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Social Media Corrals Escaped Panda

June 25, 2013 by suzannesmom

Photo: Ashley Foughty, via Associated Press. Foughty spotted the renegade Rusty in Washington’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, and twitter did the rest.

Ashley Foughty uses social media.  And a good thing, too. If she hadn’t responded to the zoo’s call for help finding an escaped red panda, who knows what might have happened.

Trip Gabriel writes at the NY Times, “Rusty the red panda, who disappeared from the National Zoo, hijacked the news cycle on Monday.

“To help find Rusty, a raccoon-size mammal with a striped tail and moon-shaped face, the zoo turned to social media, and suddenly half of official Washington broke from Serious Events to tune in to the saga of the runaway panda.

“On Twitter and Facebook, the hunt for 11-month-old Rusty … exploded in a mix of concern, humor. …

“ ‘Rusty the Red Panda eats shoots and leaves,’ Jake Tapper, CNN’s chief Washington correspondent, filed to Twitter. …

“The zoo announced Rusty’s disappearance to its thousands of Twitter followers in a message at 11:51 a.m, which was retweeted nearly 3,000 times in an hour. …

“At midday, mentions of ‘Rusty’ on Twitter nearly equaled those of ‘Obama.’ ….

“ ‘Edward Snowden and Rusty the red panda relaxing on a Havana beach,’ wrote J. D. Ross, a communications director at Syracuse University, referring to the American security contractor wanted on spying charges. …

“Once again, social media proved to be a powerful dragnet. Around 1:15 p.m., a Washingtonian posted a picture on Twitter of Rusty in a patch of weeds in the Adams Morgan district, not far from the 163-acre zoo.”

Read what happened next. Note to all escaped zoo animals: Twitter will find you.

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Midsommer

June 24, 2013 by suzannesmom

Maria writes, “Some memories from our very traditional midsummer in Dalarna.” That’s in Sweden. Erik or Margareta, care to explain what we see here?

I learned this much on the web:

“Ask a Swede what the most important holiday of the year is and Midsummer will come up as often as Christmas. Get older Swedes talking and their eyes will well up as they reminisce about community spirit, songs, barn dancing and the mystical atmosphere surrounding the Midsummer gatherings of their youth. Sure, there was a lot of drinking, fistfights and frolicking, but everyone shook hands in the end. For younger generations, Midsummer is mainly about heading out to the summer cottage and celebrating with a group of friends or family.” There’s more at the site Sweden.se, here.

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You Gotta Have the Latin for the Judgin’

June 23, 2013 by suzannesmom

Do you remember the British comedy group “Beyond the Fringe”? We love the LP record in our house.

I was thinking about a Peter Cook “Beyond the Fringe” sketch today because I have been reading tweets in Latin and my husband and I always joke about the English miner in Cook’s “Sitting on the Bench” routine who was wistful about not becoming a judge.

“I could have been a judge, but I never had the Latin, never had the Latin for the judgin’.”

The Latin tweets I’ve been following are from Pope Francis, who is said to have gathered a large following who just like Latin. I am not a Catholic, but a lot of what the new Pope has said impresses me, especially his cautions against materialism and his concern for those who suffer. I also like exercising the rusty hinges in my brain where fuzzy memories of Latin are stored. And if I don’t quite get the whole tweet, Google Translate is available — and turns out to be much better at Latin than, say, Swedish or Arabic.

I retweeted this missive:

Papa Franciscus ‏@Pontifex_ln 22 Jun
Si sensum vitae in Iesu invenimus, eos negligere non possumus qui patiuntur quique sunt tristes.

Google Translate: If we find the meaning of life in Jesus, we can not ignore those who suffer and those who are sad.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

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Turning Old Books into Sculpture

June 22, 2013 by suzannesmom

I got this lead from Andrew Sullivan. He wrote a post about a paper sculptor who made the commissioned work below, a kraken destroying a galleon. (I know, the kraken in The Island of the Aunts is a holy, nonthreatening creature, but elsewhere it’s more like a giant squid.)

“Justin Rowe is an artist and paper sculptor from Cambridge [England]. After graduating from Norwich School of Art in 1998, he began working for Cambridge University Press as an academic bookseller.”

The BBC says, “Justin Rowe started carving up the pages of old books as a hobby in 2010, using a small rotating-bladed scalpel. …

“Mr Rowe ‘lifts’ illustrations from ‘junk books’ to create scenes and illuminated installations.

“His intricate hobby began when he wanted to create a Christmas window display for the Cambridge University Press bookshop where he works as a senior bookseller.” More.

I wonder if Justin Rowe had anything to do with the stealth art project in U.K. libraries that we blogged about here. Also quite gorgeous.

Photo: Justin Rowe

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Giant Whirligigs

June 21, 2013 by suzannesmom

Summer makes me think of Fire Island, where I spent much of my childhood, and Stone Harbor, where my husband spent much of his.

Stone Harbor was also where my husband’s parents and many relatives retired. Uncle Al lived next door to my in-laws and made wooden whirligigs for family and friends: a seagull, for example, or a Mr. Sawyer who appeared to saw wood when the wind blew.

Recently I read the obit of a man who was widely known for his whirligigs, Vollis Simpson of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Martha Waggoner wrote about him for the Associated Press and the Globe.

“Where others saw trash, Vollis Simpson saw whimsical, wind-powered whirligigs, creations with hundreds of moving parts that turned and twirled.

“The whirligigs were made from recycled heating and air conditioning systems and reflector material Mr. Simpson patiently cut into thousands of tiny pieces that made the works shine when lights hit them in the dark. His work was featured in museums, backyards, dentist offices, and the 1996 Olympics.

‘‘ ‘I got caught with a lot of material, and I worked it out,’ he said in a 2010 interview. …

“Some of Mr. Simpson’s whirligigs stand as high as 50 feet … They can weigh as much 3 tons.

“He built the contraptions near his machine shop in Lucama. More than 30 of them were on display there until last year, when an effort to restore them began. That process is about halfway complete, with a few of the larger whirligigs still in the pasture, waiting to be moved.

“The Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park is scheduled to open in November in Wilson, about 10 miles from his home.” Read more about him here.

Photo: Ellen Albanse for The Boston Globe
Mr. Simpson’s “Giant Whirligig” is shown near the entrance to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

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How Two-Year-Olds Talk

June 20, 2013 by suzannesmom

John sent around a funny YouTube series. Have you seen “Convos with My Two-Year-Old”? The conversations are quite professionally produced by a dad, Matthew Clarke, who has written down actual conversations with his daughter so that a fully grown man in the role of the two-year-old can help him reenact them.

The acting is good. I love the costume touches, like the little heart necklace on the actor who plays the two-year-old girl, and in later video, the barrette and fairy wings.

Check out more, here. I’m impressed. I wrote down lots of funny conversations when John was learning language and then when Suzanne was. But carrying it to this level did not occur to me. Of course, everyone wasn’t making videos then, but I could have done Super 8. Or Betamax.

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Yarn Bombing a Former Factory Town

June 19, 2013 by suzannesmom

I do love creative stealth projects. This one is not quite stealth because, although the perpetrators act under cover of darkness, they are known — and willing to be interviewed.

Taryn Plumb writes for the Boston Globe about graffiti artists with knitting needles in Ashland, Mass. “Armed with clews of yarn, they transformed a series of utilitarian light posts into colorful, whimsical, eye-luring structures.

“It’s called ‘yarn bombing,’ ‘guerrilla knitting,’ or ‘graffiti knitting’ — wrapping and otherwise decorating everyday structures with yarn under the cover of night. …

“It is a worldwide movement — the first international ‘yarn bombing day’ was observed on June 11, 2011 — that has emerged in the last decade, with elaborate designs hitting bicycles, statues, trees, steps, parking meters, phone booths, and subway interiors, filling potholes, and even draping entire buses and military tanks in various countries.

“In its local application, though, Ashland Creative wasn’t completely rogue. Organizer Andrea Green sought approval from selectmen.”

Plumb explains that the group’s main motive is to help reenergize the downtown as other local community-building initiatives are doing.

“And the response? Curiosity from both adults and kids, the latter of which have named their favorites and been more than happy to explore their texture.

“ ‘People have just been delighted to see the way ordinary functional objects have been transformed into fun, interesting works of art,’ said Green …

“ ‘People often have the perception that art has to be seen in museums,’ Green said, ‘but amateur artists can create it, and it can still entertain.’ ”

More.

Update 2/10/14: Got to add another great yarn-bombing story here, courtesy of Mary Ann.

Photo: Ashland Creative
Ulie Nardone participated in Ashland’s recent Wrap-It Up Art Project.

Update: Beagling sends along this version of yarn bombing.

Photo at the NY Times: Olek
“Charging Bull,” near Wall Street, was covered in crochet by artist Olek in December 2010.

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Landmine-Sniffing Bees

June 18, 2013 by suzannesmom

You never know what curiosity is going to turn up on AndrewSullivan.com, which is why I am a paying member of that blog (the posts are mostly free, except for a few jumps). Here Andrew links to a story about bees that are sniffing out deadly landmines.

As Olivia Solon writes at Wired, “A team of Croatian researchers are training honeybees to sniff out unexploded mines that still pepper the Balkans.

“Nikola Kezic, a professor in the Department of Agriculture at Zagreb University, has been exploring using bees to find landmines since 2007. Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and other countries from former Yugoslavia still have around 250,000 buried mines which were left there during the wars of the early 90s. Since the end of the war more than 300 people have been killed in Croatia alone by the explosives, including 66 de-miners.

“Tracking down the mines can be extremely costly and dangerous. However, by training bees — which are able to detect odours from 4.5 kilometres away — to associate the smell of TNT with sugar can create an affective way of identifying the locations of mines.

“Kezic leads a multimillion-pound programme sponsored by the EU, called Tiramisu, to detect landmines across the continent. … The movements of the bees are tracked from afar using thermal cameras. Bees have the advantage of being extremely small and so don’t run the risk of setting off the explosives in the same way that trained mammals such as dogs or rats do.” More at Wired.

Andrew also links to posts on a mysterious illness affecting bee populations, an international concern. The cause, still under investigation, may relate to a pesticide.

Photo:: United States Department of Agriculture

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More Rambles in Spring

June 17, 2013 by suzannesmom

Here are a few photos from recent rambles. You will note that I am drawn to flowers. You can identify these or your own flowers, shrubs, weeds, and houseplants by uploading pictures to MisterSmartyPlants.

bird-sculpturedavis-sq-break-dancer

clematis

rose-says-hello

bloom-and-decay

abandoned-farmstand

graveyard

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Free for Fathers

June 16, 2013 by suzannesmom

My husband suggested we go to Worcester County Horticultural Society’s Tower Hill Botanic Garden today. When we got there, we learned that this weekend, the admission is free for fathers.

All the flowers and trees have labels, so it’s another way to get your plants identified (besides MisterSmartyPlants). There were lots of plants. Lots of families, too. A curious thing: In spite of the crowds and the absence of trash cans, I did not see one single piece of litter.

My husband chose to pose by a large aloe. Borrowing a line from A Raisin in the Sun, he said the aloe “expresses me”: prickly and healing. 🙂

grandpa-with-aloe

morfar-gets-greetings

tower-hill-fountain

tower-hill-tortoise

tower-hill-hippo

tower-hill-dad-day

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Restorative Justice

June 15, 2013 by suzannesmom

Solving a problem by definition means making something better. But for many years, disciplinary action in schools made things worse. Now more communities are testing the potential of “restorative justice,” an approach focused on helping a perpetrator change for the better.

It was at a neighborhood picnic that I first heard from a couple neighbors that they were restorative-justice volunteers.

They told me that if a student spray paints someone’s garage, let’s say, the police get called in, and the kid may end up with a record.

Under restorative justice, however, police, perpetrator, victim, school personnel, and community volunteers hear the case and agree on suitable compensation — in this case, it might be repainting the garage. The youth sees face to face how the victim feels. Change is possible with the community involved.

Patricia Leigh Brown writes at the NY Times about a restorative justice program in Oakland, California, where a high school’s “zero tolerance” policies had ridden roughshod over underlying causes, leading to escalation of problems.

She writes about youth adviser Eric Butler, whose “mission is to help defuse grenades of conflict at Ralph J. Bunche High School, the end of the line for students with a history of getting into trouble. He is the school’s coordinator for restorative justice, a program increasingly offered in schools seeking an alternative to ‘zero tolerance’ policies like suspension and expulsion.

“The approach … encourages young people to come up with meaningful reparations for their wrongdoing while challenging them to develop empathy for one another through ‘talking circles’ led by facilitators like Mr. Butler.” More.

In one talking circle, participants discovered that a girl in trouble for uncontrolled aggression had just lost a brother to gun violence. She had not told anyone or sought support. She began to learn other ways to deal with her anger.

Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Mr. Butler with a student at Ralph J. Bunche High School in Oakland.

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Wells, Maine

June 14, 2013 by suzannesmom

Rodin’s the Thinker, Wikipedia Commons

Went to Augusta, Maine, yesterday for a conference, where I took a bunch of pictures but not a single good one. Even when a conference is interesting, as this one was, it’s very hard to make it look interesting, although in one shot a panelist looked as absorbed as Rodin’s The Thinker.

I need a camera that shows thought processes — or a cartoonist who can draw light bulbs over people’s heads.

So here are few photos of a stretch-my-legs stop instead. Wells was about halfway to the Augusta, and I was curious about it as I always heard that a founder of Wells (Edmund L. Littlefield) was an ancestor. I couldn’t stay long, but the spiffy little train station made me want to take the Downeaster from Boston someday. Maybe spend a weekend in Portland and check out its art museum. …

wells-maine-train-station

wells-train-clock

wells-stop-on-Downeaster

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Street Art in Cuba

June 13, 2013 by suzannesmom

“JR,” a French street artist, has created a series of murals called “The Wrinkles of the City.”

The wrinkles are the intriguing faces of older people, often pictured on crumbling edifices. Kevin Harnett writes about them at the Sunday Globe, here.

“JR, a Frenchman whose real name is unknown, has become an international art celebrity thanks to his work flyposting oversized black-and-white photographs, often portraits of ordinary people’s faces, to the sides of buildings in cities around the world. …

“JR’s series ‘The Wrinkles of the City,’ which he began in Cartagena, Spain, has also appeared in Los Angeles and Shanghai. More recently he and collaborator José Parlá took to Havana, where they bedecked the old communist capital with the faces of dozens of Cuban Revolution survivors wearing expressions of deep-creased sanguinity. ‘The Wrinkles of the City, Havana, Cuba’ has been adapted for display at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York City.” The show may be seen until July 12.

Street art in Cuba by JR

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How the Turtle Got Its Shell

June 12, 2013 by suzannesmom

“How did the turtle get its shell?” asks Carolyn Y. Johnson in the Globe.

“A group of scientists at Yale University and the Smithsonian Institution argue that a reptile fossil that has been gathering dust in museum collections is actually a turtle ancestor, and that its reduced number of ribs, distribution of muscles, and T-shaped ribs could help settle the question once and for all.

“In a paper published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, they unveil the argument that a 260 million-year-old creature called Eunotosaurus africanus was a turtle ancestor, hoping to help resolve a debate that has split the scientific community for decades. …

“The ink spilled so far has roughly divided the scientific community in two camps. On one side are those who believe that the turtle shell came about as external bony scales, similar to the ones found on armadillos or certain lizards, that eventually fused together with the reptile’s internal rib cage. On the other side are those who believe that reptiles’ ribs instead began to broaden until they eventually formed the bony protrusion that is the shell, mirroring the way that turtles develop in the egg.”

Which theory does the 260-million-year-old Eunotosaurus support? Read up.

“ ‘The results are pretty convincing; previously I was skeptical as to whether Eunotosaurus was a likely relative of turtles,’ [Kenneth Angielczyk, a paleobiologist from the Field Museum in Chicago], wrote in an e-mail. ‘But Tyler [Lyson]’s results make me think it is a plausible idea.’  ”

Scientists clearly have a lot of fun, but let me try a more Kipling-esque approach to the turtle question.

When the world was new, Oh, Best Beloved, the Turtle was a small, soft creature who played all day with other small, soft turtles on the banks of the great gray greasy Limpopo River all set about with Giant Eucalyptus Trees. He was timid. He was shy. He kept his distance from the great beasts of the jungle. But he was watchful, too, and he learned from what he saw. And so it happened, Oh, Best Beloved, that at the very day, hour, and minute that the Giant Python Rock Snake stretched out the stumpy nose of the Elephant’s Child, the Turtle felt a great fear come upon him. And he ran and rolled himself in the grease of the greasy Limpopo River all set about with Giant Eucalyptus Trees, raced to the most gigantic of the Giant Eucalyptus Trees, embedded his sticky self in the most gigantic of the Giant Eucalyptus Trees seeds, and there remained.

When he felt brave enough to stick his head out, he reported to all the small, soft turtles what he had seen. And thus the world gained not only a Turtle with a Shell, but the very first embedded reporter.

Photo: Luke Norton
This South African sideneck turtle bears a structural resemblance to the fossil of a creature called Eunotosaurus africanus.

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Great Science Videos for Kids

June 11, 2013 by suzannesmom

As a scientist with young children, Gregg often tweets ideas for engaging kids in science. Recently @gfavalora tweeted about a website with instructive and fun videos. It’s called The Kid Should See This.

The site describes the video below thus:

“To celebrate World Ocean Day 2013, director and animator Akiko McQuerrey created a Papa Cloudy stop-motion music video: Overfishing Song from Papa Cloudy’s Restaurant.

Overfishing—catching fish faster than they can reproduce—is an urgent and devastating issue, and may be the single biggest threat to ocean ecosystems… The global fishing fleet is operating at 2.5 times the sustainable level—there are simply too many boats chasing a dwindling number of fish.

“What can we do to help? With more sustainable practices, our oceans can be healthy and plentiful for everyone. Recommendations from the Monterey Bay Aquarium suggest that we select sustainable fish from restaurants and stores, and diversify the kinds of fish we eat beyond just the popular choices.

“To help make these choices easier, they created a Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch pocket guide and mobile app. They even have recipes and more information about how to solve our ocean challenges.”

More videos here.

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