Blue Paper

Evil: Rippled Potato Chips & French Onion Dip
Good: Helping a student find a tutor for their writing skills

Today was the start of the second, full week of classes on campus. It's been long enough that many classes have had at least one grade recorded for some homework, assignment or the like. This is also when a lot of students decide to change their schedule based on those grades so they walk around campus with blue scheduling forms to get signatures.

So, while waiting for my Psychology class, I had two students come to get my signature to drop the class. Let me tell you a little about them.

Student #1: This student is in his mid-forties and had a bad educational history. He quit school at 15, came back to get his GED at 30 and now came back at 45 to get an actual degree in something. He had never written anything more than his name or the occasional list so when he was given my assignment - he freaked. "In two pages, tell me what you hope to learn in this class." This is a standard assignment I give to my students - it's a 'plot device' to help me grab their interest in some of the material to be covered in the class. I also use it to get a sense of who are going to be the serious students and who are the Sheeple. Student #1 didn't strike me as a Sheeple - but he just didn't have the skills that one needs to jump into college and run. In my opinion he would be an average student once he completed a 'pre-college' program; something to help him learn how to write, proof-read and construct professional papers. This student couldn't type without capitalizing every other word and ignoring all punctuation and rules of spelling. I could tell that he was sort of getting the material that we were covering, but he didn't have the skills to communicate them very well.

Unfortunately, student #1 decided to drop the course. I would not be surprised if he doesn't finish his first year without serious attention to his professional / academic skills.

Student #2 was a punk; at least that's what I originally thought. With more tattoos, piercings and successful attacks on the English language than I have notebooks - he seemed like he was just in school for the overage money. He didn't sit in class - he sprawled across two desks because he 'wasn't comfortable'. He would ask questions that had nothing to do with the topic being discussed - and then become argumentative if I didn't answer him immediately. The cap was when I noticed that he had nothing with him to write - or write on. so all the times he was asking questions, it seemed as though he had no intention of capturing the material in the lecture and that I was there for his amusement. If you can't tell - I was not amused.

Then, out of the blue (ok, bad joke - I own it), he came by my office today with a blue paper in his hand. He explained that he did not have anything to write on or write with in class because, get this, he -couldn't- write. I was confused and asked him if he just had problems taking notes, or couldn't focus his attention - etc. He explained that he was constantly passed up the grades through High School because no one wanted him in class - that they didn't want to help him learn. Being the paranoid, suspicious person that I am, I countered him and said that if he was going to be successful in college - he had to help himself. He had not written the paper or taken a single note yet in any of his classes because he didn't know how. So, I got a hold of some of the services we have on campus, even walked him down to the tutoring center so he could get signed up for help. They said that they could help him teach himself - something that he seemed to respond to quickly. Rather than waiting on someone else to help him - he would do it himself with a little help from others.

While he was filling out some paperwork for the Center, I went back to my office to grab one of my spare notebooks (yes, I carry an extra in my bag. You never know) and brought it back to him. I gave him a pen and notebook and told him that he doesn't have any other excuses. He has the help and now the materials to survive on Shawnee's campus. What he did from then on was on -his- shoulders. It was sort of a 'grow up or shut up' speech that I've given a few other students and considered the matter closed.

Psychology came and went and as I was closing up shop and answering some questions from straggling students, I saw him pausing in the wings. He still had the notebook and pen that I gave him and I saw him writing furiously in class. He put the notebook on the podium and wanted me to look through his notes. We talked about what he wrote (which was pretty good concerning the topic today was Abnormal Psychology) and he said that he was going to 'impress' me this term.

I was surprised but willing to give the guy some latitude. We'll see where this goes.

ATQ
-T

A dose of weird

"Seven Queens wear Seven Rings as the Seven Stars in Heaven."

This is a rhyme that popped into my head last summer. Originally, the rhyme was:

"Seven Rings... Seven Kings... Seven Stars under Heaven."

It was a fragment. Just like trying to remember an old song or something that you heard once and could only pick out some of the information.

I wrote it in my journal and basically forgot about it.

Until today.

While watching a NatGeo program on the Nebra Sky Disk, I saw something that got my attention (aside from the fact that it's a as-yet unexplained artifact); a seven-dot cluster that was used to help identify the other markings on the disk. The seven-dot cluster was used in the ancient world to identify the Pleiades star cluster.

I leaned up from my computer chair and tried to rattle off the rhyme as I remember it. However, this time I said "Seven Queens" rather than "Seven Kings." I knew that it was one of the two and reached up to find the journal entry. In the program, an astronomer commented that Pleiades was also called the "Seven Sisters" and the whole thing seemed to fall into place.

The Pleiades cluster actually has thousands of stars in it, but we can usually only see seven of them.

When I looked up the cluster to read more about it, I saw the cluster of stars and immediately saw a pattern in the arrangement of the brightest of the stars; a crook.

I have associated the Crook as a symbol representing a quest or the search for knowledge. The crook (as either the crook and flail or the crozier) is also seen everyday as a modern question mark. When I saw the arrangement of the stars as a crook, my curiosity was aroused a bit more.

Unfortunately, the discovery of a possible connection between my interest in symbology, ancient astronomy and a rhyme from last summer has left me with even more questions.

FOLLOW UP:

I cross-referenced the cultural identity of the Seven Sisters cluster against Mayan Astronomy. Since the Maya were one of the most well-documented Astronomers (Mayan Astonomy, 2012, etc.) The Maya watched Tianquizli (Pleiades) closely to ensure that the world wouldn't end. They watched for the signs of the apocalypse and that demons of darkness would descend to the earth and devour the world of man.

Have you Seen this?

I was watching a program on Discovery channel and saw an add for one of their series called: "The Colony".

From the site:

The Colony is a controlled experiment to see exactly what it would take to survive and rebuild under these circumstances. For 10 weeks, a group of 10 volunteers, whose backgrounds and expertise represent a cross-section of modern society, are isolated in an urban environment outside Los Angeles and tasked with creating a livable society.

With no electricity from the grid, no running water and no communication with the outside world, all the volunteers have to work with are their skills and whatever tools and supplies they can scavenge from their surroundings.

Experts from the fields of homeland security, engineering and psychology have helped design the world of The Colony to reflect elements from both real-life disasters and models of what the future could look like after a global viral outbreak.

Over the course of the 10-week experiment, the Colonists must work together to build the necessities of survival, such as a water-filtration system, a battery bank that powered their electricity, a solar cooker, a shower system and a greenhouse – and even some niceties (a coffee maker!).

Watch some of the episodes here.

OMG

Thundercats - the movie?

Yeah, it's a fake trailer - but wow.

Look here:

The Wedding

This past weekend, June 13th, marked the wedding of June's son Adam to his girlfriend of many years, Anna.

For as long as I have known June and Adam, there was no doubt that he and Anna were going to get married at some point in the future. They were equivalently High School sweethearts who, now in college, decided to get married over the summer so that they could finish out their degrees.

When I showed up to the Amphitheater at Greenbo Lake, I saw the usual spread of chairs out in the green lawn and picked up that it was an outdoor wedding. True to Adam's style, I also noticed that the groomsmen, bridesmaids and others in the wedding party were in garb. Here you can see a picture of Anna being escorted to the altar by her father in a kilt.

The wedding march itself was a piece of bag pipe music that I only know as Scotland the Brave. It was a very cool service. Adam's younger sister was there to shoot the place with her camera - a budding photographer. I've seen her work and the girl has a very good idea for capturing the shot.
It was a small ceremony - perhaps attended by no more than fifty to sixty people - but no less enjoyable. It should be a lesson for the times and perhaps a good theme for their marriage:

"Keep things simple".

One Word

CHEEZECAKE

Tseo says Hi

Two posts in one day...

Amazing.

Once I got home from the lake, I decided to fire up the outdoor kitchen again and cook something for lunch. When I was finished and putting things away, I saw something gray walk down from the hillside and into the back yard. Originally I thought that it was one of the stray cats in the neighborhood coming down to eat at the bowl of food I put out for strays.

Well, I was half right.

Someone's been busy...

Today, like other Tuesdays, is a day that Josh and I get out of the house for a while and try and do something adventuresome. It does not always work since we're trying to keep it cheap so we're usually just traveling to local parks, lakes and the like.

Today we went out to Turkey Creek Lake on the west side of Portsmouth and went creek-walking.

As soon as we showed up to the park, there was something that was different about the place. Large stones that had been part of the hillside since I was a kid had slid down and altered the landscape and the creek had altered its course. As my eyes followed up the length of the creek I was surprised to find that someone had been busy.

Stacked stone sculptures and monuments are as ancient as any human civilization. A rock might point out a boundary or barrier between one area and another. Circles of stones (some as large as those creating the stone circle of Stone Henge) are ancient symbols dividing the ground within the circle and the ground outside the circle as separate; perhaps as simple as the difference between the mundane world and the spiritual world.

Stacked stone monuments, such as the structure above, were commonly found across the European landscape as markers for everything from trails, burials, environmental dangers, etc. They require only time and patience to build since there is no mortar and creek stones are fairly plentiful if you just hunt around for them.

The thing that I find most disturbing about the discover and construction of this stone monument is that =I= didn't do it.

Given the time and inclination, this would have been something that I could have and probably would have built. I didn't think that there were people in this quaint corner of Ohio who would even contemplate the idea of creating a stacked-stone monument. Anyone can stack stones to create a small dam in a creek but it takes patience to collect the stone and stack them so that the shape is maintained.

Near the monument was yet another piece of construction - something that I found rather curious.
A few feet from the monument, someone had stacked and piled stone, sticks and leaves in what I can only best describe as a spiral. This picture doesn't quite capture the design that well, but if you look below there is a close up of the various layers of the form.

The dead sticks are piled at the center of the spiral and then, as it expands, the channel is filled with leaves that are only slightly wilted. I would surmise that this structure (or at least the leaves) were harvested and piled over the weekend since they haven't completely wilted.

So then I thought:

Who would have created two ancient symbols of stone; the monument and the spiral?

I have my own theories as to who -could- make such things but not necessarily if they would or not.

Again,

Someone's been busy.

A strange thing on the way to the campus

Today was one of those days that everything was just... odd.

Josh and I walked down to campus today so I could check on a student's grade. The student claimed that she didn't receive a final grade in one of my classes and I knew that she was there and I remembered grading her paper. So all I could assume was that there was a typo somewhere in the steps to post her grade.

Out of 184 students it's bound to happen and it's easily fixed.

So while on Offnere, a main north-south artery in Portsmouth, we were walking by a building that we have passed several times when I happened to read the billboard outside. Much to my shock, Josh claims that the sign had this message on it for some time now and that I've just missed it. Truth be told, I can't remember ever actually looking at the sign before today more than a casual glance and I am fairly confident that I would have picked up on the word 'Murder' sometime before now.

Today, for some reason, it finally registered and I was a bit surprised to say the least. Not only has some woman lost her husband but she's also offering a reward to the capture of whoever killed him. This is not something that I would find uncommon - but the fact that she's advertising that she's investigating her husband's murder, may suggest that she's either unsatisfied with the work of the local police department or feels that she can find more information than they can detect by throwing out the promise of some reward. There's also the more curious alternative that she is advertising her own interest in her husband's murder to possibly remove the air of guilt or complicity from around her shoulders. I would love to hear about something so dramatic as that, but I doubt anyone in this town could try and throw up any kind of plausible deniability such as this.

I have no idea who the man was who was murdered, how he died or even what the case file might reveal as to a possible motive, but I'm curious.

Strange. Very strange.

Projects:

Chalkboard: 95% (just need to attach the supports and mount it to the wall.

Wallpaper: 50% (no movement)

Driveway: 6% (Thought about it again today)

Mother Nature... WTF?

Ok,

So I'm all about a crisp spring morning but FORTY-FIVE DEGREES!?!?!

This morning I got out of bed to the smell of brewing coffee (roommates are so handy and since this one is a *twitch* morning person, he has become the in-house Barrista) and stumbled through the house. When I spied the thermometer / clock thing in Josh's room I saw that it was only 45 degrees outside.

WTF?

I know that classes ended a wee bit early this year, but the last I checked we shouldn't be having March-like mornings in MAY.

Someone needs to check Mother Nature's Adderall prescription.

Brr.

-Tom

Week 1, down

... Fourteen to go.

Project Updates:

Chalkboard: 90% complete
Wallpaper: 60% complete
Driveway: 5% (ok, so I've -thought- about doing it a few times)
Painting Car Port: 5% (yup, you guessed it.)

The chalkboard that I've been working on with Josh is almost complete. This past Friday I got the board and we primed it with two coats and then put on two of the black, chalkboard paint. Today was the application of the cork board border. I know me and I will definitely have a few dozen things posted up on the edge of reminders and designs or projects that I'm progressing. The wallpaper has all but been removed from the walls of the middle, or "living" room. I have to continue to scrape and sand the wall here and there to remove any loose bits of paper that refuse to be scraped free. This is, essentially, the easy part. Once all of that is complete then I can start the arduous task of -FINDING- a replacement wallpaper. Putting it up is fairly easy.

As for beating the driveway into submission or painting the carport - well, both of those have suffered this first week of my summer vacation.

I'll post some pictures of the two projects that have gotten any kind of attention as soon as I figure how to yank them down from my new phone.

Until then -

Go see Star Trek.

-Tom

Freedom

Well, it's that time again.

As of 5 p.m. this afternoon, I have posted the last of my exam grades, handled the last of the emails sent to me by students hoping / pleading for "understanding" or "assistance" with their grade.

It may be yet another constant in the universe, but whenever I assign extra-credit for my classes, the only students who actually complete it are the ones who don't need the extra points. All those who blow it off are those who could have really used the help by the end of the year?

What does this mean? Well, it means that I can usually shut down any of the begging, pleading, and general childishness that I get from some students by simply asking, "Did you do the extra-credit?" When they reply, "Well, no, but I had a good reason." I usually end the conversation. Life is too short to hear yet another excuse for poor preparation or performance.

Now that I'm on my summer break (aka, being unemployed), I can work on my house projects. Last summer started off with fixing a bathroom sink. This year it's been ripping down wallpaper in my living room. The old wallpaper was put up some time ago and needed to be replaced. It shouldn't cost too much to repaper the old walls, but more on that later.

As for now it's late and I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow I plan on attacking my driveway with a sledgehammer.


See ya.

-Tom