Grace Wishes You a Happy 4th of July
Grace offers Happy 4th of July wishes.
Do You Have What it Takes?
Grace offers me a real life challenge.
Happy 4th of July 2009
I have always been a fan of Carrboro’s Family 4th of July Celebration. This year, like most others, we arrived early at the Weaver Street lawn, decorated our rides, a scooter in Grace’s case, and lined up for the parade. Here’s a short video of the parade.
The parade ends at the Carrboro Town Hall and Farmer’s Market with lots of free games and fun. Grace wanted to be at the front of the parade so she could get to the fun before the lines got too long. She went on the bouncy obstacle course first and then she climbed the climbing wall. She also tried her hand at the “Ring the Bell.”
Here’s a link to more pictures on Flickr.
My Phone Rang
Yesterday my phone rang and it was Grace.
“Hi, Dad. Can you give me Peter’s cell phone number?”
Peter is at the beach with his friend and their family. I gave Grace the number and said goodbye.
My phone rang again.
“Hi, Dad. Can you give me Peter’s number again.”
I asked her why I needed to give it to her again.
“I was in the garage and didn’t have anything to write it down on.”
I decided to ask her why she needed Peter’s number.
“Well, we were playing with Peter’s water balloons and I can’t turn the hose off.”
I asked her if she tried to get someone else to help her. The kids of one of her mom’s friends are staying with her this summer.
“Yes, they tried and they can’t turn it off either.”
I asked why she wanted to call Peter.
“He has more experience with the hose.”
At that point, I asked her if she wanted me to come try to turn the hose off.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
As I was on my way, my phone rang.
“Hi, Dad. We got the water to stop. We put a clamp on the hose.”
Not Just Cool, But She Understands Me
Tonight I went shopping with my 8 year old daughter and she was playing with my iphone. She is recently enamored with a bubble wrap game. She has mastered it and has knocked my high score out of the high scorers. Every few games, the app shows a promo ad that offers prizes if you play the pro version.
Grace read me the ad and said that it is only 99 cents.
I told her that I don’t pay for apps.
“You paid for the Twitter app.”
Memorial Day Questions by Grace
We went to a friend’s open house over the Memorial Day weekend, and my 8-year-old daughter Grace interviewed partygoers with a series of questions. This video is the result.
Here’s a link to the YouTube version if you have trouble playing the Vimeo one above.
Grace and My Little Bronto
I have several friends who work at email marketing firm, Bronto, whose mascot is the dinosaur formerly known as the brontosaurus. I was given an inflatable bronto and Grace decided to sing to it, with me videoing it of course. They posted this video on their blog, BrontoNation. And for anyone who is wondering, I shot this video long before I applied for the job at Bronto.
Grace is Going to Rock Camp
Grace sings in the church choir. She is also in a drum corps in school, and that’s elementary school. She frequently plays percussion rather than drums proper. She also plays Rock Band at her mom’s house. But this summer she’s going to Rock Camp for a week and she is super excited.
The concept is simple. Bring a bunch of girls together for a week and let them bond over songwriting and learning to play instruments. Like most programs of this type, it is less about the music itself, and more about the creative process of musical expression and building self-esteem. And at the end of the week, there is a performance at local rock club, Cat’s Cradle. I’m definitely looking forward to that.
The local organizers are part of a national group that runs Girls Rock Camp across the country, and here’s the trailer to a documentary about the program.
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