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Posts Tagged ‘postaday’

Junket Is Nice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 4, 2013| Leave a Comment »

junket-is-nice

Everybody knows the baby book Pat the Bunny. But that is not the only book Dorothy Kunhardt wrote. She published 50, including some for grownups.

When we were kids, we loved her book Junket Is Nice, about an old man with a red beard eating a rennet custard called junket while crowds of people try to guess what he is thinking.

We children used to eat a lot of junket, a dessert that is not around much anymore. It’s tricky to make because the milk has to be at a very precise temperature.

One day my friend and I got it in our heads to bury some treasure that we could dig up later, and we included in the cache Junket Is Nice. Needless to say, by the time we followed our map to “X marks the spot” several months later, Junket Is Nice was mildewed.

Which is why, when I saw it was reissued, I jumped to get a copy.

Read a bit more about Dorothy Kunhardt here.

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London Plans First Cabaret Festival

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 3, 2013| 2 Comments »

Here’s a tip for anyone planning to be in London in late fall. A cabaret festival, said to be the first ever, will take place in locales around the city.

Matthew Hemley writes at The Stage, “Comedian Alexander Armstrong and US singer Michael Feinstein are among the performers lined up to appear as part of the first London Festival of Cabaret.

“The festival will run from October 22 until November 15 with events taking place in a variety of venues across London.”Other acts taking part include Elaine Paige, Maria Friedman and Barb Jungr.

“Armstrong will appear in Alexander Armstrong and his Band Celebrate the Great British Songbook from October 28 to 31 at the St James Theatre, where Friedman will give a master class in performing cabaret on October 25.

“Friedman said: ‘Cabaret is a unique way for an artist to hone their communication skills, allowing the audience an up-close, concentrated, in-the-moment experience.’ ”

More.

My husband and I enjoy cabaret music. We like to catch Will McMillan when he performs, whether it’s in Jeff Flaster’s original musical Tortoise or on the terrace in front of Cambridge Adult Ed.

Are you going to London, Will? These London guys need to see the show you put on with Bobbi and Doug, don’t you think?

Photo: Willsings.com

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Hidden Glass Floats, Year 2

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2013| 2 Comments »

Around this time last year, I alerted you (here) to a treasure hunt for hand-blown glass floats. I never ran into anyone who found one, but they must have done, as the tourism council is back at it again this year.

Glassblower Eben Horton has once more hidden floats off the beaten path, including a special float with gold leaf.

The tourism council explains it all for you.

“WHAT: 400 Glass Floats (glass orbs about the size of a grapefruit) will be hidden on Block Island. Floats will be dated, numbered and stamped with the shape of Block Island. All floats are clear glass except for 13 (because it is 2013), which are special colored orbs. One super special float is made entirely out of gold leaf.

“WHERE: Floats will be hidden on the beaches and on the Greenway Trails. They will be above the high tide mark but NEVER in the dunes or up the side of the bluffs. They will be within one foot of either side of any Greenway trail they are placed on.” More.

3/5/14 Update: Suzanne e-mailed me about a Kickstarter campaign for the glass float project. Check it out here.

Photo of glassblower Eben Horton: The Tourism Council

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Teens Approve Young Adult Galleys

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 1, 2013| 2 Comments »

Asakiyume is a wonderful writer. I have read many of her stories for adults and her three main young adult books. The latest is perhaps the most marketable so far. Kids, teachers, librarians — all sorts of people — will be as riveted as I was. (Perhaps she will comment below with a few words on the theme.)

While waiting for an agent, Asakiyume asked Kelsey Michele Soderstrom to paint the main characters, below, and began to plan a website about the book and its exotic settings.

I thought of Asakiyume when I read an article in the Concord Journal the other day about high schoolers who weigh in on galley proofs of young adult books.

The Journal says, “Just two years after the group’s inception, the Concord Carlisle High School Young Adult Galley has been selected as one of 16 Young Adult Library Services Association Teen Top 10 review groups.

“Members of the group will read galleys, or uncorrected proofs of books, before they are sent off to be published, and select 10 they like best. This information will be used to select YALSA’s top 10 galleys this year.

“Jennifer Barnes, ex-teen library services consultant at Concord Carlisle High School, was the head of YALSA’s teen fiction division and used to bring galleys into the high school’s libraries for interested students to read. The galley group formed …

“When Barnes left the school, students still wanted to review galleys but had a harder time procuring them. …

“Using Kindles, group members would download galleys off of NetGalley, available to bloggers, educators and members of the media. The CC Group members would also send letters to publishers requesting galleys.

“Then, still looking for more galleys to review, the group decided to apply to be a YALSA  Teen Top 10 Review group. …

“ ‘Sometimes authors will respond [to reviews],’ [recent grad Clare] Bannon said. … ‘It was so cool when an author would respond to something you wrote. It would encourage you to keep reading and keep reviewing stuff.’

“The group will continue to get together and meet up to discuss books throughout the YALSA Teen Top 10 process.” More at WickedLocal.com.

Art for Asakiyume’s latest story: Kelsey Michele Soderstrom

 

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Photo Roundup

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Fearless little bird on the back of a dog.

bird-and-dog-sculpture-peterson

sculptor-louise-peterson

Grandson checking out playground, turtle deciding not to cross the road after all, Suzanne’s Mom taking pictures in Concord and around Boston Harbor.

rhode-island-playground

turtle-returns-to-pond

flowers-at-cheese-shop

boston-harbor

gillette-marker-in-boston

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New Bird Found in Cambodia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

If you can’t photograph the ivory-billed woodpecker in Louisiana or Cuba or wherever it is rumored to have survived, the next best thing is to find a brand new species. That’s what Simon Mahood did in Cambodia.

Thomas Fuller writes about it in the NY Times. “The discovery of new fauna conjures up images of Livingstone-like explorers trekking through malaria-infested jungles. But scientists working in Cambodia have reported a new species of bird in a decidedly less remote environment: the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

“Simon Mahood, the lead author of an article released Wednesday in the Oriental Bird Club’s journal Forktail, says the bird’s primary habitat is about a 30 minutes’ drive from his home in Phnom Penh, ‘allowing for traffic.’

“ ‘I’ve always wanted to discover a bird species, but I never expected it would happen like this,’ Mr. Mahood, who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Cambodia, said by telephone from Phnom Penh. ‘I certainly didn’t expect to be standing in flip-flops and shorts a half an hour from home.’

“Roughly the same size as a wren, with white cheeks and a cinnamon cap, the bird was named the Cambodian tailorbird by the team that documented the discovery. Tailorbirds get their name from the way they build their nests, by threading spider silk or other fibers through a leaf, creating a sort of cradle.” More.

Photo: Ashish John/Wildlife Conservation Society
The Cambodian tailorbird was found near Phnom Penh.

 

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The Entrepreneurial Sock

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Erik sent along this lead, and John sent it to him. Both are guys who started tech companies, and I’m learning that requires a certain kind of attire.

To signal you are a laid-back but savvy entrepreneur, wear cool socks.

Claire Cain Miller and Nick Bilton write at the NY Times, “For barristers in 18th-century London, it was shoulder-grazing wigs. For the Mad men of 1950s New York, it was briefcases and fedoras. For the glass-ceiling-shattering women of the 1980s, it was shoulder pads.

“And for today’s tech entrepreneurs in high-flying Silicon Valley, it is flamboyantly colored, audaciously patterned socks.

“In a land where the uniform — jeans, hoodies and flip-flops — is purposefully nonchalant, and where no one would be caught dead in a tie, wearing flashy socks is more than an expression of your personality. It signals that you are part of the in crowd. It’s like a secret handshake for those who have arrived, and for those who want to. …

“Some say the craze took hold because socks are an acceptable shot of flair in a dressed-down, male-dominated culture — and peek out when entrepreneurs present their latest apps onstage at the tech world’s frequent conferences. Others offer a perhaps more universal explanation. ‘Girls notice,’ said Matt Graves, 37 …

“Travis Kalanick, 35, co-founder and chief executive of Uber, the on-demand taxi service, began wearing statement socks at his previous company, which sold software to businesses.

“ ‘I started having to suit up for meetings with Fortune 500 companies,’ said Mr. Kalanick (his favorite: hot pink). ‘I wanted to keep a little of my geeky computer engineering flair without people thinking I was nuts.’  …

“Sometimes I will even browse the women’s section and get the XXL, because they have all the fun colors,” said Andrew Trader, 42, an investor at Maveron who helped found Zynga. (He is partial to wool socks with bright stripes as well as a pair with an American flag pattern.)”

Read more at the NY Times, here, and check out their slide show.

Erik adds, “And here is a Swedish retail start-up (featured in article) that apparently designs and sells them.”

I can’t tell you how happy I am to know about socks. Father’s Day gifts for the men in the family are settled for the foreseeable future.

Now, can I give Suzanne, the Luna & Stella entrepreneur, socks as gifts, too?

Photo: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

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Roman Concrete Is Better for the Planet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 27, 2013| 3 Comments »

The concrete that the ancient Romans created is so durable that it may hold lessons for those who want to reduce carbon emissions.

Paul Preuss, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, explains.

“The chemical secrets of a concrete Roman breakwater that has spent the last 2,000 years submerged in the Mediterranean Sea have been uncovered by an international team of researchers led by Paulo Monteiro of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Analysis of samples provided by team member Marie Jackson pinpointed why the best Roman concrete was superior to most modern concrete in durability, why its manufacture was less environmentally damaging – and how these improvements could be adopted in the modern world.

“ ‘It’s not that modern concrete isn’t good – it’s so good we use 19 billion tons of it a year,’ says Monteiro. ‘The problem is that manufacturing Portland cement accounts for seven percent of the carbon dioxide that industry puts into the air.’ …

“The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated – incorporating water molecules into its structure – and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.”

Apparently the key ingredients are found all over the world, enough to make a big difference in construction — and carbon emissions.

There’s more at the Berkeley Lab site for readers who can follow a technical explanation.

Photo: Berkeley Lab

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Toy Lovers Join Forces

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I moved from Rochester, New York, more than 30 years ago, so it was only when I went back for a visit that I got to see the storied collections of Margaret Woodbury Strong in a museum built to house them.

When one recovers from the enormity of her obsession, one feels deeply grateful for all the toys and dolls of one’s childhood so beautifully preserved.

The offerings and outreach of the museum have grown like topsy in 30 years. And today another new partnership was announced.

“The great minds of the toy industry will be honored alongside their famous creations when the Toy Industry Hall of Fame combines with the National Toy Hall of Fame under a partnership announced Tuesday.

“The 5,000-square-foot National Toy Hall of Fame gallery at the Strong museum in Rochester will undergo $4 million in renovations, with the goal of opening the combined hall in the fall of 2015.

“The Toy Industry Hall of Fame, whose inductees have included Milton Bradley, Frederick August Otto Schwarz, Walt Disney and George Lucas, has been without a physical presence for about eight years following the closure of the International Toy Center in New York City.

“Leaders of both halls have been talking for some time about combining the two as a way to raise their visibility and exposure and to promote their educational missions. …

” ‘The Strong is an ideal home for this homage to both the toys that have influenced generations of children and the innovative minds that brought them to life,’ Carter Keithley, president of the Toy Industry Association, said at a news conference at the Strong museum, where items like alphabet blocks, roller skates, the Frisbee, Lincoln Logs and the stick occupy places of honor.”

Read more at Yahoo, here. Click “like” if you believe in toys.

Photo: The Strong Museum
“The Strong’s founder, Margaret Woodbury Strong, had a particular interest in dolls and amassed one of the largest collections in the world. The National Museum of Play® at The Strong continues to refine and develop her collection, making it increasingly comprehensive and inclusive. It now includes more than 12,000 dolls and 2,800 paper dolls.”

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Social Media Corrals Escaped Panda

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 25, 2013| 2 Comments »

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

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 24, 2013| 4 Comments »

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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Landmine-Sniffing Bees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

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

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »

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

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 16, 2013| 2 Comments »

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

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 15, 2013| 4 Comments »

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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