Kansas Dresners
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Summer Fun 2009
We're over a week into the semester here, so summer is REALLY, really over. So here are some of our adventures from the warmer months:
One of the annual highlights around here is the Four State Farm Show, with tractors and harvesters and silos and cowboy hat salesmen.... It was surprisingly diverting.
Closer to home, though they moved a lot of the geese out of Lakeside Park, we still have ducks and ducklings. And Max now knows how to play checkers, thanks to his other grandmother!
We also took a short trip up to St. Louis, to see the other cousins and have some fun.
We went to the new City Garden sculpture park, which doubled as a water adventure
On our last day we spent a couple of hours at the St. Louis Zoo, then the next morning, on our way home, we stopped at the Merimac Caverns to explore the caves and history
Then we came home and got ready for school. ¶ Tuesday, September 01, 2009 0 comments
One of the annual highlights around here is the Four State Farm Show, with tractors and harvesters and silos and cowboy hat salesmen.... It was surprisingly diverting.
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 | The cousins arrive! And grandparents! And we showed them Pittsburg. |
 | Big Brutus is one of the biggest steam shovels ever. I've had dorm rooms smaller than the scoop. |
 | There was a lot at the George Washington Carver museum: the kids may have had more fun in the museum, but the nature walk was pretty good. |
 | We took the whole clan out to Triple Creek for a visit. The kids, naturally, had a blast on the trampoline. |
 | Dad and I had fun hunting bugs in the garden |
Closer to home, though they moved a lot of the geese out of Lakeside Park, we still have ducks and ducklings. And Max now knows how to play checkers, thanks to his other grandmother!
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We also took a short trip up to St. Louis, to see the other cousins and have some fun.
 | The Magic House is a big exploratorium-type complex just a few blocks from Clint's place. Max and Jack spent quite a while in the Construction Zone, moving bricks and making walls. Below, a self-portrait in plastic. |
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We went to the new City Garden sculpture park, which doubled as a water adventure
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On our last day we spent a couple of hours at the St. Louis Zoo, then the next morning, on our way home, we stopped at the Merimac Caverns to explore the caves and history
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Then we came home and got ready for school. ¶ Tuesday, September 01, 2009 0 comments
Summer Work 2009
One of my summer projects -- which will actually never end, as it's now going to be an ongoing component of my teaching -- is creating a set of images that I can use for teaching. Some of it is going to be scanning art and other book images which I can use, but a big chunk has to do with converting my old slide and print pictures from Japan into digital forms that I can make easy use of in the classroom and (because I own them!) share on the internet for other people to use.
It's been a blast, really, going back into the old collections, rediscovering things I didn't even remember taking pictures of, figuring out what things are, and thinking about what I can do with them as a teacher.
I started out scanning my slides, the ones that I'd pulled out of the collection years ago for teaching purposes, but haven't used in years because of the awkwardness of slide projection in the classroom. I've borrowed Dad's slide scanner, which is producing very nice results. The slides cover our time in Japan in the mid-'80s, a quarter century ago now: they're historical! Once I scan them, I'm annotating them (at least a little, to start) and sorting them so that I can find them again when I need them. 
Since the semester started, and I've been at work more, I'm using the new scanner I got to scan prints, which cover both my junior year ('87-88) and our year in Yamaguchi ('94-95).
I still have a lot more prints to scan on the first pass, and a lot more slides to look at. In the meantime, if you want a giggle, I've got a set of bad Japanese English examples and if you want to stroll down memory lane, there's the Personal and Family set. ¶ Tuesday, September 01, 2009 0 comments
One of my summer projects -- which will actually never end, as it's now going to be an ongoing component of my teaching -- is creating a set of images that I can use for teaching. Some of it is going to be scanning art and other book images which I can use, but a big chunk has to do with converting my old slide and print pictures from Japan into digital forms that I can make easy use of in the classroom and (because I own them!) share on the internet for other people to use. It's been a blast, really, going back into the old collections, rediscovering things I didn't even remember taking pictures of, figuring out what things are, and thinking about what I can do with them as a teacher.
I started out scanning my slides, the ones that I'd pulled out of the collection years ago for teaching purposes, but haven't used in years because of the awkwardness of slide projection in the classroom. I've borrowed Dad's slide scanner, which is producing very nice results. The slides cover our time in Japan in the mid-'80s, a quarter century ago now: they're historical! Once I scan them, I'm annotating them (at least a little, to start) and sorting them so that I can find them again when I need them. Since the semester started, and I've been at work more, I'm using the new scanner I got to scan prints, which cover both my junior year ('87-88) and our year in Yamaguchi ('94-95). I still have a lot more prints to scan on the first pass, and a lot more slides to look at. In the meantime, if you want a giggle, I've got a set of bad Japanese English examples and if you want to stroll down memory lane, there's the Personal and Family set. ¶ Tuesday, September 01, 2009 0 comments
