Gardening and 100 million strong

Good morning everyone. I seem to be distracted, I'm having trouble sitting here getting this done today. I have Spring Fever. As to my yogurt making and container gardening, I'm not expecting any Armageddon, Don, I think I just reached that stage in my life where I need something to do besides grade papers, worry about students, and go to the grocery store. I'm not sure that my efforts at nutrition are worth the time and effort I'm putting into it, but it is a nice distraction.

I'm hoping that we are beyond frost warnings because I'm planning on plantings seeds today. I think the weather will support the growth of seeds. I went to the greenhouse and bought early flowers and some tomato plants. I think we have enough old plastic plants if it gets too cold. Today is supposed to be a balmy 80°, but tomorrow we will struggle to get into the 70s.

 

It was interesting to note the number of people that are coming into your neighborhood to open their summer cabins. Hopefully most of the cabins will be okay. I think a large number of the mountain in Colorado will be opened on Memorial Day.

Congratulations to the Montréal Canadiens! Hockey is one of my favorite games. I don't particularly like watching it on TV, but I do love going to watch it in an arena. Unfortunately, the tickets for the Avalanche Team have become so expensive that even the nosebleed section is outrageous. We have several college teams in the area which are really good – DU Pioneers are one.

I actually got time yesterday to work on my research for the Wired Generation. I am working my way through Howe and Strauss's book called Millennials Go To College. It is a great book that has given me a

good timeline as to when things shifted culturally. Howe and Strauss were able to delineate various actions by society that led to what they call  eras: the protected child era, the era of the worthy child, the era of the perfect child.

They also increased the size of this particular generation to 100 million. That includes the 80 million kids that are born in the US, and the 20 million immigrants that will be absorbed into our society. Some of the things that are most noteworthy are that this generation is the most racially diverse generation and has the least number of Caucasians in the under 20-year-old group. They consider themselves global, and are rocking the ratings for academic standards, have the highest decline in child poverty, teen pregnancy, and, believe it or not, school violence. One of the interesting things was the idea that child poverty rates for every ethnic and racial group in the United States is at a record low.

The book covers what they feel are the seven core traits of this generation: special, sheltered, confident, team oriented, conventional, pressured, and achieving. I have not finished all of the core traits yet but one of the really great points in the book are the discussions on "implications for campus life" which are at the end of each section. They also include at the very end of each section a discussion on "implications for the classroom." This will be my afternoon reading after I get the containers planted.

 

Riddle cave! Magnetism? Really? That was stretching it a bit, Don. And yes, you are correct, mine is a portable digital music player, also known as an iPod or an MP3 player.

I have absolutely no idea but yours is this week, Don. I even looked up atavism – a characteristic found in a remote ancestor but not in more recent ancestors. I have the feeling that once tell me what the answer is you might just be able to hear a grown all the way from Colorado.

So mine to you today is:

Sunny happy heads of seeds

comptroller stakes for legumes

delight of squirrels and people alike

Have a great week everyone! And congratulations to Raymond, Jeroen and Kathryn for winning this week's riddle contest. I'll have another contest up and going on Wednesday.

Carolyn

 All images downloaded from Google Images

Fig 1 – Flowers retrieved from www.lucygardens.com

Fig2 – Tomatoes retrieved from garden plants clipart

Fig 3 – Summer homes – Cabin Rentals N.C. retrieved from www.rockcreekcabins.com

Fig 4 – What is Magnetism and How does it work retrieved from someinterestingfacts.net