Mitsumasa Anno's Math Games II

I discovered this great series of books about math in the 'Games' section of my favorite bookstore.

Merry Christmas

The morning of Christmas Eve presented a unique challenge. Our seven year old woke up earlier than usual, and his first words to me were this: "Mom, what about breakfast with Santa?"

I gently reminded him that the snow kept us home from a local event in which families enjoy breakfast and a visit with Santa. My answer was no consolation. "But how will he know what I want?"

His concern was valid. In his world, this was a very important matter. I felt a renewed focus to help him on his quest. I bravely replied: "I think Santa will be at the mall today. Let's get ready now to go and see him."

We arrived early enough to wait in line for a short twenty-five minutes. The entire production was professional, with a clear focus on the photographed memory. Santa himself seemed a bit tired, a little grumpy and ready to be done with the whole thing. I wish I had quietly told the team--the usher, photographer and Santa himself: "We don't care about the picture. My son just wants to talk to you."

Hindsight being twenty/twenty, the kids and I got swept up in the production. Twenty dollars later, we left for home, just as families were being given pagers to be notified for their space in line.

* * *

This Christmas has been quite enjoyable. The kids all got toys that take batteries: a simple digital camera, a voice recorder which also plays MP3s (all the bells and whistles without the screen), a pretend chainsaw with four different sounds. I did most of the shopping last minute, choosing wisely not to get stressed out. I know, Mom's are often in charge of such things. Jugs of maple syrup, good olive oil, freshly roasted coffee...who doesn't enjoy such delights?

The gifts I received were really nice: a case of seltzer water, a lightweight jacket, a small set of ceramic houses my sister and I used to play with , and a copy of The J Peterman Company Owner's Manual No. 72. It's the most clever print advertising I've read in years.

Happy Thanksgiving

I would love to live in a neighborhood like this: clean, surrounded by mature trees, with real sidewalks for pedestrians and cyclists. Every house has a large porch, intended for use as an outdoor room. How soon will we see these kinds of neighborhoods sprout up along the eastern United States?

www.rosschapin.com

Dinotopia

This week I ran across the book Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, written and illustrated by James Gurney. I was floating around one of my favorite places, the Kennett Area Senior Center Book Store. It's a used book store whose donor base is often both affluent and educated, so the selection is good. I had a spare hour, child free, and wanted to enjoy every minute of it.

I am enamored by this book and plan to enjoy the other two in the series which follow. There's discovery and adventure, inventions and engineering, contemplation and philosophy. Read aloud season is upon us, when the kids and I bundle up in bed and enjoy a chapter book together. I might suprise them with this book soon.

For three weeks now, the paw paw trees have been yielding their sumptuous fruit. Some describe the taste of North America's largest native fruit as that of banana-pineapple, others say it is like a sweet mango, while others say it has an aspect of vanilla-root beer. Some hand sized raspberry plants padded into a small nursery bed in the spring quickly grew to productive canes within months. We've been enjoying the month long backyard harvest. Yesterday my husband brought in three chestnuts, the first ever to fall, from two trees which were planted when our seven year old was just a baby. We promptly set to roasting them, and enjoyed the warm, starchy sweetness.

New Discoveries

Abstract:

Fascinating and elegant shapes may be folded from a single planar sheet of material without stretching, tearing or cutting, if one incorporates curved folds into the design. We present an optimization based computational framework for design and digital reconstruction of surfaces which can be produced by curved folding. Our work not only contributes to applications in architecture and industrial design, but it also provides a new way to study the complex and largely unexplored phenomena arising in curved folding.

I've spent the last month transitioning into the new family schedule. I thrive off of newness and variation, though this new set of responsibilities has sent me back to the drawing board. My husband has been a great anchor, providing a calm focus in contrast to the background chatter of life with three young children.

My birthday passed by without much fanfare. In my haste, I forgot to ask for the day off (from mothering that is!). I was delighted by the special recognition at work. With every year that passes, I still feel ageless. Thirty-four seems a lot like twenty-eight, which seemed a bit like twenty-three. Although now when I listen to my favorite Miles Davis album, Live-Evil, the music has never sounded so good. It still sounds like the first time I heard it, which was decades ago. I bet I'm not the only person who feels this way about their favorite Miles Davis album.

So, new discoveries for this month include: hydrofoil surfboards, kite-surfing, paper folding, barefoot jump rope games, freestyle dance, roller derby, the writer Malcolm Gladwell and digital video cameras that film 1,400,000 frames per second.

Unison Hand Made Pastels

These beautiful pastels are hand rolled and air-dried by a small company in Northumberland, England. This may be a place where work and play are used as synonyms. Those colorful sticks remind me of the ones my older brother and I used to make when we were little. I recall one of our main games of playing pretend centered around the idea of 'work'---where we worked, what we did at work, that we were either going to or coming back from work. At one time, my 'office' was up in a pine tree. These games of make believe lasted hours, days, months, years.

Yesterday the rain poured on and off and kept my husband away from his usual tasks. He is a landscaper and an arborist, and for the most part he loves his work. He is also a musician, a composer. After tending to the kids and their needs all morning, he set aside some time in the afternoon to sit down at the piano.

He started off with a familiar tune, some classic jazz standard, and then kept going until he got through it without a flaw. As he warmed up, he went into some of his own compositions, playing them in rounds, changing a few notes here and a few notes there. The house filled not only with the chords, but also with the memories and feelings, the times and situations when he first sat down and played the bits and pieces of what would become full songs. Whenever I hear him play something new that sounds bright, distinct and special, I put in a gentle request:

"Oh, I like that one. Can you write it down?"