Durham’s Golden Belt
This past weekend was the Durham Art Walk, which featured a gallery showing in the recently renovated Golden Belt complex. I had been to this site on the Eastern edge of downtown a week before, but everything was closed on a Sunday. Upon my return visit, I was pleased to find not just the gallery space, but about 35 artist studios with working artists. The complex also features living spaces and office space.
The people inhabiting this space are definitely on the bleeding edge of downtown revitalization. They are in a bubble totally unconnected to rest of the area. There is not even a grocery store anywhere nearby. For a complete history of the complex, go to Endangered Durham, one of my favorite sites about the history of Durham.
Baseball Season Has Begun
Both of my kids play baseball and it is baseball season in the local rec leagues. It is such a change from basketball season, which is completely weather independent, to baseball which occurs in the shower season hear in North Carolina. We have to get used to checking the weather on practice afternoons and checking our email on game days. Above is Grace playing catcher in a recent game.
Lessons from Living Wax Museum Project
My daughter Grace is in third grade, and every year the third graders in her school work on biography projects that they present in the form of a speech from their subject. Grace choose George Washington Carver for her subject. I am not quite sure how or why she choose him, but I imagine he was on a list of suggestions. She also likes peanuts. Her second choice was skateboarder Tony Hawk.
The first concern about this project was how would she, an 8-year old white girl portray a grown black man. She and her mom discussed it and decided that she would wear an old suit of her brother’s, wear an old man’s wig and carry a jar of peanut butter, one of Carver’s most famous inventions. They decided that there really is no respectful way for a child to darken their skin and present a speech to members of the school community. Blackface just doesn’t cut it anymore, although in high school I was in a play that included a play-within-a-play, and I did appear in blackface. Sorry, no pictures available.
I was working with her on the speech this week and we encountered a word choice question that was in the same vein. Certain aspects of George Washington Carver’s story happened because he was black. Since Grace will be speaking as George Washington Carver in the living wax museum, I wondered aloud what word he would use to describe himself. Since he lived from the 1860s to 1940s, this son of former slaves would call himself Negro. Well, we knew that was not the right term to use in 2009 liberal Chapel Hill, even though it was historically accurate. We settled on African-American, as the term that would not offend anyone, since it is the current term most commonly used, especially in an elementary school setting.
Her choice of a notable African-American was a bit odd, but wound up causing important and thoughtful conversations of how one acts in today’s society, and as a member of a community
Passover Seder
This year Passover coincided with Spring Break, so the kids and I were in Florida for the first night of this Jewish holiday. My mom’s community holds a large seder in their clubhouse with over 130 attendees. My mom is on the committee that plans the event, now in its 7th year, and she is responsible for working with the chef to pick the dishes for the dinner. She shares her recipes with him and he figures out how expand them from serving 8 to serving 130.
Traditionally, the youngest child asks the four questions, which are answered throughout the ceremonial service before dinner, but since they were the only two kids in attendance, they divided the questions between them. Watch the short video to see what a great job they did.
Part of the service involves putting a drop of wine on the plate for each of the plagues brought upon the Egyptians, and here are my 10 drops on the saucer.
The food was fabulous, and included turkey with cranberry sauce, brisket, potato kugel, tsimmis and broccoli.
And here’s a picture of Peter and Grace with my mom and stepdad, Bob.
Grace Earns Her Yellow-Black Belt
My daughter Grace is training to be a ninja through her Toshin-do classes. These are her exercises required to get her Yellow-Black belt and progress to the next level. Plus she tries on her new belt in a second clip.
Digital Papercuts Has Moved
This post is primarily for my subscribers who view this blog in their feedreader. I have changed my blogging software to WordPress and that brings many changes. I would be happy to share my experiences with the blog move, and may do so in a future post.
You may see some duplicate content and old content in the feed, but that will clear up soon as I get everything up and running. The duplicate content results from pointing the same feed at a new site. Duplicate content is a small price to pay to keep my posts flowing toward your reader. Some of the older content may be posts that I published on other sites, and have now re-posted here for completeness.
And finally, I have changed the feed to summary mode rather than the full posts, so you can come to my site and give me some feedback on the new look. It is a work in progress that still needs some more tweaks, but I wanted to share ideas, videos and photos and couldn’t wait any longer. After a little while I may change the feed back to showing full posts. Please let me know your thoughts on that below.
Grace’s Big Adventure
On Wednesday I was meeting a friend for lunch when my phone rang. It was my daughter’s school principal telling me that Grace had fallen on the playground and hurt her back. The nurse and others were keeping her immobilized while they waited for the paramedics to arrive. I told the principal I would be there in 10 minutes.
On my way, a fire truck passed me. I knew it was headed to the school because I know that fireman are frequently the first respondents to an emergency. I made it to the playground and saw Grace lying still under the slide. She was up on her side, and covered with a blanket. It was a bit scary to see her like that, but she was calm and lucid. Apparently she was on the wooden platform of a play structure and slipped on someone’s coat. She fell off the edge, about five feet to the ground, and hit her back and neck on the structure on the way down. The impact with the ground did not appear to cause any injury.
The firemen made it to the playground and did a preliminary check of her condition and put a brace on Grace’s neck to keep it still. She described the pain to them as a “7.” Soon the paramedics arrived and secured Grace to a board for transport. Another girl was having a severe asthma attack, and also needed to go to the hospital. Grace, the other girl, one of the paramedic and I rode in the back of an ambulance (my first ride, ever) to the hospital.
We pulled up to the ER and Grace, and the transport board she was riding on, were put on a rolling hospital bed and taken inside. After checking in we were rolled down to the exam room. All this time I had been trying to get in touch with Grace’s mom, but was unable to. The endless stream of people came in. Two nurses, an admissions person, a resident, a med student and eventually a doctor. Everybody asked the same questions, and Grace calmly repeated the answers.
There was one bit of confusion when Grace told the residence that her head hurt. I know that part of the exam is to see how Grace responds to questions, but I intervened on this one and told Grace to tell the residence why her head hurt. From lying on this board, she said. The resident took this to mean that Grace did not get hurt in the fall, so we had to straighten all that out. The doctor led a brief exam and determined that she had some bony tenderness in her mid and lower back, as well as her neck. He would evaluate further after xrays.
They rolled Grace down the hall for a series of xrays of her neck and back, including one weird shot where the tech had her open her mouth so they could see her spine at the back of her head. While we were in the xray room, Grace’s mom showed up. I had finally been able to get in touch with her and tell her where we were, but she had never gotten any messages from school, so she didn’t know what had happened. I filled her in and we went back to a different exam room. This one was bigger, since Grace now had both parents with her.
After the doctor reviewed her xrays, and Grace did some mobility tests (turn your head this way, now that way), she was released. The doctor told her to take is easy, and that she might be sore. She had completely recovered and was fine at school the next day.
Here’s a link to the rest of the photos on Flickr.
Peter’s Tournament Picks 2nd Round
Peter did okay with his picks in the 2nd round of the tournament. He correctly picked 11 of the teams that made it to the Sweet 16. Since it is getting complicated to list games he picked as we get deeper into the bracket, I will just list his correct picks for each region.
Midwest
Louisville
Michigan St
West
Connecticut
Purdue
Memphis
East
Pittsburgh
Villanova
Duke
South
North Carolina
Syracuse
Oklahoma
His total record for the tournament so far is 32-48.
Peter’s Tournament Picks Day Two
Day Two was a rough one Peter, as well as many others who missed calling lots of upsets. Peter went 8-16 on this day, for a total of 21-32 for the opening round. None of these missed games have any effect on his bracket for beyond the second round, so he is still hanging in there. Not really sure what he was thinking about Kansas.
Games he missed:
Upsets:
He picked #5 Florida State who was beaten by #12 Wisconsin
He picked #8 Ohio State who was beaten by #9 Siena
He picked #5 Utah who was beaten by #12 Arizona
He picked #4 Wake Forest who was beaten by #13 Cleveland St
He picked #6 West Virginia who was beaten by #11 Dayton
Missed because he predicted upsets
He picked #11 Temple who was beaten by #6 Arizona State
He picked #14 North Dakota St who was beaten by #3 Kansas
He picked #11 Utah St who was beaten by #6 Marquette
Peter’s Tournament Picks Day One
Peter went 13-16 in the opening day of the tournament. That’s a pretty good opening day. He’s what he missed. 2 were upsets, and one he picked an upset that didn’t happen.
He picked #7 Clemson who was beaten by #10 Michigan
He picked #5 Illinois who was beaten by #12 Western Kentucky
He picked #11 VCU who was beaten by #6 UCLA