VPR News: Mosher Releases ‘Walking To Gatlinburg’

VPR News: Mosher Releases ‘Walking To Gatlinburg’


I can't wait to read this new one and to see Mosher again. His last book, On Kingdom Mountain: A Novel, was a jewel and the new book, Walking to Gatlinburg: A Novel is supposed to be his best yet. Mosher is a resident of the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont. He lives in the town next to Barton.
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Blog Your Blessings: Extrinsic Motivators

The weather has been beautiful this weekend and I have been stuck inside studying (and moaning about it) — although I did get outside for some great photos yesterday morning; this photo is Sentinel Rock, a glacial erratic in Westmore. I took a class this summer (Teaching Mathematics to ADD/ADHD/LD Students, paid by my contract) and am now taking two six week workshops (Tools for Building Math Concepts and Algebraic Reasoning at the Math Forum, both paid for by the National Science Foundation). Instead of doing my homework during the rainy season in August, I am forced to do it now. I love doing the assignments — so why didn't I? 

This year we are required to write professional goals for ourselves at school. I am going to read Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma and Fostering Algebraic Thinking by Mark Driscoll. I've had these books for ages and have not read them. Books such as these energize and enrich my teaching and I find them fascinating. So why didn't I read them? 

My final blessing is my camera — an intrinsic motivator. Over the years, the camera has become a comforting companion for me. Behind the view finder I find focus and purpose beyond my professional life. This week I was finally published in Humanities (September/October 2008, page 19) — the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  The photo is of the round barn at the Shelburne Museum that I took on a school field trip a year and a half ago. The photo is not in the online edition of the magazine, but the print edition has my name on it. I think I want to subscribe to this beautiful magazine out of thanks, but it costs $24 a year. I want to thank Maria Biernik at NEH for finding and using the photo.

My motivators — extrinsic and intrinsic — enrich my life.

My Sentinel Rock State Park Set on Flickr

My Shelburne Museum Set on Flickr

To read more blessings clickBlog Your Blessings
or Blog Your Blessings

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Book Review: The Geese of Beaver Bog by Bernd Heinrich

On April 22, 2007, I noticed a pair of nesting geese on the beaver ponds across the road. I was disappointed that they choose to nest here because I had been told they were aggressive and would make the ponds their own, chasing out other water fowl. That seemed to be confirmed when I saw that no mallards, wood ducks or mergansers nested here as they had before. I decided that I may as well take advantage of the presence of these birds and photograph their young when they hatched. These photos in this review were taken at 10x zoom.

I saw the three goslings soon after they hatched (but was never able to photograph them), but only for a day or two. The family quickly disappeared. I was concerned that they had been eaten by fox or coyote. Then in July, Wingnut and I went to Crystal Lake State Park to swim and there was my goose family. They had integrated into life at the park and were eating and pooping very well. The goslings were nearly as big as the parents.

The park staff was asking people to not feed the geese, but were ignored. A ranger told me that they had to clean fifty pounds of geese droppings a day and it was becoming tiresome. It was impossible to walk barefoot as we usually do. But the geese were pleasant, not aggressive, and enjoyable to observe, especially since I knew that they were "mine."

I have always wondered how the family got to Crystal Lake, a mile down the road and over at least one beaver dam and a huge falls at the Barton Waterworks. Why did they leave? Was the water at the beaver pond polluted in some way? Did the food supply in the ponds suddenly become scarce? Did the goslings walk or were they carried?

Heinrich wrote the amazingly personal and engaging book, The Geese of Beaver Bog, about his observations of a group of geese from 1997 - 2003. Heinrich is a professor of biology at the University of Vermont. I have read his book Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds (after observing ravens rolling in fresh snow) and have heard him talk about bees and other topics on Vermont Public Radio and National Public Radio.

This book is a wonderful resource for me. Heinrich's experiences with his geese and beaver pond are remarkably similar to mine. We are both in Vermont, so the plants and animals are the same, and the bird populations are similar. Reading this book was like sharing experiences with a friend who doesn't only know the pond, but understands the excitement and sadness that I see here. He would feel as badly as I did when a crow stole a young redwing blackbird. Or when I heard the killing of a deer one night. He would chuckle at the scene of the coyote meeting a beaver face to face on the ice.

Canadian geese are precocial: they are able to be independent after hatching. The goslings are not fed by the parents. They mimic the parent's behavior and quickly learn what wisdom they need to continue surviving. And the parents do take the goslings to other ponds and lakes after hatching. The beaver pond, with its mink, weasels, foxes and coyotes, is not safe for the youngsters. Heinrich's geese walked two miles through cow pastures to a new pond. Mine walked through the woods where there were many dangers from predators that could not be easily seen by the parents.

Geese will try to return to nest where they are born. So I will most likely be seeing geese here for some years to come. Geese pairs do not necessarily mate for life. They tend to be monogamous but life interferes with our plans: mates are killed, or are chased away. I learned about different groups of geese in North America ("races") and about their migration.

We tend to categorize animals as cute, smart, companions, pests, killers, unimportant — there is no end to how we judge which animals are worthy of living. But once we understand their complex behaviors and how they interact, we begin to identify with them and judge them worthy of living on earth with us. We are now concerned about the survival of mountain gorillas, wolves and other animals because of books and movies that personalize their lives. The Geese of Beaver Bog personalized the natural lives of geese for me. It demystified their behaviors, asked questions that I would like answered, and removed the "pest" stigma from them.

I believed geese were nuisances but now that I know them better, I will protect their right to survive in the beaver ponds. I won't be hoping that they never return. I will be re-reading this book in the spring so that I am prepared to better observe, and enjoy, the behaviors of the geese.

All of these photos will open, full-size, in a new window when clicked.

Technorati Tags: Canadian geese, Branta canadensis, Bernd Heinrich, The Geese of Beaver Bog

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Book Review: "Have You Found Her" by Janice Erlbaum

This is copy of a review posted at librarything.com for an Early Reviewer edition of this book, which will be published February 12, 2008. You can pre-order this book by clicking the image on the left or on the title link below. I urge you to do so.

Have You Found Her: A Memoir is a true account of Erlbaum's nearly two years of experiences with Samantha, a girl in the New York City homeless shelter for which Erlbaum volunteered. These two became close friends with Erlbaum attempting to be Samantha's mentor while she also tried to discover something about herself. The book reads like a novel, as the cover says: I could not stop reading it. Erlbaum and Samantha became part of my daytime thoughts.

If I was not reading the book, I worried about Samantha and Erlbaum. It actually felt to me that I could enter their world, and keep an eye on them, simply by opening the book. I was not a "fly on the wall" observing the action: I was a part of the cityscape that they traveled in. I walked with them on the streets and sat with them in lounges. I smelled the institutional smells that they smelled. I had the advantage over a fly of knowing them so well that I could observe them, read their thoughts and empathize with their actions. Would Erlbaum become burned out, like I did when I worked in inner city schools? Would the story end in death and without hope as my experience did?

The title, Have You Found Her, is so apt: when you live and work with children such as Samantha, you spend your life wondering where they are and if they are safe. Usually they are in the wrong places, and are not safe. I became disappointed in one person after another in this book, yet each time my disappointment would resolve into understanding as Erlbaum unraveled Samantha's mysteries.

Erlbaum uses the literary devices we have come to rely on in mystery novels. There is foreshadowing (how often while reading this book did I stop and say, "I should have realized this would happen"?) and she dropped subtle clues to Samantha's problems. She also is an honest observer of her own motives and doubts. These observations helped me unravel a bit of my own life of teaching kids in the city. I say "a bit" because I still don't have, and never will have, the experiences all wrapped up neatly into a package of "lessons learned." It was too complex a time in my life. Erlbaum seems to have achieved peace with her conclusions about her experiences. She found herself right where she had been all along: inside.

This is simply one of the most powerful books I have read in quite awhile. I hope that it is as successful as it should be so that it reaches a huge audience. I need to read Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir to learn more about Erlbaum's adolescence and what led her to Have You Found Her.

Erlbaum's blog is at Girlbomb. Her husband, Bill, has a blog at American Caesar Salad.

Technorati Tags: Have You Found Her, Girlbomb, Janice Erlbaum, William Scurry Jr
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Unplugged Project: Knots And A Cipher Update

Sorry, Mom Unplugged. No string theory today.

I got you-know-who The Dangerous Book for Boysfor Christmas. And

then I got a copy for myself because of the cipher wheel instructions on page sixty-seven. The cipher wheel activity blends perfectly with my Unplugged Project on ciphers. Identical, free instructions can be found here at Scholastic Kid's Spy Academy. (There are great online activities here, at Scholastic, for home and school.)

The connection to this week's Unplugged Project is the section "Five Knots Every Boy Should Know." The Dangerous Book has a web site with a special section for teachers with some free activities to use at recess or at a Parent/Son Night. And one of the activities is this knots section from the book.

Beware of this pdf activity file, though. I have had to use my school PC while my Macintosh is in the shop. And the pdf file for the knots activity crashed this PC twice. Finally, I right-clicked on the link, downloaded the file and opened it locally. It then worked. Be sure to click all of the stickie notes on the book graphic. You can print out certificates, download a section of the book and even print out badges after completion of parts of the book. There are also other valuable links.

I am still planning a math club that will engage kids, especially boys, and I think I will use this Dangerous book. It is stuffed with mathematics activities.

Please note that I am blogging on a PC, which I find inordinately difficult. All of the formatting is differently than on a Mac. I also cannot work with my photos because of my lack of PC software. Therefore, my few posts this week are using graphics linked to their source.

Thank you for stopping by.

Visit other participants of the Project at Unplug Your Kids
or clickUnplugged Project

Next week's Project is in two weeks: COLLAGE

Technorati tags: The Dangerous Book For Boys, Conn Iggulden, Hal Iggulden, math club, cipher wheel, knots
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Cats That Look Like Hitler and Other Links

1. Cats That Look Like Hitler!
2. Stage6: The Last Stop: Videos (public domain videos for free download)
3. Block Posters - Create large wall posters from any image for free!
4. DailyLit: Read books by email and RSS.
5. Open Source: Blog Archive: No Artist Left Behind
6. Open Source: Blog Archive: Pharma: The New Drug Lord?
7. Open Source: Blog Archive: Bug Week (Part 2) with Bernd Heinrich UVM professor and the author of my raven books.
8. Open Source: Blog Archive: William James: Son, Brother, Hero Brother of Henry James.
9. The Story of Spider Web Farm - Williamstown, Vermont
10. Will Knight's Spider Web Farm, Williamstown, Vermont TODO
11. Vermont Scrap Wood: While we are talking beverages Vermont Vodka?
12. eBird || Vermont Institute of Natural Science A Database for Vermont Bird Records
13. Google Earth Hacks - File Downloads - Vermont

Eight More Random Facts About Me

Sarala at Blogaway and Teacher Julie have both tagged me with the Eight Random Facts About Me meme. This is my second time round with this meme and I am ready to write more about myself. This is the perfect time for me to do this. For a teacher, the New Year begins on the Tuesday after Labor Day. That is true even if classes begin in August. So here are my eight New Year's resolutions (with a couple more things about me tossed in):

1. I am actually getting psyched for the new school year. I can't believe it but it's true. I need to write goals for the upcoming school year but I am going to wait and see what the principal's and new superintendant's goals are. The state has mathematics goals and I have goals for my professional development plan. I can merge all of these into no more than four focus areas.
   
2. I am going to read more this year. I will include a bit of fiction, but it will mostly be professional journals and mathematics books (which I love to read the most). I want to also remember to read Marcus Borg and Karen Armstrong.
   
3. I used to be able to do that gross stuff in life: baby diapers, litter boxes. I never blinked an eye. Now I am gagging when I do litter boxes. I cannot for the life of me deal with children's loose teeth (and I teach a bunch of those fifth graders who are always losing them, bleeding from their mouths, blood dripping everywhere . . . ). My resolve for this upcoming year: do those damn litter boxes every damn week and then they won't be so damn awful!
   
4. I am not the most social person. That is why blogging is so attractive to me. I can interact with people without interacting. I am going to become more social in real life this year. Not much, just a bit. A tiny bit.
5. I get way too distracted and am easily led down non-productive but fascinating paths that teach me a lot. I need to harness this so that I can still follow these trails but not do so all day (or night) long. Any ideas, Sarala?
6. I used to have a terror of thunderstorms. It is gone now! I guess living in the mountains with very violent storms makes one overcome the fear. Storms are so bad here that your telephone begins to ring all by itself. That's pretty weird. I am now typing this in the dark on battery power because of a bad storm overhead. If I think and type faster, I can finish this before I lose power and won't be able to post. The foundation of the house is actually vibrating.
   
7. I had two days of complete misery when Wingnut went home. My overly strong reaction has its roots from when my husband died. Sometimes my body becomes confused about the difference between leaving and dying. I gotta work on discerning the difference for these good-bye-but-not-forever-times.
   
8. I have found that photography is a method of getting me off of my property (where I would, if possible, never leave, even to go buy milk), and is mood elevating.
9. I love to keep lists. Right now my table is littered with yellow pad-size sticky notes with lists. Wingnut wanted to throw some away because the wind keeps blowing them around the room. I can't throw them away unless I re-write them onto a new list!
10. I'm in GIMPS again (I hope because I don't think mprime is doing so well). You will be seeing a whole bunch more mathematics here. I want to teach everybody and help everyone overcome math phobia.
11. Oops. Math teacher can't count.
    

I tag all of my new friends:

1. Peppylady
2. Annalee Blysse
3. scan man
4. JMB
5. alisonwonderland
6. ailurophile
7. Drew
8. Opal
9. Stephen the Dog (so sue me)
   

I hope I have never tagged any of them with this meme before. If any of these eight nine do not wish to participate there isn't a problem. I waited over a month before I was ready to respond to Sarala's invitation.

OH YEAH
One more thing: be sure to click these links (Marcus Borgand Karen Armstrongand Branford Marsalis), and buy a lot of books and CDs on amazon so that I can get my Canon Rebel XTi. kthx

Technorati tags: Branford+Marsali Karen+Armstrong GIMPS Marcus+Borg thunderphobia grief

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Wired: Math Book Helps Girls Embrace Their Inner Mathematician

Math Book Helps Girls Embrace Their Inner Mathematician

The actress who played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years, Danica McKellar, is a self-proclaimed math advocate for girls who might otherwise shy away from a subject that Barbie once famously described as "hard."

McKellar's math book for junior high girls, called Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail, will be at bookstores Thursday. It has the look and feel of a teen magazine, but puts heavy emphasis on fractions and pre-algebra.

Graduating summa cum laude from UCLA with a degree in mathematics, McKellar is also co-author of a published proof. She has testified before Congress on math education and served as a substitute teacher.

You can download the proof that Ms. McKellar wrote here. And of course, if you buy this book now by clicking on the book image or on the title, I will get paid. Then I can buy my Canon Rebel XTi.

Technorati tags: Danica+McKellar mathematics

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Ruth Stone

Brian McClintock's VERMONT HUM: WEEKEND HUM (07-28-07)

We Love Ruth Stone
Middlebury's Ruth Stone,92, selected Vermont's State Poet. Is that the best? Here's one of her gems:

The Cabbage

Click the link above for the full poem by Ruth Stone.
Buy Ruth Stone poetry books.

Technorati tags: Ruth+Stone poet Vermont poetry

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Bats At The Library

Little Brown Bat

Jerry Schneider came to the children's last summer library program today to teach us about bats. I attended because of my own bat experience. The library basement was jammed with over twenty children and approximately ten adults. Jerry showed us slides of photos taken by Merlin Tuttle founder of the Bat Conservation International. After the presentation, the children made their own bat t-shirts with bat stencils and fabric paint.

Skeleton of a little brown bat

• You can visit bat caves in Dorset, Vermont.
• There are nine species of bats in Vermont but the little brown bat, Northern long-eared bat, and the big brown bat are most common.
• Bats pollinate night blooming flowers (none are in Vermont) and they disperse seeds.
• Vermont bats eat millions of bugs every night.
• Bat boxes will help keep bats out of your attic.
• Hawks, owls, skunks and domestic pets prey on bats.
• Bat babies are called pups.

Examples of what bats eat in New England

• Bats can live about 34 years but the average life span is 15-25 years.
• Bats can fly at 35 miles per hour (56.3 kilometers per hour).
• Bats can see as well as humans so they need to use echo location to prevent flying into things at night and to locate bugs in the air.
• Best bat book: Stokes Beginner's Guide to Bats
• A bat's echo location call frequency is from 38-63 kH
• Bats evolved from rodents. They grew fingers that evolved into wings. They have thumbs to hang off of trees.
• Only 5% of the reports of rabid bats are true.

Wingnut makes his own bat shirt.

• Female bats congregate in bat houses, caves and attics to nurse their young. Males are usually alone in trees.
• If you have a bat in the house, turn off the lights and open the windows so it can escape.
• You can also use a net or blanket to carefully capture it and free it.
• Bats have gaps in their teeth so that their echo location call is not blocked.
• Some bats make echo location calls in their noses.
• About 50 bats can fit inside a bat house.
• Put your bat house about ten feet high on the south side of your house.

The design is finished.

• The bumble bee bat is the smallest bat.
• Bats are social creatures and need their colonies in order to thrive.
• Bats are the only flying mammal.
• Bats are born alive.
• Bats are attracted to areas with lots of bugs, like fields and marshlands.
• The pallid bat can hear beetles walking on the forest floor.
• If slowed down to frequencies that humans can hear, bat calls sound like bird calls.

Painting the design on the shirt.

I talked to Jerry privately after his presentation to ask him if it were true to get the series of rabies shots if you awaken to a bat in your room. He said yes. But he emphasized that the reports of rabid bats are greatly exaggerated.

The finished shirt.

For more information:
Vermont State Parks Bat Information page
Chiroptera Cabin Company bat houses

Technorati tags: bats, Merlin+Tuttle, Jerry+Schneider, Bat+Conservation+International, Vermont, Barton+Public+Library, bat+caves, Dorset+caves

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My Harry Potter Saturday

Wingnut with his new HP7 in front of the Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick

I did the Harry Potter thing and to tell the truth I am glad I did. At last I was a part of our American popular culture. Our Vermont experience of American culture is a bit different, though.

I took Wingnut to Hardwick for his book at 5 AM on Saturday morning. The Galaxy Bookshop was going to open at 6 AM. They had an ample supply of books to sell so I did not need to reserve a copy. The national "will-I-get-a-copy anxiety" does not exist here.

Wingnut was excited the day before. But not at 4:30 in the morning. He had spent most of the night reading his Lemony Snicket book so he had maybe four hours of sleep. He stumbled about while I hopped about (I had been up since 2 AM, which was accidental because I had read the clock and thought it said 3 AM).

Just as we left the driveway my doe crossed the road. We took about five minutes waiting for her to stare at us, cross the road, and then sit in the tall grass and watch us. Even I was too zonked from only 3 hours of sleep to grab the camera.

Wingnut with his new HP7 in front of the Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick

We were at the bookstore at 5:50 AM (25 miles). We were the only people on the street. Wingnut were concerned that we had the time or place wrong (OK, we did have one short moment of will-I-get-a-copy anxiety). I saw people inside the store which reassured them. The Lamoille River runs through Hardwick and is directly behind the bookshop. I went to look at the river but Wingnut needed to keep an eye on the door of the shop.

At 6 AM sharp they let the hoards of young readers in the store (Wingnut). Immediately one other young man from the neighborhood showed up. I was fascinated to see that the clerks at the store had already read three-quarters of the book over night. I paid. Another neighborhood resident showed up on his bike. I left to take photos.

More traffic: a young mother with her daughter, a couple from Massachusetts looking a bit frayed at the early hour, and second young mother. The Mass couple got two copies. Wingnut came out for photos, and we went to the Village Restaurant for breakfast. One of the young mothers was there with her brood. Her boy and Wingnut read HP7 while we ate. We were home by 8:30 AM. Just in time for me to nap until noon.

A very pleasant excursion was had by all.

Hardwick at 6 AM on a Saturday morning.

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Howard Frank Mosher in Newport

Goodrich Memorial Library

Howard Frank Mosher, author of Marie Blythe, appeared at the Woodknot Bookstore in Newport on Friday, June 29. As soon as I heard of his appearance, Wingnut and I ran up there. I bought his new book, On Kingdom Mountain, and he signed it.

Orleans County Courthouse

Mr. Mosher and his wife both know D and M from school. He didn't remember me from last May when he signed Marie Blythe for me. But he repeated the story of Marie as being true and she is still alive in Brownington.

Orleans District Courthouse

He had returned the night before from a ten bookstore tour in Massachusetts and the next day he was leaving for a one hundred city tour. He didn't want to go because the weather in Vermont is the most perfect that you can find anywhere in the world in the winter.

View of Lake Memphremagog from the District Court

Wingnut and I took the time to take photos in Newport for this post. The courthouses are the scene of Midwives by Chris Bohjalian, an Oprah Book. The view of Lake Memphremagog from the courthouse is mentioned in one scene.

Wash Your Zebra Mussels!

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