Small Stuff and Two Year Olds

Don,
Loved the walk through 1966 movies! I remember the Fantastic Voyage, and the early Batman, but the others were new to me. It could be that my parents were rather old-fashioned - I didn't stay the night with many folks, and my parents screened all movies - family movies at the "drive in". I was not adventurous or rebellious until my college years.  Then I was out of the house and my mother could  not stop me! By then, the movie theater in the small town I where I went to college had closed.  And being in a small mountain town made TV reception a bit "snowy" at best. So my movie education is sadly lacking.

But, I do remember coming to the big city in time to see Marooned a week before the Apollo 13 accident. Freaky! David Pogue has a series out on Making Stuff Small - one of the interviews is with a doctor who has made a pill you can swallow that travels and reports on the whole digestive system. It is so amazing what science can do now.I got to thinking about "drive in". My grandchildren know what that is; their folks take them often during the summer. But an old fashioned telephone is not something they can conceive of using.

Most of my students scoff at telephone booths (where would Superman change if it weren't for telephone booths!) What students don't realize is that the changes from rotatory phones to digital is what opened up the way to the kind of phones they use now. Maybe it is time to renew the lecture on scientific advances in the 1960s to create and develop thesis. That usually opens up the doors to curiosity.





I've had the pleasure of spending the last 4 days with my youngest grandson. Talk about curiosity! At 2 years old, the world is new and amazing! I'm loving the simple things in life again.  It was fun watching him explore water. Yesterday we watered the yard, and he was intrigued by the sprinklers. He'd go right to the edge of the sprinkles, giggle and run back out. Then he'd race up to the edge again, each time he'd go further into the water. Eventually he found a sprinkler that wasn't pulsating the water above his chin. Then he's squat down and wash his hands in it; all the time giggling.

Our trip through the grocery store was fun. At first only his mom or dad could push the cart, then grandpa. By the time I was able to push his cart, we could go out of sight of mom and dad and then zip around and go back to find them. We were able to keep the shrieks of joy fairly quiet. At least we weren't asked to leave the store. His ability to imitate is uncanny. He crawls on all fours and follows the dog through the house, under the table, across the carpet, into his bed (Night night doggy...). Outside he sniffs the grass like the dog does, smells the tall grass, puts his nose deep into the grass. "Careful, Children Listen" is really true.

I've come to the conclusion that if God laughs, it must be the laugh of a young child. There is such an abandonment, a sense of thrill and delight that goes all the way to the soul. I like the way the eyes light up and then the whole body lights up in delight. I miss it - but not enough to become a preschool teacher. Those good folks are earning halo points - their patience and calmness and ability to compromise should be patented and sold to world leaders.

We've posted the last of the Transports on the website. For July, we'll focus on the books our authors have written. I've arranged for the Transports to be sold at fire sale price - $0.99 each through August. And the books are at the great sale price of $1.99 through August. After that, the Transports will be taken off the market. Wormhole will focus on publishing books and the works of specific authors.

Readers showed great support for Tammy Narayan with her last 3 short stories. In the fall, Tammy, will  return with more! We'll run her favorite 3.



Well, grandson is back from the Dr.s -  time for lunch.
Have a great week!

Carolyn

All images downloaded from google images:

Fig 1 -- NOVA | Making Stuff  retrieved from www.pbs.org

Fig 2 -- Marooned (1969)  retrieved from www.1000misspenthours.com

 Fig 3 - All Crime n Violence today We can only blame... retrieved from funnyand.tumblr.com438 × 410Search by image

Fig 4 -- Which indoor playground to visit?  Retrieved from www.thestar.com.my

Fig 5 – Transport 40 created by L. Varvel

 

Route 66

Hi Carolyn,



Sure sounds like you have been doing some heavy duty treading on the path of higher education recently. Hearing about those cuts made to meet " the bottom line " in your college was not cool.  Up here that same kind of cost-cutting activity has been in the news a bunch recently. A number of years ago the provincial government passed a law that made it mandatory for all boards of education to balance their budgets. It was an election year so this was  part well-intentioned and part election time politics.






Predictably, this did not bring stability of any sort but just upped the turmoil ante in the education sphere. Most folks, it seems, feel that education is something to be endured in their formative years and ignored thereafter. The upshot has been some pretty massive budget cuts in the last few years as boards of education try to toe this line that puts the ledger above the future, if you will. Yes, it does truly suck, sometimes, to realize that so many people don't catch on to the fact that education is a long term investment as well. Scrimp on it now and it will come back and bite ya in the future.


Speaking of the future, I was back nosing around in Gizmodo, one of my favorite sites to visit, and ran into this article:



Nanorobots wade through blood to deliver drugs

By Nick Lavars

June 17, 2015

Nanorobots hold great potential in the field of medicine. This is largely due to the possibility of highly-targeted delivery of medical payloads, an outcome that could lessen side effects and negate the need for invasive procedures. But how these microscopic particles can best navigate the body's fluids is a huge area of focus for scientists. Researchers are now reporting a new technique whereby nanorobots are made to swim swiftly through the fluids like blood to reach their destination

 

 

 

Well, while it did initially make me say to myself,  " Isn't this far out? "  it also  almost immediately reminded me of one of the very first movies that really made me think about technology way back when I was a fifteen year old in 1966.

I actually went to the theatre twice in the same week to see Fantastic Voyage  because it was so intriguing . Now, remember that this is a boy of fifteen we are talking about, so the intrigue comes in a variety of forms. I also went to see another movie with one of the stars from this one twice, too.

I would be lying if I said that I remember Raquel Welch for her riveting performance in either of these 1966 epics, but I'd also be fibbing if I said that I wasn't riveted to the screen whenever she appeared...

Like the poster says ...

 " This is the way it was "

for this 15.5 year old guy  in 1966.

 

 

 

 

Hopefully Ms. Welch does not go to the back of her closet these days  and grab any of the outfits she wore at work in 1966, slap them on and go for a walk in the neighbourhood.

 

 

 

 

Horsing about in IMDB for 1966 brought me to a number of other cinematic touchstones for that particular year. I did get to the cinema to see each of the following - although Godzilla, Batman and Zontar were observed at the drive-in because I had a friend whose mostly in absentia  parents soothed their guilt and bought him off  by giving him the car whenever he asked.

 

 

 

 

Got to see Fahrenheit 451 at the movies while we were at school thanks to an English teacher who was ahead of her time. She had to bend a few rules to get a class of "minor niners " freed up halfway through the afternoon to walk downtown to the movie theatre, I'm thinking. Fortunately our school was only five blocks from the cinema, or I'm sure most of us would have been MIA on the way there.

 

 

We read the book in class earlier in the year. I do believe that this is one of the first examples in my literary life of how the book can excel and exceed well beyond the movie.  Mind you, Julie Christie stuck with me from that movie, and certainly not for the the same reasons that Raquel did! ( Again, we gotta remember that this a fifteen year old talkin' here )

 

 

 

Godzilla and the Sea Monster, The Batman Movie and Zontar, the thing from Venus were all drive-in specials..........

 

 

 

 

 

 

I admit to a particular weakness for schlocky Godzilla movies. I'm certainly not alone in this regard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I think, as do lotsa people, that this shark up the ladder after Batman scene may have inspired the Sharknado movies thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have no defense against why I went, willingly, to see Zontar other than at fifteen it was cool just to go to a drive-in. This ain't the kind of thing that ever happened with my parents and I'm sure I fabricated an elaborate excuse to get out of the house that night.

 

 

 

The only other thing about pop culture in 1966 that bears mentioning right now is that this was the year that a bizarre little debut album from Frank Zappa and his band The Mothers of Invention  came out. I am still torn as to whether I should put Mr. Zappa as my second or third most favored musical influence of all. I'm gonna leave the basic introductory details to Wikipedia in the paragraph below. However, Carolyn, you are a musical person and if the name doesn't ring a bell, I'd like to think that it would with your musical offspring. For reasons I cannot explain or elucidate, I love Frank Zappa. I loved him then and I love him now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zappa was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often difficult to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was rock, jazz or classical. His lyrics—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.

 

 

 

 

Anyhow, Carolyn, to bring things full circle, you asked last time around what Mark Twain might have had to say about the incongruous developments in the world of education where you are. Well I think Mark and Frank ( Zappa ) may have gotten along well in terms of their feelings about public education at its lowest common denominator.  I can't say that either one would have approved of the budget-motivated cuts of which you spoke. I think they would have felt the system was suspect from the git-go. However, I also figure that these kind of long-range and wide-ranging visionaries can often lose track of how the rest of us have to deal with such things here in the trenches.

 

 

I had this Twainism picked already as a recognition of Donald Trump's silly presidential sortie down your way,  but I think it can be easily stretched to fit  the mindset of the policy-making powers that be in your teaching situation :

 

 

 

 

 

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

 

 

 

 

 

Have a good week.

 

Don

 

 

 

All images sourced from Google Images

 

Fig. 1 - gcn.com

Fig. 2 - Gizmag.com

Fig. 3 - stuffpoint.com

Fig. 4 - en.wikipedia.org

Fig. 5 - moviepilot.com

Fig. 6 - stuffpoint.com

Fig. 7 - thesupernaughts.com

Fig. 8 - garth.typepad.com

Fig. 9 - vinliciously.gr

 

Survivor's Remorse

Don,

Glad to hear that you are back in the world of technology! We often laugh about just how dependent we are and we say "Oh, not us!"  But in reality, the land of Wi-Fi has become, for some, a life line. I try hard not to look at email or e-news while I'm doing the marathon grading – but it has become a diversion that I sometimes need.

Your daughter and I should get together and write a book of excuses! This quarter I had a rash of student cars being towed. Now, I'm not sure how you know your car is being towed at the very minute  you are in class and your car is 5 blocks away... I know! My students have precognition! But only when it comes to their cars. They apparently had absolutely no idea about their final grades.

It's been a long hard 2 weeks. I'm finally done with grading, the grades are posted and the old quarter has been put to bed. I figure that I've graded about 8 pounds of papers this quarter - 2 pounds of it in the last 2 weeks.  Students became aware that maybe they should have put forth more effort a little sooner and they begged for more to improve their grades. But, too little too late. There was nothing more any of us could do. My standard line became, "Don't let me every catch you with another grade as low as this one. It is a poor reflection of what you can do..." I sigh, they sigh, and hope fades for some.

There is a psychological condition known as "Survivor's Guilt".    The military deals with this a lot; it is the trauma of surviving when everyone else dies. We see it when a single family member survives an accident or friends survive a mass shooting and others of their group do not. I'm going to suggest that there is another, lesser traumatic condition known as "Survivor's Remorse."   (Not the TV show)

We had another round of layoff this last week.  The majority of the surviving faculty was told that there were a number of cuts that still had to be made, and a generous buy-out offer was made. Everyone at the meeting had the option to take the package and go through "separation" from the company. If they choose to do nothing, and the numbers were not met, the company would decide who would be separated out. I was not offered the package this go-round.

It became hard for me to go to work, knowing that next week, friends won't be there anymore. At this moment in time, I still have a job. For this I am very grateful and incredibly sad at the same time. There is nothing I can do or offer to keep my friends employed. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this way.  

I'm reading a book by Gregg Krech, The Art of Taking Action: Lessons From Japanese Psychology. He recommends that instead of trying to hide from, deny, push away the sadness of loss, hold it gently in your heart with warmth and tenderness. And as the British say, "Soldier on." And while we're doing that, Krech suggests that we find the blessings in our lives and be okay with them.

It's hard to be gentle and tender when those around me are ranting and stamping their feet; it's hard to soldier on knowing that my already full classes will now be overflowing.  And I'm afraid to share my blessings when so many are scared and feeling turned out and abandoned. This is a confusing time for everyone.

I'm trying really hard to not judge those who demand that Education turn a profit, or that all classes be taught the way the politicians were educated. I know that none of them have ever faced a class of excited new students who are trying to be their own hero, trying to save their own day, and maybe, by doing that, they can save the days of those around them.  To those instructors that have made this possible, thank you. For those of you who are facing new opportunities – may your lives be blessed. For those of us soldiering on, may we do it gracefully.

What would Mr. Twain say, Don?

It's been a long six months...

Carolyn

Umbilical cords and cables

Hi Carolyn,



Well, we're back from another  trip to the land that Wi-Fi forgot.  Ironically upon our return we discovered that our neighbors, in the process of putting a new fence around their yard while we were away had accidentally made it so that our "unconnected" adventure was to continue.









It seems, they had a " friend"  (who was supposed to be an old hand at these types of construction projects), come and dig the holes for the fence posts. Since we're on the shore area with lotsa underlying limestone  it meant using some muscle to get those posts far enough into the ground to handle the frost. This meant a medium sized excavator and a rock hammer were rented and flung about.  Well, in the process they managed to sever our buried cable and essentially leave us without  internet, landline telephone and cable television for a number of days.










I  suggested to my lsbh, during this unconnected adventure, that we could pretend we were Amish.  But, having just spent almost a week without Wi-Fi  she didn't seem to see it with the same sense of jocularity. It would be a lie to say that I didn't feel  cut off during this scenario, though - and I'm a borderline introvert most of the time.














Our daughter, in her last visit, had some interesting teaching anecdotes to pass along. She, like you,  deals with post-secondary students ( or clientele as some uber administrative types like to label them ). Her most memorable/chilling  tale has to be of the penitent student who, given the opportunity to submit a written appeal to avoid outright expulsion for near zero attendance and complete failure to submit assignments, presented an earnest and plaintive  outline of the extenuating circumstances. The whole troublesome  situation was precipitated, apparently,  by the unendurable stress caused by balancing a full-time job with a full-time university career. The job, as the student explained, was necessitated by the fact that the payments on the high-performance German sedan the student had purchased for transportation to and fro needed to be paid for. 







The implicit audacity actually pales beside the more ominous feeling that this person really felt they had organized their priorities appropriately for this situation. Hmmmmmm.

It  makes ya wonder just what kind of world those grandchildren you spoke of will be trying to make their way through when they are severing the various umbilical cords and jumping out of the nest.

 

 

 

After reading your plans for your supposed " down time "  Carolyn, all I can say at the moment is don't forget to take it easy.

 

 

 

 

Leaving you with something suitably appropriate  from Mr. Twain, of course:

 

 

 

 

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities.

Truth isn't.

 

 

 

Don

 

 

 

 

All images sourced from Google Images

 

 



Fig. 1 - cremlypoi.com

Fig. 2 - northernequipment.net

Fig. 3 - en.wikipedia.org

Fig. 4 - en.wikipedia.org

Fig. 5 - www.caycon.com

Fig. 6 - blog.familymoneyvalues.com

 

 

 

 

Between the Generations

Ev'n, Don,

I remember Gunsmoke – in our house it was a must see, along with The Lone Ranger. Now that you mention it, I remember Burt Reynolds – I think he was the first beefcake on TV. Maybe that was why my mom loved watching the show... I liked your quote by Smith that Gunsmoke was the American equivalent to the Iliad and Odyssey. So very true!

You mentioned the plot lag – that 27 minutes just seems a bit too long to wrap things up! My Better Half and I have been watching the first year of Star Trek and the hour long show from 40 years ago is longer than today's standard. That few extra minutes does not lend to the story very often. But it is a bit of respite and sometimes has a good chuckle at the end – a joke on Spock or Bones trying to make a witticism that Kirk or Sock somehow turn around.

You're right, The Serpent Bearer is an excellent example of steampunk. Jeff Keir is another steampunk author. His latest offerings are more science fiction twisted, but he started a series called the Iron Sky a couple of years back that also fits the steampunk genre. Jeff's newest offerings will be up on the website by the end of next week, but Outpost is available through Amazon.

I'm sure the stories from your daughter are enough to make you celebrate not being a teacher anymore. Hopefully she'll see her way to write a book – I'm sure we can find a good publisher for her. If you were to mention Gunsmoke in my current classrooms, I don't believe there would be anyone who knew it was even a TV show. The term steampunk is probably not going to be understood either.

I was comparing musical events that Garth Brooks did to some of the more recent artists – comparing use of technology, music... the 2 students I was talking with didn't have the faintest idea who Garth Brooks was. I thought I was being clever by mentioning someone more current than Led Zepplin, The Who, David Bowie, Kiss ...  obviously not.

I read a magnificent article by Oli Scarff about a gentleman in England who is growing trees in the shape of furniture. The piece of furniture is "one solid, joint less piece of wood" (Scarff, 2015). The furniture grower, Gavin Munro, does everything by hand: picks off tree pests by hand, pruning and bonsai techniques that help shape the living chair, organic methods are used for weed killing. It has taken 10 years for this project to develop into a business. He also has lampshades and
 hexagon-shaped mirrors. His first chair will be ready for market in the spring 2017. Believe it or not, there have been a number of pre-sales. What do the neighbors think? What would you think if you stumbled into a farm that grew up-side-down chairs?

I have three more weeks left in the quarter, then I'm done for a couple of weeks. And what are you going to do? You might ask... Well...I'm going to meet my new grandson for the first time! Our son and his wife adopted a little boy this spring and we get to meet him for the first time! We've "met" him thanks to Skype, but we're all a twitter about meeting him face to face.

But first! This is just as good! Our other grandson is coming to stay a couple of days with us. I think we're going to go to the museum – there is an exhibit on toys from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Maybe this will help close the communication gap we sometimes feel with younger folks.

I keep putting myself into positions to learn new and different ways to write. I just completed a condensed series of sessions on how to write video manuscripts. It is a fascinating process! The one thing I'm still having problems with is the use of all caps for the dialogue in the 2 column format. I understand that it allows for a completely different look from the video or film shots that are put in the first column, but all my years of English training are screaming it is just wrong! I have enjoyed learning how to condense information down into "sound bites." When I actually think about it - it isn't that much different than the way I lecture. I'm not sure I ever use full completely formed sentences. What will I do with this? I don't know! But maybe someday I'll have my name as the Writer on a famous video... 

I loved the quote from Twain, Don! I didn't get my facts straight first so I made a bit of a fool of myself when I made a bid on a car. Thankfully, no one took me seriously. Unfortunately, "they" didn't take me seriously enough to make a counter-offer. I think I got caught up in trying to prove to the "younger folks" that I am just as savvy as they are. This growing more mature stage in my life has offered up some bumps to my ego.

Have a great week!
Carolyn  

Scarff, O. (2015) British designer growing trees into furniture. Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/britishe-designer-growing-trees-furniture-102756959.html

Fig 1 --The Lone Ranger Fan Club :: Novelties retrieved from

www.lonerangerfanclub.com

Fig 2 – Serpent Bearer book cover by L. Varvel

Fig 3 – Stories by Jeff Keir Transport cover by L. Varvel

Fig 4 – Kiss retrieved from KISS - KISS Wallpaper (23452819) - Fanpop

www.fanpop.com

Fig 5 --  Trees to chairs retrieved from The Innovators: growing solid wooden furniture without the joins | Business | The Guardian

www.theguardian.com

Fig 6 – chairs from trees retrieved from Full Grown: Trees grown into the shape of items of furniture such ...

www.ibtimes.co.uk