Kansas Dresners

Winfield 2011

2011-09-17T17:33:00.002-10:00

Thursday and Friday we were at the 40th Walnut Valley Music Festival, aka "Winfield." Woody's been a few times; I went once before; this is, of course, Max's first trip. Being the 40th year of the festival, there were a great many old favorite performers, so lots of names we recognized. We were only there for two of the four days (the campground celebrations started a week earlier), but it was fun, and Thursday, in particular, was uncrowded. You can see the performers and grounds here.

	The first thing we did was Linda Tilton's Ukulele workshop. Usually, Winfield workshops are more showing than teaching, but this was a solid, hands-on basic class.
	As you can see, we were bundled up: the temperature didn't get much above 60 for two days, and the drizzle and wind kept it chilly. It was a good year to be selling official sweatshirts....
	John McCutcheon is one of the most reliable and popular performers at Winfield, and a great guy. In addition to his own solo work, he invited Notorious up for a few songs, and joined in Bryan Bowers sets at least twice.
	In addition to the main stages, Winfield has a very lively campground jam tradition, with some groups returning year after year, with themes and logos. "Froggy Mountain" is the camp which some of Woody's Kansas City friends maintain, including Mike, who's one of the Kansas City Ukesters.
	More jamming! (Note the official limited edition Froggy Mountain frog cap! Most of the camp groups aren't that organized, but we did see some which involved great effort and focus).
	I wasn't trying to be anonymous, but Max and I were messing around and his hat ended up hanging from my cap. Naturally, he got a shot.

Little Balkans Days and Gutters

2011-09-11T19:28:00.004-10:00

	Our traditional Little Balkans Days observances starts with the train ride. We got some extra tickets along with the family pack, so brought one of Max's friends.
	The next stop after the train is usually the petting zoo, yes. Max is getting a bit big for the pony rides, but the camel holds him just fine. Then we wander through the Car Show.
	This year we checked out the folk-life show, though the music didn't hold Max's interest all that well at times, he found ways to amuse himself.

That was last weekend. This weekend was more a-little-of-this-a-little-of-that, including a little it-might-rain-again-someday home repair (and it rained last night, thank you very much!) which did have the unfortunate effect of disturbing the amphibian below. Max was my spotter, and photographer, while I fixed the back, and helped clean out (and sweep up after) the front gutter/mulch pile.

This is a test of an animated gif. If it's working you should see flashing train lights:

Underhill Academy Takes Shape

2011-07-29T07:28:00.002-10:00

How is homeschooling like moving? Everything changes, and everything has to be moved. Well, maybe it only feels that way.

This is how the Family Room looked at the start of the project. Note the Lego-strewn desk and table, the haphazardly packed blue wire shelves, the piles...

Stage One: Clean out under the desk and table, consolidate legos


	Note the cleared desk, the elimination of piles around the desk, and Max playing with something he hadn't seen in a year or more.

The Legos were a particular challenge, and weren't completely done until the very end, because we kept finding legos up to and including the final floor sweeping.


	Once the Legos were basically organized, though, the rest of the room could start shifting. Note that the keyboard moves from next to the Lego table over to where the pie chest with the games was, and vice versa.

Next, the wire shelves, which had become more or less random collections of... stuff.


	Once the shelves were emptied, we turned them sideways, to make room for that shiny new (OK, we've had it for ten years, but we haven't used it in a while and I cleaned it up) table and new (actually new, thanks to Grandma Marcia) drawers.

With the basic infrastructure in place, it was time for finishing touches: the built-in shelves, and then... putting everything that he was keeping back somewhere. This meant putting stuff back in the wire shelves (saving the top ones for folders) and other places, including a lot of toys and mementoes which needed to go in his room.

So, after a lot of that, the room finally looks like this:


	As you can see, the wire shelves are still mostly empty -- a lot of stuff is going upstairs -- and the balls and games are under control.

Now we're moving on to phase two of the project. Phase two? Yeah, well when you change part of a system -- in this case a major room in a household -- that much, it affects other parts of the system. Look at the office:

Moving Woody's old desk out of there, and making room for school files, meant processing and shredding large quantities of old papers, moving a file cabinet to make room for the desk, and generally reexamining how a lot of things were stored. I went through years worth of bills and papers, sorting and shredding and recycling. We've found things long thought lost -- that second bin for frisbees and balls was full of miscellaneous stuff we didn't know what to do with when we moved, including Japanese chopstick holders in the shape of tops and the instruction manuals to most of the power tools I bought in Hawai'i.

Now we're working on Max's room: moving a few boxes of toys upstairs means that we need room for more stuff, so he's doing the same process there: pull out everything, decide whether it's garbage, give-away or keep, and figure out how to put it all back. And we just bought a few hundred dollars worth of frames for posters and pictures that hadn't been put up yet. We'll be done... someday.

Many thanks to Grandma Marcia for her help getting the process started and moved to the middle stages.

Limericks

2011-04-23T05:25:00.002-10:00

For the Mushroom FM birthday, Woody's making her listeners compose limericks to get a free t-shirt. Relatives not allowed, but Max and I got to demonstrate homemade limericks to inspire them. Max did one he made up on the way to school, and I did two that I wrote this morning:

For Passover, most Jews eat matzo(r)
We eat it plain, sometimes with butter
instead of flour
we grind it to powder
and cook it with eggs, oil, water

People say that they like history
But they just mean the Channel. Not me.
I'm not big on war.
Ice truckers? They bore.
I explain how things came to be.

The scan isn't perfect. Nor the rhyme. But for improv it's not bad.

March Maxness

2011-03-17T18:16:00.002-10:00

	After two snow-day cancellations, the PTO gave up trying to have the science fair, but we didn't. After some communication with the school, and Max's teacher in particular, she decided to stage a 3rd grade science fair, invited the other teachers in the grade to have kids bring in their undisplayed projects, and view the results. Well, only Max and his friend Logan actually did, but they had a blast, showing all three of the 3rd grade groups, one after the other, their science chops. Below is Logan's demonstration of breaking down water to gas with electricity flowing through pencil graphite: you can see the bubbles! Max's project, of course, can be found here.

	The science fair was a nice release after a tense week: State Reading Assessment tests. The tests themselves were about an hour's work, spread over three days, but they've spent the last few weeks getting the kids so worked up about them that it's a wonder any of them wanted to go to school. Last week they did all kinds of 'dress funny to show your spirit' stuff: this was "Dress Up Day."
	Yesterday Max was messing around while we were in the kitchen, and I heard him and Woody joking about getting an updated rocking horse picture.... so I took one. Not the same without the sailor suit, though!
	Our other project this week was the Alligator Cake! We were asked to bring something good for the Purim Oneg, and Max has wanted to make this "Princess and the Frog" cookbook cake since we got the book, so we did. Spearmint-leaf toes and scales, M&Ms, too. Yogurt Pretzels for teeth, eyes. white bundt cake and white icing with a few score drops of food color and a teaspoon of peppermint extract. As you can see below, it's not quite the same as the book, but not bad for an historian.....

Science Fair 2011

2011-01-20T10:57:00.005-10:00

The Flame Game

What Burns What Doesn't

By Max Dresner

The Question: What I hope to Learn

Which dissolvable materials will make cloth fireproof? I want to learn this because I read that alum makes cloth fireproof, and I wanted to find out whether that was true, and whether other dissolvable materials would make cloth fireproof too.

	Materials Water Alum Salt Sugar Epsom salts Borax Baking soda Dawn dishwashing soap Cotton cloth
	Equipment Lighters: high heat and regular Permanent marker Twine for a clothesline Bowl Fire extinguisher Safety Goggles Latex Gloves

The Steps

First, we had to get all the materials. Some were common household objects, but some were harder to get. We bought the last bottle of alum at the pharmacy. The rest was easy to get at Wal-Mart.

	Next, we cut the cloth into squares with 12 squares on a side and labeled them.
	Then, we made the solutions...
	...and dipped the cloth in them. We hung them to dry for a day.
	The next day, we lit one piece of cloth dipped in each solution with a very small blowtorch. We started outside, but it was too windy, so we had to move into the garage after trying the plain cloth and the first attempt with cloth dipped in water. I hoped at least one would explode, but no such luck.

	The final day, we lighted the second batch of cloths with a regular-heat lighter in the garage, with the garage door closed.

Results

Alum makes cloth fireproof if you use a low-heat flame. The same is true of Borax, water, salt, and Epsom salts. With the hotter flame, the cloth soaked in all of these burned some, but not as much as when dipped in the other solutions or when not dipped at all. Baking soda made the cloth burn more slowly than plain cloth with both types of flame, but not as slowly as alum, salt, and Epsom salts. Dawn made the cloth burn more, with both the low and high flames. With the high flame, sugar made the cloth burn much more than plain cloth, but less than Dawn did. With a low flame, cloth dipped in sugar did not burn very much. See the chart for the details.

Conclusions

Borax and Alum were supposed to make cloth fireproof. They did, but not very well. Dawn and sugar were very flammable. The rest were somewhere in between. In the future, we could test other kinds of cloth or other solutes.

	After Treatment		High Heat		Low Heat
Name	Stiffness	Color Change	Flammability	Squares Burned	Flammability	Squares Burned	Notes
No Solute Ø	None	None	Burns a short period	4	Burns some	3	The burn looks like flowing lava
Water H₂O	Almost none	None	Short	5	Almost none	1	The fire starts after the flame is lifted
Alum NH₄Al (SO₄)₂	Stiff	Patchy	Small	5	None	2	Snow-like substance on cloth, turns black, intense smoke, doesn't burn well
Salt NaCl	Slightly stiff	None	Almost none	3	None	1/2
Sugar C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁	Very stiff	None	High	30	Not deeply scorched	1	Almost impossible to bend
Epsom Salt MgSO₄•7H₂O	Stiffer	None	Moderate	22	None	1/2
Borax Na₂B₄O₇•10H₂O	Slightly stiffer	Sparkly	Almost none	5	Almost none	1	Snow like substance covering cloth
Baking Soda NaHCO₃	Slightly stiffer	None	Slightly flammable	4	Crawling ember	1 1/2
Soft Soap (Dawn)	None	Slightly flakey	Highly flammable	134	Tall long flame	12

Little Balkans Days

2010-09-05T19:12:00.002-10:00

I've been remiss in posting summer pictures, but I'll try to get some up. Meanwhile, here's a few from the Labor Day weekend, better known in Pittsburg as Little Balkans Days

	There's not a lot of "Balkan" in the festival at this point, but there's plenty of stuff to do, and all the usual fair foods. This is Max's second year doing the camel ride: it may become traditional, until he's too big.
	Same goes for the pony ride, which Max picked instead of the inflatable toys. I didn't know, at the time, that he was leaning low over the horse for a reason: he'd already decided that he wanted to photoshop it so it looked like he was riding fast through the desert! This is a rough draft....
	The "Heart of the Heartland" train ride is one of the de rigeur events of the weekend. They only ran one train this year, to considerable grumbling, but we got our tickets early enough! It's just a short, slow ride, but still a nice way to reflect on the history.
	Nothing to do with Little Balkans Days, but Max's cherry tomatoes have finally been producing some ripe fruit! Tasty little things, and a dozen or more green ones still hanging.

Visiting Pittsburg

2010-07-11T12:13:00.002-10:00

Pittsburg isn't the tourist attraction that our last home was, but it's closer! Clint, Anne, Jack and Nate came down for the weekend.

	Needless to say, Big Brutus is a must-see for the 6-12 set (and the geek of all ages!), and Max and his cousin made the most of it. You can see the rest of my Big Brutus pictures here.

	No visit to Brutus would be complete without the "everyone in the scoop" shot! And no visit anywhere would be complete without a bug or flower shot (below). After lunch, we dropped by Pitt State, where the cousins went bananas....

	After we got back from our adventures, I did a circuit around the yard with the Nikon. Left, a Zinnia bud in the garden. Below that, one of our ripe (but still largely tasteless) pears. Just below, a young robin in the branches.

Shed

2010-07-05T15:01:00.003-10:00

As I reported back in February, we got a new riding mower earlier this year, and also a shed kit to house it. When my parents were here in Spring, we got the shed up.

	First, of course, finding a flat, open but not too obvious spot in the yard. This is the back corner (northwest, if you're keeping maps) surrounded by cedars on two sides and pear on the third.
	We were too busy putting the thing up to take pictures during the process, but here's a finished view
	Obviously, the first thing to do with a mower shed, is park the mower! The T-Shirts are in honor of Woody's new internet radio home, Mushroom FM. We had a little trouble with one side of the roof, and I 'fixed' it with foam filler and silicone caulk. When we got back from vacation, I discovered that that half of the roof had slid entirely off the shed. Taking the opportunity of the now-half-empty roof, I got up and recentered the skylight piece, and we got the roof back in properly. Now we're slowly moving gardening stuff out of the garage, and the shed is looking more and more shed-like inside!

Postscript: Here's a better shot of the shed in place.

Yard Work

2010-07-05T14:17:00.003-10:00

Aside from the travel, our big adventure this summer has to be Max's garden. Of course, calling it "Max's garden" doesn't begin to describe the work that's gone into it, starting with one set of grandparents (plus a cousin!) helping with the tilling and the other set helping with the initial weeding and planting, not to mention the work his parents have put into re-weeding after our neglectful travels. We had some bad weather luck early: a run of rain which wiped out a lot of seeds and kept us from weekding during the critical early stages, then a run of hot, dry weather right after we replanted the tomatoes (and abandon them, because we were having fun in other states). In spite of it all, we've got some plants growing.

	Stage one, after deciding what the garden would involve, was pre-planting the tomatoes indoors. They got to a few inches high before we replanted them and nearly killed the lot. Below, you can see the initial weeding and laying out of the garden. It looks so neat and promising! And then we planted the seeds and .... it started raining. And raining. And raining. Then we went on vacation!

	As you can see, when we got back from our trips, the garden had sprouted..... WEEDS. The tomato plants had disappeared entirely, which is what you're looking at here. As you can see below, the entire garden was something of a mess. There's almost no evidence of the original lines, except for the morning glory on the right. It was a little while before we actually got back to weeding, as you can see below. By then the pumpkin was showing flowers and some real life.

	The rain has been a bit inconsistent: first that huge wet spell, then a really dry spell. Aside from a couple of times, though, we've not had to water it much: since we got back, rain's been pretty reliable.
	This goes in the "if we'd had time, we should have done this at the beginning of the summer" category. As we've cleared the weeds -- working in roughly half-hour daily shifts in the morning -- we've been discovering what's still living and laying down weedblock. Turns out that we've got a little of everything, almost. The morning glory and pumpkin, true to their viney nature, are growing like gangbusters. There are a few sunflowers now starting to get tall and, much to our surprise, a few carrot tops. I don't think any zinnias made it, though.

	Perhaps the biggest surprise has been the survival of two tomato plants. We'd actually taken the tomato frames out of the garden for a while, but we put them back to support the two that are growing.
	It's me, of course, so I have to share a bug picture! This cute fellow was hanging out on a sunflower.

Postscript: Those "Sunflowers" I was going on about? Zinnias.

Performances

2010-04-17T17:12:00.002-10:00

It's getting to be that time of year: Spring, when all the end-of-year school performances come! So far we've had the school 2nd-3rd grade musical, a multicultural Cinderella event at the library and Max's first judged piano performance. Of course I got pictures...

	Being a musical about bugs, Bugz required costuming: the bumblebee costume from a couple of years ago still fits, but it's kind of skintight now. Everyone needed antennae, though. We experimented with different kinds before settling on the curly ones. Below you can see Max getting on stage with his wings, and singing in the chorus parts with the masks on. He also had two short solos, including a kind of bug-like square dance call.

	Max wasn't officially part of the puppet production of the story of Esther that the congregation youth group did, but he got drafted to help display the illustrated megillah. Below, you can see scenes from the school carnival, inexplicably held indoors on a beautiful day: Max practicing fire safety and Max trying to win a bottle of soda nobody in our family drinks (he failed).

	Max's performance of "Spirit of the Stallion" was a great success -- the judge declared it "excellent" and his teacher was quite pleased as well. He was nervous, but satisfied. (I would have gotten better pictures, but the judge's 'assistant' came in right before Max's turn and sat down right in the middle of the front row between me and the piano.) Below you can see Max and Woody starting Max's garden -- the tomato plants need to sprout indoors for a while first -- which will really get underway as soon as I remember to rent a tiller during the week (no, I don't know why our rental places are closed on weekends).

Passover 2010

2010-04-02T18:42:00.000-10:00

New Year Miscellany

2010-02-06T18:57:00.002-10:00

	We celebrated New Year's in Kansas City, trumpeting in the 2010s. Below, some shots of Max.

Because I always take nature shots.

Around Home

	This is an older picture -- Vivian's much older now! -- but it's too cute not to share.
	When Jim and Marge moved to St. Louis last month, they left a few things with us. Here's Max demonstrating his new rug, and his "keep the floor clean" committment has remained surprisingly strong since.
	The "Candy Cane Invitational" gymnastics event involved honest-to-goodness judging. This is Max's score, after his brief routine. Everyone got medals. Below, Max's Science Fair experiment: cookies with and without salt! No judging this time, but I think a much more successful event.

	Another of the "hand-me-down's" from the Farm: our new riding mower! Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy to get off the truck as we'd hoped. However, I got off it safely, and with a little extra leverage and it came down fine.
	Then, we had to get it into the garage, until we can build a shed for it. Oh, and we also had to get the shed kit into the garage. We've succeeded, but it's going to feel like a very big garage once we get the shed built!

Christmas 2009

2010-02-06T17:45:00.002-10:00

	Christmas proper was in St. Louis, with the Bauer side of the family. Max and Cousin Jack were very proud of their Santa snacks this year. The name is Bauer. Jack Bauer.

	One of the themes of Max's presents this year was construction: a lot of them were "some assembly and imagination required."

	Fun with Cousins: In addition to the Christmas festivities, playing with each other's new toys (like Nathan's eminently wearable Play-doh), we got to spend time at the St. Louis City Museum (more of a parental stress generator than a museum, but well worth the visit) and the St. Louis Science Center (which had lots of real science stuff, as well as astronaut toys)

Preparing for Christmas, 2009

2010-02-06T17:29:00.002-10:00

	While we were in Maryland, we introduced Max to the Dresner-Scherer Tree Trim tradition. I'm not sure whether the highlight for him was the tree trimming, or meeting baby Rachel.

Once we got back from Maryland, it was time for the Christmas Pageant! (Nope, no token Hanukkah songs, or anything like that. Max's big solo number was Elvis's "Blue Christmas." In unrelated but odd news, the winning word in the Middle School spelling bee this year was "dreidel", even though no two Jews can agree on how it's spelled.)

	"Go Tell It On The Mountain" rocked.
	The director of the show is primarily a choreographer, so the staging was fairly elaborate.
	Aside from channeling "The King," Max also got to be one of the Three Kings for a scene where an older girl was singing to baby Jesus.

Catching Up: Newman Thanksgiving

2010-02-06T16:41:00.002-10:00

Before all the snow, it was possible to travel to and from the mid-Atlantic region! Here's the evidence, from November

	Last December was my Grandpa Vic's 90th Birthday. We gathered in Maryland to celebrate with good deli food and cake.
	The Sisters!
	The Grandkids (and spouses). Bek and Sean and Rhyer were represented photographically!
	The Great-Grandkids, of course.

Thanksgiving

	Thanksgiving Dinner was the predictable feast, very friendly. Grandpa Vic was there, and Fellis and Hap. Things got a little odd after dinner, fitness-wise....

Birthday Stuff

2009-11-15T18:43:00.002-10:00

In addition to a magical birthday, Max also had a bit of a medieval birthday, with shields and swords (OK, lightsabers) and castles....

By the way: between the rabbi's visit and cleaning up the family room to make room for the castle project, the house is in really good shape right now! Anyone want to come visit?

Things We Did Recently

2009-11-15T18:23:00.002-10:00

	Woody beat me at chess for the first time. Max helped, by playing me simultaneously.
	We reupholstered the dining room chairs. Well, to be specific, we bought fabric and Marge reupholstered them. Then, because the rabbi was coming over for dinner, we cleaned everything up, so we could even take cool pictures.
	Max was working on his gymnastics at school
	Max was Darth Vader for Halloween. Apparently nobody sells Ewok costumes around here. Below, you can see Local Darth, and our 2009 Pumpkin. We hadn't planned on a sad look; it just came out that way. As always, Max did the design, and I did the execution.

Finally, some local events: the PSU production of A Midsummer Nights Dream, a Family Art night (featuring liquid nitrogen-made ice cream to demonstrate the tasty art of science. Don't ask, but it was fun and tasty!), and the regional ballet version of Prokofiev's Cinderella (fairies, and Max with the Jester).

Autumn Nature

2009-11-15T17:48:00.002-10:00

I'm starting off this series with my nature pictures. First, some mushrooms that I found on campus:

Next, some Fauna

Finally, a sign of the season: Harvest

Summer Fun 2009

2009-09-01T15:30:00.004-10:00

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.

	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!

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.

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.

Summer Work 2009

2009-09-01T14:41:00.000-10:00

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.

1981, if you'll cast your minds back

2009-07-30T18:35:00.003-10:00

I've been messing around with Dad's slide scanner: I need to find my Japan slides (I think they may actually be at work) but I practiced with a few of my older personal slides. So here are two slideshows: the first is from Grandma Ev's birthday party, 1981, with a few aquatic garden pictures at the end:

The second is labelled "Williamsburg" but I wonder if the first part isn't from somewhere else: it's nature pictures (and family shots), from some wetland (Update: Mom says "Florida") we visited with the Dresner grandparents.

Arkansas Travelers

2009-07-11T18:13:00.002-10:00

	Our Arkansas adventure began in Fayeteville, at the Arkansas Air Museum and Ozark Military Museum, a two-for-the-price-of-one which was a lot of fun. It's not all airplanes: I didn't know, for example, that Model T's came in five colors for the first few years, and only later were limited to black.
	The silver one-seater in the foreground is Sam Walton's first plane, a simplified one-stick model.
	Among the working models donated to the museum were several home-kit craft, including this shockingly basic helicopter.
	The big military stuff was outside, including this F-4 and the Cobra helicopter. Inside the Military Museum were some interesting hardware, as well as some great documents: my favorites were the December 1941 war bond and the Okinawa Invasion Map.
	After the museums, we drove down into the Ouchita Forest, and took a little nature walk. On the way out of the forest, we stopped at a great rocks and crystals place in Mt. Ida. Speaking of nature, we saw a lot of daddy longlegs around.
	When we got to Hot Springs we discovered that the National Parks have been going to new lengths to engage children, including their Junior Ranger program. Max is testing the water from the Spring.
	After a very thorough investigation of the medical equipment and facilities, the decorations and architecture at the old resorts, Max got to be sworn in as a Hot Springs Junior Ranger.
	The Hot Springs Art Museum was small, but interesting. Well, more amusing, but still, we had fun.
	Just because Fort Smith is an historical site, doesn't mean that there isn't a natural side to it.
	In addition to getting his Junior Ranger badge at Fort Smith, we took the historical trolley. The tour ended up being more about the trolley itself -- recovery, restoration, ongoing expansion of the rails -- but we love that kind of stuff.
	As part of the tour, we got to check out a caboose they are restoring, and a few other things. After we left Fort Smith, we visited the Farm, where, before I was felled with illness, I got some excellent vulture pictures.

Summer Theater

2009-06-29T11:27:00.004-10:00

The first half of the summer, it seems, was taken up with Max's theater camps: a two-week broadway revue camp and a one-week mini-camp with singing, dancing and acting.

For the first camp, they did a half-hour show with bits and pieces from several generations of song-and-dance theater. Max's crew had a bit from the 1920s ("Varsity Drag") and "So Long, Farewell" as the closer, plus everyone in the camp did "Wells Fargo Wagon" as a group number in the middle. They also did some cute introduction skits: Max got to utter the immortal segue, "And now for something completely different." These pictures are frame captures from video, part of our recent explorations into video editing:

	Dora the Explorer introduces the Peter Pan number
	Not quite Rock Opera, but a nice scene
	The Wells Fargo wagon is a-comin' down the street...
The Wells Fargo Wagon is Here!
	The grand farewell

The theme of the mini-camp was "Surfin'" ("Surfin' USA" and "Surfer Girl" were the songs) so they ended with a surfer pose:

Though Max missed the first two days, he still had fun and got to be friends with some of the kids:

In academic theater, I went out to southern California and had a lovely conference: I've got a few of the pictures here:

Ferrets and Flowers

2009-05-19T18:05:00.004-10:00

	Max and I went by the park one afternoon last week, and a couple had brought their ferrets out for a bit of fresh air. They let the kids -- who gathered around the portable pen immediately -- walk them, and hold them. Needless to say, Max talked about getting a ferret for a pet all the way home. The picture below is from Parsons, but it could be from anywhere around here: we had some serious thunderstorms and straight-line windstorms: lots of billboard damage, trampolines in soybean fields, and big trees.

	Squirrels! The conclave to the left was on campus: six squirrels all digging for nuts and seeds around this one tree. The two pictures below are from Lakeside Park: First, a squirrel so busy with foraging that he forgot to be nervous when we walked by. Second, the grackle was trying to run the squirrel off, but I'm not entirely sure why.

Cute:

Flowers and Bugs

Update: Northern Harrier (female). This is the kind of raptor we've been seeing all over SE Kansas. This one was in our backyard while I was mowing this morning!