to point A again. But those descriptions lack the vim of the term "tooling around." Do I use the phrase just with boats? I think I've probably used it to mean aimlessly wandering for the purposes of entertainment in the context of roller skating, or riding a bike through the park, or even surfing the internet. Just tooling around. My challenge to myself now is to find a phrase to use in place of "tooling around" that I like just as much. I may never find one, but I'm never opposed to expanding my vocabulary. I only have about a week left of driving past this cluster of buildings every day (at least for a while) but I don't think I'll ever be done with them. As the above photo represents #9 of pretty good shots I've taken from my car during my commute, I thought I'd go for a full 36 in tribute to Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji are his most well-known collection, and the first print in the series is The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. I had been contemplating this 36 Views of South Waterfront thing for a while (as evidenced by this post), but in light of recent events in Japan, it seems all the more apropos. These two below (#6 and #9) were taken from nearly the same spot in traffic, just a few days apart, but the difference in color is apparent. One of the things I love about this collection of buildings is that they appear to be a different color every time I pass them. The weather and the time of day do so much to change their reflective facades. Number 7 and Number 8 above were taken not while stuck in traffic, but still while in my car. I was zooming across the Ross Island Bridge and I held my camera at arm's length toward the passenger side window and clicked randomly. Most of the shots I tried that with were not worth the effort, but these two were interesting enough. Conflict, 7th Grade: As students finish their Know Hope piece and their chess board, they are beginning to form their chess pieces. They may choose any theme for their pieces, but the design must adhere to the following rules:
The pieces must also fit onto the chess board and be able to stand upright on their own. All Culture and Conflict posts can be found under the topic heading: Diversion Audit. Culture, 6th Grade: Once every student had completed their design, we gathered all the students from both classes around the collection of art. Students pointed out designs about which they were curious, and the artist of that design took a few moments to speak about the meaning behind their art. The designs are currently on display in the 6th grade common area, and the students will be able to take home their shirts on Friday after we hang the corresponding prayer flags around the garden. It's supposed to be rainy until... well... June, but maybe we'll catch a break long enough to hang the flags while sporting the shirts. Fundraiser shirts are still available here. Proceeds go to support future artful learning projects. All Culture and Conflict posts can be found under the topic heading: Diversion Audit.
Two delightful baby rabbits spent the day in the classroom before heading off to their new home. Baby rabbits need names, of course, and it is the solemn duty of teachers, just as it is the solemn duty of older brothers, to horrify children as often as possible. So, we named the rabbits after ways to cook rabbit, inspired by Elmer Fudd: Fricassee and Rotisserie (the one pictured here is Fricassee).
Elmer Fudd: Got you, you wabbit stew, you. Bugs Bunny: Look, Doc. Are you looking for trouble? I'm not a stewing rabbit. I'm a fricasseeing rabbit. I had to look up Fricassee, and it turns out, Bugs Bunny is even funnier than I thought. Fricassee is a way of stewing meat in gravy. A fricasseeing rabbit is a stewing rabbit.
After a student had been cuddling with Rotisserie for a while, she very innocently asked me what Rotisserie meant. I told her it meant "to skewer on a spit and roast slowly." The absolutely appalled look on her face was priceless.
We also found this recipe for Bunny Burgers, and left it casually displayed on the computer screen.
Of course, these rabbits are not going to be eaten. They're pets, and the students know that. But it's fun, for just a little while, to evoke their protective instincts and the most indignant expressions they can muster. Fricassee and Rotisserie are sisters, and they like nothing more than to cuddle with each other in the corner of their cage (soon to be a deluxe hutch), usually with Fricassee serving as the mattress.
The theme of my Lazy 365 challenge is this: See a shot, then get out the camera and get that shot.
As I was leaving the middle school one day, I noticed that the lacrosse team from the local high school was practicing on the field. I remembered that a good friend of mine was the coach of that team, so I decided to see if she was there that day.
Sure enough there she was, running drills with the goalie, looking like a badass... as usual.
Just because you're a good swimmer, doesn't mean you shouldn't follow all boat safety protocols.
I spent nine months teaching (among other things) a Lake Study class to students from the Chicago area. Part of the class involved taking the students out on this pontoon boat, tooling around the lake for a bit, and doing some water quality tests through the trap door in the boat's floor. Some students resisted the need for a personal flotation device, citing the hundreds of times they'd gone boating with their families when they weren't forced to wear one. My favorite incident featured the opposite reaction. These boats were a bit finicky, and on this particular day, there was a crystal clear blue sky. The sun was shining, but it wasn't hot; it was a warm pleasant temperature. It seemed as though everyone in the area were out on the lake with their boats. I started up the pontoon boat with no problems, and handed off a radio to one of the employees scheduled to be on the dock that day, in case of emergencies. As we pulled away from the dock a bit, I watched as the guy with my radio walked into the boat house and left the radio inside. He hadn't understood that I wanted him to carry it with him until we got back 45 minutes later. Oh well, we were out of earshot now. In the middle of the lake, I cut the engine and we did our water tests. When I went to start the engine back up again, it wouldn't start. No problem, we had been trained for this. I tried everything. One of the parts of the engine that's supposed to, you know, move just wouldn't budge. It was completely stuck. I had no tools. But, here's the thing: worst case scenario is we sit on a boat in the middle of a huge gorgeous lake with a pleasantly warm sun beating down on us, and in an hour or so someone will realize we haven't come back yet and come get us. That was the absolute worst possible thing that could happen to us at that moment. And yet, the students took this opportunity to freak out. They screamed at the top of their lungs repeatedly, "We're gonna die!" There was nothing I could do to console them. They insisted on screaming and waving their arms frantically at every boat that came marginally near us, hoping to be rescued from their predicament of having been stuck on a boat for 15 minutes. Finally, another boat came close enough to hear and towed us to shore. I was really looking forward to my mini-vacation in the middle of the lake. Sadly, we made it back to the dock before anyone had noticed we were late. I hope those students were happy that they made it to their next class on time with no legitimate excuse to be late for it... |
Topics
All
Archives
May 2021
|