22. The Importance of Gloves

Have you seen the documentary Free Solo?  You definitely should if you feel like it.

It's about Alex Honnold's climb to the top of El Capitan, using no ropes at all.

Come to find out,  Alex's mom just published a memoir.  She's the oldest woman to climb El Capitan.  She climbed it at age 66, which is pretty good, but let's not forget that she used ropes.

Over 30 people have died trying to climb El Capitan, so if I were you, I'd think twice before you give it a try.

Rock climbing is good fun, but use ropes.  Also spend a few extra bucks and buy your belayer some gloves.  Many climbing accidents occur because belayers without gloves let the rope slip through their hands.

21. The Wrong Side

I woke up on that wrong side today, so while I'm drinking my coffee, I've been searching on the internets for "what to do when I'm in a really really really bad mood."

The advice sucks of course.

Investigate your bad mood?  No.  Leave me alone.

Help someone in need?  Are you freaking kidding me?

Dance around to a favorite song?  Looking like an imbecile is going to solve all my problems. Sure thing.

One site just said, "Let the bad mood be."  So that's what I'm going to do.  It'll probably go away once we began the standardized testing (Math Performance Tasks) around 9:05.

20. Museum of Common Sense Physics

This is one of those days where I wonder why I thought a 30 day blogging challenge in April was a good idea. But I'm here, getting it done, and soon I'll be in bed asleep.

I was reading the NYT yesterday and came upon one of their 36 Hours in Such and Such a Place pieces.  This week it was Mendocino.  I thought of 20 Something right away.  Mendocino is only 90 minutes from where she lives, so why wouldn't she just drive up there and spend 36 hours poking around?

There's a museum there called The Museum of Common Sense Physics.  I spent time reading all about the gentleman who made this little museum.  He's dead now, but he seemed like a great guy, full of curiosity.  He was interested in physics, so he opened up a TV store, where he sold and repaired TVs.  Most of the time, he was just working on physics experiments, using various television remnants and spare parts.

When I was reading the NYT article, I miscued and thought the museum was called The Museum of Common Sense.  What an awesome idea, I thought, and clicked on the link with vim.  I was disappointed that the museum is really just about physics, which is not one of my major interest areas.  But that's neither here nor there.  Larry Spring turned his job into a front for his real passion, which is pretty sensible thing to do if you can swing it.

19. The Duck ID

Photo Credit:  Judith

I've been learning a ton of stuff today.  I've been at my computer for about 3 hours, just looking at things and texting with people and ordering stuff online and drinking five cups of coffee.  It's been a lot of fun.  20 Something and I have spent a lot of this time sending duck links back and forth.  She sees ducks at Lake Merritt and sometimes she asks me to work with her to identify some of them.  That's when we both roll up our sleeves and get to work. Today we believe we've identified the Swedish Black Duck.  During our search, 20 Something turned me on to the Magpie Ducks.  Sweet birds.

Magpie Ducks, FOTO uncredited.  Sorry, Magpie Duck Photographer

18. The Locals

We're learning about going local in our economics unit.  One of the benefits of spending time and money at local businesses and institutions is that you help promote the uniqueness of your town.

As part of this lesson, the Thirdlanders were searching for images on the Visit Bloomington page in order to plan a weekend for their families, where they would frequent some new local spots.  After planning the schedule, they used their images to make cool collages.

I could tell I didn't do a great job with my lesson on what going local means when they started working on their collages.  I kept hearing questions like:

Is Denny's local?
Is Brown County State Park local?
Is the IU Art Museum Local?
Is Chipotle local?

  I guess there's no reason for them to know that there are millions of Denny's and only one IU Art Museum, but it still seemed strange to me. I had given many examples of local businesses and had displayed photos on my power point and I had also shared some fascinating anecdotes of my personal interactions with local entrepreneurs.  Sometimes I think The Thirdlanders are ignoring the heck out of me.

17. The Adventures of Husbandman

Tomorrow, Husbandman journeys to Nantes, in the country of France.

I learned this morning that Nantes has been labeled a Gamma World City.

What's a Gamma World City, I asked myself, and maybe you also are haunted by this question, as you read this blog entry.

Don't worry, I've looked into it for all of us.

Come to find out, cities are ranked by economic factors. Being a Gamma World City isn't all that great.  The Gammas are way behind the Alphas and the Betas.  Case in point:  Kansas City is also a Gamma World City.

I'm sure Nantes has some great things going for it, but in terms of economics, it's not in the same ballpark as London or New York or Shanghai.  Not even close.

16. Emily St. John Mandel

I finished The Lola Quartet this week.  It's by Emily St. John Mandel.  I learned that St. John is the author's middle name, so if you're shelving her books, they should go under M if you use an alphabetical system for shelving. Lola Quartet was the third Mandel book I've read.  I began with the masterpiece, Station Eleven, then spent time with her first novel, Last Night in Montreal, and then I read Lola Quartet.  It's fun to acquire a new fave author.  I'm looking forward to her new book, Glass Hotel. Mandel writes characters that get themselves into some tricky situations.  She's good at quietly building up suspense.  She lives in the United States now, but she was born in Canada.  She went to school to be a dancer.

15. Elliptic Regularity Theory

Elliptic Regularity Theory, (ERT) is all about the smoothness of solutions to elliptic partial differential equations.  Turns out when you solve an elliptic PDE in a region where you've specified the values on the boundary, the solution is really smooth inside the region even if the values on the boundary aren't that nice.

This probably seems super basic to all of you, but it took me awhile to get the hang of ERT. I spent most of the afternoon reading the seminal work on the topic by Gilbarg and Trudinger.  Elliptic PDE are ubiquitous so the regularity of their solutions is really important. Put the time in and learn more about ERT.  The sky's the limit, when your heart is in it.

14. The Baldi

A trio of Thirdlanders stood with me at recess today, teaching me about Baldi's Basics.  The way they talked about the animated teacher, Baldi, who comes at a kid with his ruler when he answers math questions incorrectly cracked me up.  When they left for the day, I watched a Baldi's Basics video and quite enjoyed it.

Have you learned about Baldi's Basics?  If not, get up to speed by watching this 2 minute video.

This crew of Thirdlanders has taught me a lot about Marshmello as well.  Marshmello has some great songs and we listen to his music during our clean up time.  Sometimes I let them watch his videos too, if I'm in a decent mood. The video for FLY shows Marshmello flying through the skies. During FLY, some Thirdlander always patiently explains to me, "This is animated.  He can't really fly."

13. The Pockets With Poems in Them

Photo Credit:  Nancer

Poem In Your Pocket Day started back in 2002 in the hustle bustle of New York City.  

The country copycatted NYC in 2008, hopscotching into  Poem in your Pocket Day from sea to shining sea.

Canada crashed the party with northern neighbor poem popping in 2016.

Fast forward to 2019.  Tax Day.  I've yet to find my poem.

This week, I'm green with envy.  I keep watching the poem project video peeps feeling their favorite poems and reciting them with straight up verve.  

Why don't I have one favorite poem that lifts me up and away?

My poem's out there somewhere.

12. The Bridge

Photo by Nancer

As you all know, we're learning how to play bridge.

Bridge is extremely hard to learn, but it's going to be worth it.  One author calls the game of bridge a "life long friend."

Last night, one or two bridge rules started to make sense to me.  I was a little embarrassed because these were basic rules that have been explained to me 50,000 times over the last few months and that are written down on a piece of paper I keep in front of me at all times throughout the game.

"Why is it taking me so long to learn this game?" I wondered aloud.  I noticed the others nodding solemnly and making quick eye contact among themselves, with raised eyebrows, as if they too were pondering this same question, and simultaneously feeling concern about my progress right along with me.

One web site says it could take me 3 to 6 years to learn how to play bridge. In short, hold the horses, my friends.  We're in for the long haul.

I suggest everyone start learning bridge.  I like to think about all of us in our 80s and 90s playing bridge with our bridge club. We'll eat snacks, drink wine, do our best, forget the rest. I can take photos and collect bridge blog stories.  A ride service can take us home or we can all spend the night and Husbandman can make breakfast in the morning. Let's not worry about details.  We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.