Cleaning up at the county fair

S1's picture of the bird where he was experimenting with perspective won first prize in the 5-8 age group at the county fair:

S2's drawing (of tepees) placed second in the 4-year age group. As did her clay walrus. The wife's glazed ceramic plate placed first too.

The result gave each kid an argument for how they'd beat out the other. S1 said that since he got a first, he did better. But S2 countered that she got more prize money than him ($18 to his $10), so there!

Fortunately (for us), we didn't have to adjudicate. Outside the exhibits area, there were a bunch of rides and the kids forgot their argument and went on the rides.

Joe Wilson: not there yet

Joe Wilson, the Congressman who shouted "You Lie!" at Obama (even though Obama was stating the truth), still has ways to go if he's going to catch up to Preston Brooks.

Preston Brooks was the South Carolina senator who took offense at Charles Sumner, a fellow senator who'd criticized President Franklin Pearce and other Southerners for their sympathy with pro-slavery violence in Kansas. So, he walked up to Sumner as he was writing at his desk in a mostly empty senate and hit him repeatedly with his cane. It took 3 years before Sumner recovered enough to return to the Senate.

And South Carolinans? What did they do? They did what they are now doing for Joe Wilson -- rally around him. The Richmond Enquirer said: "We consider the act good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences. These vulgar abolitionists in the Senate must be lashed into submission."

The story gets better. Anson Burlingame, a senator from New England, called Brooks a coward and so Brooks challenged him to a duel which was accepted. Brooks backed out of the challenge though. Wikipedia drily observes: "Burlingame's reputation as a deer hunter and a deadly shot with a rifle could also have been a factor." As could the fact that the reason Brooks walked with a cane was that he had been shot in the leg in an earlier duel.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

"The Housekeeper and the Professor" by Yoko Ogawa is a revelation. Even more than most Japanese novels, the writing here is spare and haunting. Amazingly, the author draws out the psyches of the four main characters through their reaction to mathematics.

The housekeeper is a single mom living a hardscrabble life. The mathematics professor was involved in an accident and can only remember the last 80 minutes. So, everyday, he meets the housekeeper and has to get to know her all over again. He does this by talking math with her, and over time, (because, of course, her memory is longer than 80 minutes) she picks up a new way of looking at the world. He also takes a shine to her child and acts like a totally responsible caring adult in his company (the only man in the child's life). The three of them end up forming a tight family unit. Lurking in the background is the professor's sister-in-law whose relationship with mathematics and the professor is painted in just a few bold brush strokes (which I won't spoil).

In one sense, the book is about the capability of elegant mathematics to illuminate our inner selves. In another sense, it's about the role of memories and affection within families. Even if you don't normally read fiction or translations, make an exception for this book.

Al Franken draws a map

This is quite awe-inspiring, but curious minds (ok, just mine) need to know: what was Al Franken saying? Was he cracking jokes as he drew the map?

Whistler

My favorite scene in Whistler: a garden built around a stream of milky glacier melt:

Migrating toads and slugs:

And trees with gnarled roots in fast-moving streams:

Hitting the trifecta of worst possible siting

"NCAR", to me, always brings to mind their gorgeous location on the Front Range of the Rockies. So, when I went to a workshop at NCAR in Boulder a couple of weeks ago, I sort of expected to go to the mesa lab:

The taxi guy had other ideas, and to my disappointment, I was deposited in front of this non-descript building. It turned out to be part of NCAR too, but in some subtle mockery of their original location, this one is located in-front of a railway track, across the street from a munical airport and alongside a highway. In the area of worst-possible sitings, the Center Green campus seems to hit the trifecta!

This, being Colorado, though you only had to move a few paces to get a gorgeous view:

Zipping in an unforeign land

It's easy to forget in Whistler, BC that you are not in a national park but merely in a very pretty city. This, below, is a view of Fitzsimmons Creek, the creek that separates Whistler from Blackcomb. I took it from a canopy in the rainforest.

This is what one of those canopies looks like from the ground. They're attached to these old-growth Douglas firs. What are those cables that lead from the canopies?

Harnessed to those cables, you can go zipping across the creek. Here I am doing the zip upside down. Loads of fun.

A blog entry about Canada would not be complete without my pet peeve about the country. It feels so unforeign, so ... American. Look at this sign about disappearing forests. Look closely. What country is on the map depicted? Really!