“Part of nature”

Zoologist, anthropologist, and author of The Naked Ape Desmond Morris salutes Charles Darwin as a “Hero for our age” in The Daily  Mail [emphasis mine]:
There is a strange object sitting on my desk as I write. It is a shiny sphere of fossilised, primeval slime. Known technically as stromatolites, this blue-green slime was the original [...]

“A true and precious stone”

I wasn’t going to go through this week’s New York Times “Books Update” newsletter which arrived yesterday by email, but I’m glad I reconsidered this morning, for there in my inbox was Phyllis McGinley (1905-1978).
Because Miss McGinley is the mind behind “The Year without a Santa Claus”, which was originally the following:

and also several other [...]

Merry Christmas, eh?

The great Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) offered this little Christmas tale in 1910:
Hoodoo McFiggin’s Christmas
by Stephen Leacock
This Santa Claus business is played out. It’s a sneaking,
underhand method, and the sooner it’s exposed the better.
For a parent to get up under cover of the darkness of
night and palm off a ten-cent necktie on a boy [...]

Comfort and joy

From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, “The First of the Three Spirits”:
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. [...]

Not that I’m planning to send out Christmas cards…

which I haven’t done for the past several years.  But if that was the plan, these would be the pictures:

(Laura, Daniel, and Davy aboard the four-masted Peking at South Street Seaport last month)

(Davy, Daniel, and Laura in the front yard with their new Christmas hats, January 2008)
With very Merry Christmas wishes from Farm School!

Don’t try this at home

Matt Apuzzo at the Associated Press tries to find out how the banks are spending their bailout money.  Our bailout money.  Try these answers at the bank the next time you need to borrow some money:
“We’re choosing not to disclose that,” said Kevin Heine, spokesman for Bank of New York Mellon, which received about $3 [...]

Science resources and a bit of pre-holiday homework

From science writer and blogger Carl Zimmer, who writes at The Loom:
1) Year of Science 2009:
The Coalition On The Public Understanding of Science (COPUS), a grassroots network, is putting together a massive celebration of science stretching across all 12 months of the year. Museums, scientific societies, and other groups will be presenting lectures, science cafes, [...]

Repost: I triple-dog dare you

From December 1, 2006:
Just in time for Christmas, the cockles of my heart are warmed to learn that one of my favorite holiday movies has come to life:
Switch on your leg lamp and warm up the Ovaltine. The Christmas Story House and Museum will be ready for visitors starting Saturday.Imagine being inside Ralphie Parker’s 1940s [...]

Repost: Christmas on Huckleberry Mountain

I found the following a couple of years ago when I was looking for a review of the then-new live action movie of Charlotte’s Web.
*  *  *
While at the website, I happened to notice on the sidebar a link to a special Holiday Posting of Lois Lenski’s memories, entitled “Christmas at Huckleberry Mountain Library“, published [...]

General Christmas unblogginess

Apologies for the lack of posts.  I’m just not feeling very bloggy of late.  We’ve jumped into our family Christmas celebrations and preparations, since the weather (we were up to -20 C for a few days, but this morning was -30 C again.  Brrr…) made us think of staying indoors and baking and decorating and [...]

Happy Christmas

from CD and Colin Purrington’s Axis of Evo project,

Which makes me feel better about Obama’s choice for the inauguration invocation.  I was hoping the choice might run more toward, say, John Shelby Spong.
Colin also has a Charles Darwin Christmas tree ornament to download as a PDF and print on cardstock, and you can find more [...]

Holiday wishes

Via bookseller Alison Morris’s blog, ShelfTalker:
Not only can you send free e-cards for the holidays, designed by children’s authors and illustrators Janell Cannon, Eric Carle, Ian Falconer, David Kirk, Ida Pearle, Lauren Stringer, and Debra Frasier (and Bob the Builder, too), but for each card you send E! Networks will make a contribution to the [...]

From the shelves of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

store to our shelves:
Inside the Museum: A Children’s Guide to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by Joy Richardson (Harry N. Abrams, 1993).  Chapters, with color pictures, include Behind the Scenes, The Collections, Egyptian Art, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Asian Art, Islamic Art, Greek and Roman Art, Medieval Art, Medieval Art/The Cloisters (which we have to, [...]

A head-start on the Lincoln Bicentennial

When Honest Abe quits twirling at the thought of Rotten Rod, here’s something to please him –  Edward Rothstein’s review in today’s New York Times of the new National Portrait Gallery exhibit, One Life: The Mask of Lincoln,  a “modest” and “understated highlight of Lincoln’s coming bicentennial year”.
Mr. Rothstein’s review is also notable for the [...]

Poetry Friday: Lights and trees and snow

Hard to believe we’ve been back for little over a week. The kids had a full 4H weekend, the older two at a public speaking workshop on Saturday (to help prepare for the big public speaking event in February) and all three at a volleyball tournament all day Sunday. Davy, who’s one year [...]

Why I hate book clubs

and just about anything else by committee:
“Fighting over books”

Trip report, part II

The day after Davy’s birthday (Tuesday, November 25), the kids asked to go to the American Museum of Natural History, a few blocks from the hotel and just across the street from my first independent NYC apartment.  I figured a weekday would be better than a mobbed weekend, so off we went, with a packed [...]

Holiday discount for Farm School readers

I thought I’d better move up and out Kathy Ceceri’s kind offer from the comments in yesterday’s Butterfly post, for any Farm School reader wishing to take her up on it:
As a special holiday thanks, I’d like to offer Farm School fans $5 off my book Around the World Crafts. Go to https://www.createspace.com/3349559 and type [...]

Polar bears, Prime Ministers, and basic math

Rick Mercer is a Canadian satirist, and one of our smartest public figures; think Jon Stewart in a parka.  Today on his blog and in the national newspaper The Globe & Mail, he has an an opinion piece, “It’s Not the Economy, Stupid”, from which:
Not long after Stephen Harper took office as Canada’s 28th Prime [...]

Trip report, part I

“We are not giving you the advice to start smiling at everyone you meet in New York. That would be dangerous.”
Researcher James H. Fowler in yesterday’s New York Times
* * * * *
We had a marvelous, wonderful holiday visit with my parents.  The highlights were Thanksgiving and Davy’s eighth [...]